The Wound Beneath the Wound

A child scrapes a knee. Very common. Every kid does it, some of them do it nearly every day.

Before the bandage can be applied, before the antiseptic can do its work, the child must stop touching it.

Anyone who has ever tried to reason with a five-year-old about this knows the difficulty. The scab forms, the itch begins, and the small finger cannot resist. Off comes the scab. Fresh blood. Fresh tears. And the cycle begins again.

We look at that child with a knowing smile, perhaps a gentle rebuke, and we wonder why they cannot simply leave it alone.

And yet, if we are honest, most of us are that child.

We have wounds we will not stop picking at. We have hurts we return to like a tongue returning to a sore tooth. We tell ourselves we are managing, coping, dealing with life as best we can. But underneath our habits, our compulsions, our sudden angers, our sad indulgences, there is often a wound we have never allowed to heal.

And often, we have been picking at it so long, using all kinds of "sinful habits" to pick at it, that we have forgotten completely what the wound was. But it's there. Hidden, sometimes. But the pain remains, even when we can't name it.

 

The Diagnosis We Miss

When most people think about sin, they think about guilt. They think about shame. They think about a divine ledger where marks are made against them. And so they treat sin the way one might treat a legal problem: confess it, receive forgiveness, try harder next time.

This is not wrong. But it is not the whole picture.

Sin is not merely a legal problem.

Sin is a wound.

This is why Saint Augustine, reflecting on the parable of the Good Samaritan, saw in the man beaten by robbers on the road to Jericho a picture of humanity itself: stripped, wounded, left half-dead. The Samaritan, who is Christ, does not merely forgive the man. He binds his wounds, pours in oil and wine, carries him to the inn, and pays for his continued care (see Sermon 171).

Consider how Scripture speaks of the human condition. When the prophet Isaiah surveyed his people, he did not describe them primarily as criminals but as patients:

"From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds; they have not been drained, or bound up, or softened with oil." (Isaiah 1:6)

Notice the diagnosis. Not “you have broken this law and that law,” though that is true elsewhere. Here the prophet sees bruises. Sores. Bleeding wounds. And he sees something worse: wounds that have never been drained, never bound up, never softened with oil.

They are festering.

This is what sin does to the soul. It wounds. And unattended wounds do not simply stay the same. They become infected.

 

Two Kinds of Wounds

If we are going to be honest about this, we have to recognize that there are at least two kinds of wounds we carry, and they often become tangled together. We have so many "hidden wounds" that all we feel is the pain, sometimes, and we don't know which one came from where.

We are often very poor diagnosticians of ourselves. Because one of the ways we try to deal with wounds is by pretending they aren't there, by covering them up, or toughing it out until we become accustomed to the ache. So accustomed to it we forget we're wounded.

But forgetting it doesn't make it go away. It doesn't stop the infection from spreading.

The first are the wounds we cause ourselves through our own sin.

Every sin leaves a mark on the soul. Even after it is forgiven, even after grace has washed the guilt away, there is often a residual damage. A man who spent years in bitterness may find that forgiveness comes, but the habit of suspicion lingers. A woman who lived promiscuously may find, even after conversion, that her ability to trust intimate love has been damaged.

This is not because God has failed to forgive. It is because sin, in addition to being an offense, is an injury. And injuries, even healed ones, sometimes leave scars. And even if they heal, in ways we don't even realize we're doing, we often pick at them, open them up again, and expose them to infection.

The second kind of wound is one we did not choose.

These are wounds inflicted on us by the sins of others, or by the sheer brokenness of a fallen world. A father’s harsh words. A mother’s absence. A ridiculously high standard set by our parents we never felt like we could meet. A betrayal by someone we trusted. A trauma we cannot name aloud even in the privacy of our own hearts.

These wounds are not our fault. But they can become the ground in which our own sinful patterns take root.

And here is where the picking begins. The picking doesn't have to look like the wound. It can seem, at first, to be unrelated. And it might not even be directed at the person who caused the wound.

Because a wounded animal lashes out. Not just at whatever caused the wound. At everyone. Because a wounded animal is afraid. Out of fear, it turns against anyone, even someone who might try to help it.

A wounded soul finds ways to distract itself from the pain. It often sins against others, all in a completely subconscious effort to deal with the fear that their wound has sown into their soul. And often, tragically, the very behaviors we most despise in ourselves are all ways we've tried to cope, things that might not look at all like the wound we suffered, but are more related than we realize.

The addiction is not the wound. It is a way of picking at it, though. The rage and anger we struggle with is not the wound. But it might come from fear of being hurt, so we lash out, we pick at the wound, with something that, frankly, only wounds us in the act of doing it.

The compulsive scrolling, the emotional eating, the workaholism, the string of unhealthy relationships. These are not the original wound. They are the frantic fingers of a soul that will not stop touching what will not heal.

This is why willpower alone rarely conquers a besetting sin. You can white-knuckle your way for a time, but if the wound underneath remains festering, the compulsion returns.

Because the sin was never really about the sin. It was about the wound.

Almost every person who has struggled with pornography, for instance, has some kind of wound. And it's not necessarily related to their sexuality. The lust emerges as a coping mechanism, an escape, as a kind of "salve" but one that's laced with bacteria... and each time the person engages, they form new wounds, a new shame, a new pain, because sin always wounds. And that drives them back into the viscious habit.

People who are constantly berating their loved ones, judging them, refusing to repair their relationships, might not even know why they're acting that way. There is a wound there, somewhere, that they are reacting against. But until they get honest, until they start peeling away the layers of blame and resentment, the wound festers.

 

Why God Exposes the Wound

If you've been following me for a while, I hope you've been growing in your relationship with God. I hope you've been developing practices, going deeper in prayer, reading the bible not merely for information, but to encounter God within its pages. This is all good. But I have to tell you, because some people have e-mailed me about things like this happening as they started to grow in their relationship with God.

There is a moment in the spiritual life, sometimes early, sometimes decades in, when God begins to do something that feels almost cruel.

He begins to expose the wound.

You may have thought you were making progress. You had your prayer routine. You felt yourself growing in your relationship with God. You started reading your bible more, too, and other helpful books that nourish your faith. You had left behind the more obvious sins of your youth.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, an old memory surfaces.

A pattern you thought you had defeated returns with new intensity. A relationship in your life exposes a raw place you did not know was still raw.

You feel worse than you did before you started taking your faith seriously.

Many people at this point conclude that they have failed. Some conclude that God has abandoned them. Some walk away from the faith altogether because it seems to have made things worse, not better.

But this is precisely when you need to lean into God more. Because He's doing something in that pain.

What if God is not making things worse? What if He is finally making them real?

A physician who never diagnoses cannot heal. A soul that never sees its wound cannot bring it to the One who binds up the brokenhearted.

God, in His mercy, does not leave us with our polished surfaces. He loves us too much to leave us settling for a "surface" kind of holiness, a relationship with him that's polite, but never intimate.

He goes deeper. He goes to the place where we have been bleeding for years without knowing it.

"He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3)

Notice: He binds up their wounds. Not just their guilt. Not their sins in the abstract. Their wounds.

God has always known that beneath the sins are real wounds, and it is the wounds that must be healed if the sins are ever truly to lose their grip on us.

Saint John of the Cross understood this. He wrote of a “dark night” through which God leads souls, not to torment them, but to purify what surface piety could never reach. The soul in the dark night often feels as though everything is worse. But the darkness is not the absence of God. It is the operating room of the Divine Physician.

 

The Wounds of Christ

Here is where the mystery becomes almost unbearable in its beauty. The Son of God, when He came to heal our wounds, did not do so by remaining unwounded Himself.

He entered our woundedness. He took it into His own body.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5)

By his bruises we are healed. The Hebrew word here, chaburah, means a bruise, a stripe, a wound left by a blow. Peter picks up this same word when he writes to Christians suffering in the early church:

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:24)

The Greek word Peter uses, molops, means a wound, specifically the kind left by a lash. By that wound, we are healed.

Wound heals wound. This is the divine logic of the cross.

Think of Thomas after the Resurrection. When the risen Christ appeared to him, He did not appear in a body magically restored to smoothness. He appeared with His wounds. And He invited Thomas to place his hand into them.

"Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." (John 20:27)

Christ’s wounds remained. Glorified, yes. Transformed, yes. But present. And they became the very place where Thomas could bring his own woundedness, his doubt, his fear, his grief.

This is a picture of the entire Christian life. We do not bring our wounds to a Savior who has never bled. We bring them to One whose wounds are still visible in glory.

 

Placing Our Wounds in His

Here, then, is the movement of a healed soul. Not to hide the wound. Not to pretend. Not to keep picking.

But to place the wound into His wounds.

To let His pierced hand rest on the place where you have been bleeding for years.

This is not a metaphor only. When you kneel and confess your sins, you are not merely getting a legal transaction. You are entering the wounds of Christ. When you receive Communion, the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, you are receiving the very Body that was broken for you, the Blood that was shed.

His woundedness enters yours.

Even our prayers, every prayer, as we invite Him into the deepest part of our soul, is an invitation of a Lord who carries His wounds, who wants to unite us to Him in His flesh. His wounds remain, and so will ours. But His wounds after the resurrection are glorified. That's how he heals. He doesn't it disappear, as if it never happened. He uses it, He glorifies it, He enters into it.

And what had been killing you, destroying you, becomes mysteriously the very thing God has used to save you, to heal you.

 

A Practical Word

How do we live this out? A few suggestions:

First, ask the Lord to show you what the wound beneath the sin actually is. Not just the surface behavior, but the pain that behavior is trying to soothe. This requires honesty and often the help of a good confessor, spiritual director, accountability partner, or counselor. Do not underestimate the wisdom of praying, “Lord, show me what I am really hiding from.”

Second, resist the temptation to keep picking. When you feel the pull of an old pattern, pause and ask, “What am I trying not to feel right now?” Sometimes simply naming the wound, even without solving it, robs the compulsion of its power. It might not come to us right away. We might need to go deeper, to really examine what's beneath the surface. But healing requires we face it, not just so we can feel the pain again, but so that we can give it to Him, to press the wound into His wounds.

Third, bring the wound explicitly to Christ, especially in prayer. Speak to Him about the specific place you are hurting. Ask Him to place His wounded hand there.

Fourth, be patient. Wounds do not heal overnight, and deep wounds sometimes take years. But a wound in the hands of the Divine Physician is a wound moving toward healing, even when you cannot see it. Think of it like this. You can clean a wound, bandage it up, even take an antibiotic to kill the infection. If you sit and stare at the wound you won't see it heal. But over time, you might notice, eventually, that the pain is gone.

Fifth, remember that healed wounds often become the very places from which we are able to help others. Christ’s wounds, glorified, are the source of our healing. Your wounds, healed in Him, may yet become the place where He touches someone else.

Finally, remember that other people are wounded, too. That person who is lashing out at you, and you can't figure out why. They are likely suffering from a wound that they might not even recognize is there. This should move us toward compassion, not retaliation, or defensiveness. Instead of "firing back" or trying to argue with them, or judge them for their sin they can't seem to get past, allow them to be the wounded animal, even if it means that they're taking it out on you. Now that you know you can press any wound you suffer into Christ's wounds, you know where the solution is, you can heal, you can be more resilient against their attacks, and in imitation of Christ, show them the glorified wounds of He who is your Healer.

The child cannot stop picking at the scab on her own. She needs a hand to hold hers still. That hand, pierced for you, is being offered now.