How Much Does Sin Cost?

“When they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one
mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn”
(Zechariah 12:10, RSV). Whom do we see pierced? Yes, Jesus on the cross—His hands
and feet pierced with nails, His brow pierced with thorns. “When they look on him
whom they pierced …” Who will look? Those who pierced Him. And with what result?
“They shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child.”
Years ago, in a western city where I pastored, one of the saddest funerals I ever heard
of took place. A tiny toddler lay in the casket, and on the front seats sat the mourning
family. The father wept aloud, crushed with grief, for he had killed his own child. He
had backed his car out of the garage to go to work, not realizing that the little fellow had
left the breakfast table to follow Daddy, and so he had toddled into the path of the
moving car. Brokenhearted father! He had killed his boy!
But when you and I come to Calvary, we face an infinitely greater tragedy, for we see
Jesus slain, not by an accident, but by our deliberate sin. We have broken God’s holy
law. And as we see Him die, the just for the unjust, the nature of sin begins to dawn on
us. We confront a love so deep that God took our sins upon His innocent soul. No
wonder Satan tries to keep us from looking at the cross!
You see, people sin because they want to sin. Something must happen that will cause sin
to lose its hold. If I put my finger on a hot stove, I pull it away at once. Why? It hurts
me! But suppose I keep my hand on something while saying to you, “Oh! This is so hot
it hurts me; it burns me!” You would think, “It must not hurt you very much or you
would take your hand off!”
When we keep on losing our temper, when we continue going to places of worldly
amusement, when immodest fashions hold us in their grasp, when we criticize and gossip
again and again, it is simply because these things don’t hurt us enough.
But if we will come to Calvary, we will see what those sins have done to Christ.
“Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:15). And when we look at what
sin did to Jesus, we see what it will do to us if we hang on to it. It will take us into the
darkness of separation from God, where we will weep and wail and gnash our teeth.
Suppose while visiting your home I see a lovely vase on the table, pick it up to
examine it, and carelessly drop it. It shatters into a hundred pieces at my feet. How do I
feel? I am sorry, but I say to myself, “I will pay off. I wonder what that vase cost.
Maybe five dollars, surely not more than ten.” So I say to you, “Friend, I’m very sorry I
broke your vase, but I will get you another one. Where did you buy it? I will get you one
just like it.”
But I notice your sad look as you answer, “That is no ordinary vase. It didn’t come
from a store downtown. It is a masterpiece, hundreds of years old. There’s only one
other vase like it in the world—in an antique shop in New York City, and it costs
$1,000.”
Tell me, do I feel sorrier now than I did two minutes before?
What made the difference? I found out what it cost! Do you see? Jesus longs to show us
what sin costs. He seeks to reveal to us what sin does to God’s heart. In the dying lamb
by the altar in the court, He wants us to see the dying Lamb hanging on Calvary. He
wants us to understand that our sins nailed Him there.
“But,” someone may reason, “I wasn’t there. Roman soldiers drove the nails in His
hands.”
Granted, but nail wounds didn’t kill Him. Jesus died of a broken heart, broken under
the weight of sin, and unless it was your sin that broke His heart, where will you find
forgiveness, cleansing, and deliverance? “It is the blood that maketh an atonement for
the soul” (Leviticus 17:11).
If you and I want to have the power of sin broken our lives, if we want sin taken out
of our hearts, we must do in the antitype what repentant sinners did back there in the
type. We must lay our sin on the innocent head of the Saviour. We must transfer our sin
to Christ and then watch Him pay the price. We must “behold the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).