The other day I read an online list of “5 Last Minute Cheap Christmas Gift Ideas.” The second suggestion was: “You can get someone a couple of lottery tickets for the next big draw. … Not the most personal gift, but something you can get last minute and not too expensive.” Lottery tickets would indeed make for cheap gifts. For $20 or so, a shopper could buy presents for everyone on his list. Of course, the gifts would be worse than worthless.

      The folly of purchasing lottery tickets illustrates the folly of sin itself. The buyer honestly thinks that gambling means low cost, great fun, and the prospect of huge rewards. Disobedience to God also seems to be easy, painless, pleasurable, and potentially rewarding.

      Of course, the reality is that at best buying lottery tickets is squandering money. At worst, gambling is risking addiction, financial ruin, and the destruction of cherished relationships. Bitter loss is also the reality of sin in general. The sinner risks losing his self-respect and the esteem of his family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Worst of all, he jeopardizes the future of his own soul. “Repent,” Peter said, “and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).

      Sin may seem cheap, but the experience of Jesus points to its actual cost. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” Paul asked. “You are not your own; you were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). That “price,” the blood of Jesus shed at the cross, was impossibly high.