If you want to see what sin really is
Back to Man's religion & God's religion
To cast the sinning angels out of heaven—to banish Adam from Paradise—to destroy the old world by a flood—to burn Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from heaven—theseexamples of God's displeasure against sin were not sufficient to express His condemnation of it. He would therefore take another way of making it manifest. And what was this?
By sending His own Son out of His bosom, and offering Him as a sacrifice for sin upon the tree at Calvary, He would make it manifest how He abhorred sin, and how His righteous character must forever condemn it. See here the love of God to poor guilty man in not sparing His own Son—and yet the hatred of God against sin, in condemning it in the death of Jesus.
It is almost as if God said, "If you want to see what sin really is, you cannot see it in the depths of hell. I will show you sin in blacker colors still—you shall see it in the sufferings of My dear Son—in His agonies of body and soul—and in what He as a holy, innocent Lamb endured under My wrath, when He consented to take the sinner's place." What wondrouswisdom—what depths of love—what treasures of mercy—what heights of grace—were thus revealed and brought to light in God's unsparing condemnation of sin, and yet in His full and free pardon of the sinner!
If you have ever had a view by faith of the suffering Son of God in the garden and upon the cross—if you have ever seen the wrath of God due to you, falling upon the head of the God-Man—and viewed a bleeding, agonizing Immanuel—then you have seen and felt in the depths of your conscience what a dreadful thing sin is.
Then the broken-hearted child of God looks unto Him whom he has pierced, and mourns and grieves bitterly for Him, as for a first born son who has died. Under this sight he feels what a dreadful thing sin is. "Oh," he says, "did God afflict His dear Son? Did Jesus, the darling of God, endure all these sufferings and sorrows to save my soul from the bottomless pit? O, can I ever hate sin enough? Can I ever grieve and mourn over it enough? Can my stony heart ever be dissolved into contrition enough, when by faith I see the agonies, and hear the groans of the suffering, bleeding Lamb of God?"
Christians hate their sins. They hate that sinful, that dreadfully sinful flesh of theirs which has so often, which has so continually, betrayed them into sin. And thus they join with God in passing condemnation upon the whole of their flesh—upon all its actings and workings—upon all its thoughts and words and deeds—and hate it as the prolific parent of that sin which crucified Christ, and torments and plagues them.