Jaime Botin is worth $1.7 billion. The Spaniard owns a superyacht among his many possessions. He also owns Pablo Picasso’s Head of a Young Woman, a painting estimated to be worth $28.8 million.
Or at least he did.
Botin was sentenced to jail today for using the former to
smuggle the latter out of the country.
A 2015 high court ruled that the painting is a
“national treasure” owing to the fact that it was created in the
Catalan village of Gasol. It prohibited Botin from removing the painting from
the country.
Prosecutors alleged that the billionaire used his superyacht
to smuggle the painting out of Spain and then hired a private jet to take the
art to Switzerland, where he intended to sell it. Spanish authorities were
tipped off and raided the superyacht, confiscating the painting and
transferring it to a museum in Madrid where it remains today.
Botin will now be forced to pay $60.1 million and serve eighteen months in jail.
The hidden cost of ‘secret’ sin
This story illustrates the fact that sin always leads to
consequences.
Scripture is clear: “Be sure your sin will find you
out” (Numbers 32:23). Even those crimes that are never solved by the
authorities lead to consequences for their victims and perpetrators. And we
will all stand one day before the Lord in judgment (2 Corinthians 5:10).
We can confess our sins and receive forgiveness by God’s
grace, of course (1 John 1:9). But the consequences of forgiven sin are not
always removed when we are forgiven. Adultery scars a marriage; those who
choose abortion never forget their choice.
We can drive a nail into a piece of wood and then remove the
nail, but the hole remains.
Even those sins which are forgiven without consequences to
others bear consequences in lost rewards for obedience unrendered. We will be
rewarded in heaven for the good we do on earth (Matthew 16:27). Time spent in
sin is time that was not spent in obedience. And good deeds not…
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