Beautiful story of redemption

1 Peter 2:24 (NIV)

24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

Matthew Henry comments on this verse, “The sufferings of Christ should quiet us under the most unjust and cruel sufferings we meet with in the world. He suffered voluntarily, not for himself, but for us, with the utmost readiness, with perfect patience, from all quarters, and all this though he was God—man; shall not we sinners, who deserve the worst, submit to the light afflictions of this life, which work for us unspeakable advantages afterwards?”

Matt Chandler tells the following story about what happened after speaking at a conference near his hometown:

When I was done preaching, I decided to hop in my car, drive twenty minutes to the town in which I grew up, and look at the houses that I remembered from back then. As I drove into town, I passed a field where I once got into a fistfight with a kid named Sean. It was not a fair fight, and I did some shady, dark things in that fight. I completely humiliated him in front of a large crowd of people …. Then I drove past my first house, and I thought of all the wicked things I had done in that house. I passed a friend's house where once, at a party, I did some of the most shameful, horrific things that I have ever done.

Afterward, on the drive back to the conference, I was overwhelmed with the guilt and shame of the wickedness that I had done in that city prior to knowing Jesus Christ …. I could hear the whispers in my heart: "You call yourself a man of God? Are you going to stand in front of these guys and tell them to be men of God? After all you've done?"

In the middle of all that guilt and shame, I began to be reminded by the Scriptures that the old Matt Chandler is dead. The Matt Chandler who did those things, the Matt Chandler who sinned in those ways, was nailed to that cross with Jesus Christ, and all of his sins—past, present, and future—were paid for in full on the cross of Jesus Christ. I have been sanctified "once and for all" …. He remembers my sins no more …. And I no longer need to feel shame for those things, because those things have been completely atoned for.  [Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel (Crossway, 2012), pp. 211-213]

Maybe some of you have felt shame for the sins of your past, but remember Christ freed us from all sins that we could move forward in life without the shame and regret of sins past. Christ gave us hope to live a righteous life and hope to live with The Lord eternally upon our death. It was an unjust and cruel suffering Christ met to bring about a beautiful story of redemption for us.