I'm eleven years old and I'm wearing underwear that's covered with little pictures of a man on a motorcycle. Being homeschooled, I'm always a bit behind on the fashion curve and I don't fully realize that it's not cool anymore to wear underwear with artwork on it. So I wear motorcycle underwear...to a Little League game. But this doesn't bother me because after all, who's going to see my underwear? Or so I think. What I don't realize is that my baseball pants are made of a partially see-through material that allows a careful observer to pick up on any underwear artwork. With normal drawers this wouldn't be a problem, but with motorcycle underwear, well that's another matter.

I don't realize my fatal mistake until one of my older, cooler teammates says, "What's on your underwear?" I play dumb, acting as if I don't know what he's talking about. Then he nails me. "There's motorcycles on your underwear! Hey guys check this out, Stephen's wearing motorcycle underwear." I try to play it off as funny but it doesn't work. I'm embarrassed and my face burns with shame. Needless to say, I never wear the motorcycle underwear again.

I wish I could say that the motorcycle underwear incident caused me the most shame of my life. But it didn't. There are sins in my past that I am truly and deeply ashamed of. Just the thought of these sins make me feel ashamed of myself. These are the sins I don't like talking about, sins I don't want my friends to find out about. It's these sins that prove that I'm not just a sinner, I'm a wicked sinner.

All of us have sins of this nature hiding in our pasts, like skeletons in a closet. All of us have committed wicked, ungodly, perverse sins that shame us before God and men. All of us are shameful sinners.

It's my shameful sin that makes the sacrifice of Christ so glorious. Jesus Christ, the perfect, holy One, took my shameful acts upon Himself. Christ never had so much as a sinful thought, yet He willingly bore all of my wicked, disgusting, shameful sin. God punished Christ as if He had done my shameful deeds. God looked upon Christ as if He was the shameful sinner. 2 Corinthians 5:21 puts it this way: " For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Let your heart overflow with thankfulness to Jesus today. He bore your shame so that you can stand before God unashamed. How sweet is the sacrifice of Christ.