Shame

Turn in the Word of God this evening to Romans 10, the 10th chapter of Romans. Thank you for that, Bobby. Trust the Lord will guide, He will, He promises to. And your job, our job, as I have said on many other occasions, is not so much to figure out where you’re meant to be as it is to stay in the shadow of the shepherd. It’s amazing how all the problems begin to resolve themselves when we focus not so much in resolving the problems as staying close to God. And when you stay close to God, you find these things begin to work out, and you get clarity, and you get guidance, and doors open and doors close, and you understand exactly what you are meant to do and where you’re meant to be. So again, the focus is not, “Lord, where am I meant to be?” The focus is, “Lord, keep me close to you.” And if you do that, then you’ll not put a foot wrong. It’s certainly been our testimony. When we were married, Melanie and I got married, we sang as one of our hymns—not one I think that would be normally sung (it’s not a traditional wedding piece)—but we sang it because the words meant so much to us already in our testimony, our experience as believers over the last few years. We had been Christian, God had saved us and kept us together and brought us together in marriage. I have a shepherd. One I love so well, how He has blessed me, tongue can never tell. Following Jesus every day by day, nothing can harm me when Jesus leads the way. And so it doesn’t matter what you’re faced with, if you know that He is guiding every step, then you are safe, and we can testify, though we have found ourselves all across the world, never once with any regret, questioning where we’re meant to be—and that’s very comforting.

Romans 10, we are in a series, for those who were not here last Lord’s Day, a topical series in the evening time, where I am endeavoring to deal with some of the struggles that are less obvious. I’ve titled the series, Bible Answers for Inner Battles. And some of these battles are not easy to address. I’m going to tell you out of the gate. I mentioned it last week. We dealt with the subject of doubt. In some ways, that’s an easier one. It’s one that we, as a preacher, you think about often and you address frequently in various ways, but we are going to be going into areas that are more difficult, especially as the world sometimes has some input into these ideas or these problems—these inner battles—working through what may be true and coming to God’s Word and making sure we’re assessing the whole matter in the right way.

This evening, we’re dealing with the subject of shame. This is one of those areas where I knew, when I was drawing up a list of the things that I wanted to hopefully address, I thought, “This is going to be tough.” But it is one I’ve thought of a lot. I’ve considered and given a lot of thought—repetition, repetitious consideration of it. It comes up, of course, in pastoral counsel, but it has come very close to home at times. People I know reading material that I believe is misguided, unhelpful, and directs you away from what God’s Word has to say. To deal with a subject like this in one setting, in one sermon, is difficult. And so I’m sure there may be in your mind questions that arise. I will try to be clear and as extensive as one sermon will allow, but there may be things I miss or you’re not sure what are you saying. And I’m saying this now about tonight, but that will be true about anything—any of these subjects, the inner battles—because they’re inwardly felt and the inner voice is not always clear, within ourselves and also in how we perceive what others are saying or thinking can cause all sorts of uncertainty. So I trust that what we say will be more helpful than a hindrance to you. I’m not expounding on the passage, but in Romans 10, I take for a text just to encourage us, verse 11. You can see from the context here, reading from verse 9, a text that you will know:

  “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

It’s encouragement, it’s certainty. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. But there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

It’s at verse 11, as I say, that we will—I’m thinking about—“whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed.” [When a woman gives herself to Christ, when a woman surrenders her life to Christ, when there is a full-hearted embracing of the gospel, there is never disappointment. There’s never reason to feel shame or look at it as a matter of regret.] And so the Scripture, quoting here from the prophet Isaiah, [“anyone believes on Christ shall not be ashamed.”] We are placed into a position that deals with the problem of shame. What you have heard tonight is the word of the living God, and you are to receive it, you are to believe it, and obey it. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray.

  Lord, help us. We ask for understanding and guidance in these difficult subjects and yet very real experiences. In this fallen world, because of our sin, it opens up a world of uncertainty, a maze of varied pathways that may destroy us. And without the Word of God, we may never find our way out. We pray for hearts that are settled, that God’s Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. And may this then be our hope. We can turn to the Word of God for direction. We pray that thou wilt bless us tonight. I know not what is going on in any heart or life, but I pray that what we consider will be helpful, and that should there be anyone here who’s crippled by shame—and even to the point that it is preventing them from turning on to Christ, especially for them—that they may be loosed and set free, and tonight they may be saved. Give power. Give help, oh God. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

While the world knows the power of shame, the reality is it does not know its cure. When you come to the subject of shame, you’re going to find that there are many voices, many different ideas that are loud, persuasive, and certain as they address the subject—voices like Brené Brown. And I just use her as one example that is well known. If you don’t know who she is, then good—you’re probably better off not knowing. But works like hers, studies like hers on the subject of shame and vulnerability are shaping modern thought. They’re infiltrating in ways that at times people don’t even know where the origin is coming from. There are Christian counselors today that will take works like Brown’s, and they will try to take—and they see the faults, the problems with it—but then they try to map what she’s saying with the Scripture, try to, through a Christian worldview, a Christian lens, try to make sense of what she’s saying, really seeing potential in what she’s saying, but trying to change the terminology because they know the terminology is distinctly unbiblical. Such authors in the world identify shame as a crippling burden, one that isolates, silences, and destroys. But they do not tell the whole story. And there are subtle nuances that are dangerously deceptive, things that we need to be careful about. And again, I’m sure I’m not going to cover everything here tonight. But I have tried to think through, in my limited time and all that I’ve considered in the past, to come work through some of these issues. When you go to these voices, you’re going to find them to be talking to you in a way that feels like it resonates. But what you’re going to find is there’s no gospel. There’s no atonement. There’s no Christ. The solution is self-acceptance, not divine grace. It is human connection, not the righteousness of Christ. The goal is to silence the voice of shame and redefine our identity, and yet gospel-void methods cannot silence the accusations of a holy God. Christ-like messages cannot redefine our identity. We can, in a form of an illusion, recreate these things, but we cannot find ourselves on solid ground and say, objectively, this is true. Shame is not merely a social condition. It’s a spiritual reality. It’s not just fear of exposure before men that so often is the focus, but the dread of exposure before God. In Italy, it’s in us. As Adam fled from the face of God in the garden, so it is in the nature of man to flee from his Creator. And Adam was fleeing not Eve, but the fear of judgment from his God. And the world’s solution to such shame is a band-aid over an open wound. And there are forms of tonics that may help people for a time, but again, though you may be brought to a place where you feel like the problem has been addressed, ask yourself whether it has before the judgment. The gospel offers something truly healing, and I trust that that comes across clearly tonight.

So we’re looking at the subject of shame. As I say, I make no apologies. This is topical, and I trust it will be helpful. And I’m breaking it down under the same heads. I don’t know if this will be the case for everything I address, but the heads that I used last time—where we looked at the character, the causes, and the cure—and so we’re seeing this not about doubt as last time, but about shame, the character of shame. And there are two things we want to see here. First of all is expressions. How is shame expressed? How do we see it expressed? Well, there are three things I want you to see in terms of how shame is expressed.

First of all, there is natural shame. Natural shame—this is the shame that is innate within man. It is something of a mercy from God because when it functions as it should, it restrains man from the worst impulses of his nature. He finds it to be something that is keeping him back from being all the bad that he is capable of being. This kind of shame is implied when the Apostle Paul writes concerning the Gentiles in Romans 2. And he speaks there of these people who have not the law, they have not the word of God, but they have a law written in their hearts. And that governs them, it influences them, and brings to them even an experience of shame. Thus, this shame is useful, but it cannot save. It is important, but it cannot deliver. It may curb outward wickedness, but it cannot cleanse the soul. Paul instructs in 2 Thessalonians 3 to the church—he says, if any man obey not our word, he goes on to say, have no company with him that he may be ashamed—and there he’s utilizing the sense of natural shame that the church turns away from the disobedient, and the experience of that turning away brings a sense of shame to them. And that’s really coming about through the natural—this is what we’re talking about, natural shame. But it’s not enough. It may restrain, but it can’t redeem. It can make a man be motivated to hide the problem, but not hate it. So there’s natural shame. That’s how it’s expressed in one way.

But there’s also legal shame as well. This is the shame that falls upon the sinner when the law thunders against his soul, when God’s Word—when His law—is uttered and we feel or view ourselves in light of that law. Such a thing reveals our true condition. I was thinking of the expression of Isaiah when he finds himself in the presence of this holy God, a God who embodies all His law in ways that are beyond comprehension. And he says, “Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips.” It reveals his true condition. The prophet is made to be humble before God. It strips away self-righteousness. This is, in the presence of the law, similar to what the Apostle Paul recognized before his conversion—in his flesh dwelleth no good thing. It’s a recognition of his shortcoming before God’s law. And of course, it then is meant to drive us to Christ. It’s to put within us a sense of our need, our emptiness, the void, and lead us then to the one who can help. Galatians 3:24 says, “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” So it functions then in this legal fashion. It’s a mercy. It’s a mercy. This kind of shame is merciful. It’s the same—if you can, if I can illustrate it this way. None of us enjoy the feeling or experience, I should say, of pain. And yet none of us, at least in most cases—I’m thinking of someone just the last few days who had surgery to get rid of the nerves that were causing the feeling of pain. But generally speaking, we don’t wanna obliterate feeling, right? Feeling is important. The ability to feel what’s hot and what’s dangerous is important. And so if you have ever read stories of various diseases—and again, some of you know Bill Woods, and you’ve read the story of Bill Woods and him coming across these individuals in Brazil, and their hands had been turned to stumps, and their feet were similar as well, in part because the leprosy killed the nerve endings, and then whether it be heat from things that they’re carrying that are boiling and destroying their hands, and they don’t know it, or the gnawing away of rats in their homes while they’re sleeping and they don’t know that this is going on—we realize that pain functions; it’s a mercy that we feel pain because it causes us to move away from it. It takes us away from danger. And so it is this shame, this kind of shame, because it exposes us and moves us in the way we should go—the shame of the prodigal. Without it, he’s not going to arise and go home to the Father. The shame of Peter, who weeps bitterly recognizing his shortcomings—this is the shame that breaks the sinner, not to destroy, but to lead him to the place of healing.

And then there’s another expression of shame, what I’ve called evangelical shame. It goes beyond the shame that restrains within society and goes beyond the shame that convicts us and drives us to Christ. But it’s a sanctifying shame. It’s not the shame of a criminal before a judge, but the shame of a son before a father who knows he has done wrong—a sense of sorrow. This is a sorrow that’s spoken of in 2 Corinthians 7:10. It’s a sorrow that is not the sorrow of the world that leads to death, but a sorrow that shows life—true life within the soul—that deepens our love for Christ, that quickens our conscience before God, and increases our longing for holiness. God’s people at times feel—and are meant to feel—shame. Now this is where you’re going to find me diverge from, and I believe God’s Word diverges from, the voices out there that really have no place for shame. Now again, if you think of Brown, I mentioned her name, she will have a place for guilt, and we’ll get to that in just a moment. But shame she abolishes entirely, and I’m telling you, if you read God’s Word, it’s not wrong—there’s a place for shame in God’s order of things. And I’ve tried to break down the various ways in which we see that: naturally, in restraining society; then legally, in exposing our sin and driving us to God; and then even as a believer sensing our shortcomings so that we may go before our Father sorrowful. I know people will take, like the prodigal, and they’ll say, “Well, look how the father embraced him—he didn’t expose his son, he didn’t try to condemn him in any way,” and so on and so forth. But if you imagine the story a different way, if you imagine the son comes home with a spirit of “give me more, I’ve run out, give me more, come on, Dad, give me more,” and his whole demeanor was one of pride and no sense of wrongdoing—you can imagine, perhaps, the scene might read much differently. It was the humility of his heart, his father’s responding, recognizing that God has already broken him, already dealt with his soul, already brought him low. It’s always embraced and accepted. It’s important to note these things.

So, as I say, there is the natural, legal, and evangelical shame. It’s good to see these various expressions, but I want you to see a distinction as well in the character of shame. There’s a vital difference between guilt and shame, and this is noted by most, and I think we need to understand it. Guilt is the objective reality of moral failure before God. It is the objective reality of moral failure before God. Shame is the subject of feeling—of unworthiness or disgrace. It’s subjective, how we feel about the matter. So a man may be guilty and feel no shame. Just as the hardened sinners are described in Ephesians 4:19 as being past feeling—they’re past feeling. And so it may be true: a man is guilty, but he doesn’t feel. There’s no shame about what he has done. A man also may feel shame without guilt. You think of the story of Tamar—not the Tamar in Genesis, the Tamar in Samuel. She’s taken and she’s violated. It describes her feeling after the violation of shame, but she was not guilty of anything. She had performed no guilt in that. She was not guilty of doing anything wrong, and yet she felt a sense of shame because of what happened. Shame is either a servant to grace or a tool of Satan. In Christ’s hands, it’s meant to humble us and sanctify us, whereas in the devil’s hands, it’s meant to torment and condemn. So when God speaks to His people in Isaiah 54, “fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed,” again, this plays upon the language of Romans 10, 11. God’s people have no need to shame in the sense of when they come to Him and they find acceptance in Him—and we’ll see that more as we go on—that it deals with it properly, but it doesn’t remove the experience of shame. It’s not something to be denied. It’s not a cultural construct. It’s not a societal construct. It’s a tool. It’s a mercy. Just again, if you can think of the analogy of responding to something dangerous—the feeling of our bodies, feeling heat, and wincing and moving away from it, recognizing the heat of a fire—this is the same for shame. It plays into it—that we need to understand there’s a distinction between guilt and shame.

And so sometimes, as I have counseled people, I have found them being upset or ashamed about something that they have no reason to be ashamed of, and they’re applying guilt where it doesn’t belong. For example, a parent that is lamenting something that happened pertaining to their child or their children—and they’re assessing the whole matter, and in hindsight they’re looking back and they’re filled with a sense of shame. But when they tell the whole story, when the whole thing comes out and they’re talking about the matter, there’s no guilt. They didn’t do anything wrong. They couldn’t have foreseen. There’s no possibility that they could have known. And so parents, at times, when something happens to the child and they start beating themselves up and say, “I should have known, I should have foreseen, I shouldn’t have been there,” and so on—and while that may be true in some cases (not saying that at times we shouldn’t foresee the danger, foresee the evil)—there are many times there’s no possible way you could have ever foreseen this outcome. And yet you’re laden with a sense of shame, but there’s no objective legal guilt. You did not do anything wrong. And I find that Satan so desires that we will hyper-focus upon the things that we’re not guilty of, and make us feel shame about things where there is no real guilt, and we ignore the things where we are truly guilty and we should feel shame. It distorts the whole thing. So I say, listen, you have enough in your life to repent of. Don’t multiply with things where there is no guilt. So we must make sure we understand the distinction between guilt and shame. And so when you’re feeling weighed down by something, maybe you do feel a sense of shame about something, ask yourself honestly—or go and get some counsel from outside of yourself, someone you trust—and say, “Here’s a scenario. Am I guilty here?” And if they say, “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. You could never have known,” then stop feeling ashamed and focus on the areas where you are falling short. See the areas where you’re not what you should be and go before God with that matter.

So the character of shame—I hope that’s helpful. I can’t say any more there, but let’s look at the causes of shame. What are the causes of shame? Well, we’re gonna look at a legitimate cause and then illegitimate causes.

Legitimate cause: Well, sin is the mother of shame. So again, you go back to the garden, Adam hiding himself from God. This is man. When man breaks God’s law, when he denies the Lord, when he walks in hypocrisy, when he neglects the call of God upon his life, shame ought to dog his steps. Conscience rises as a faithful watchman, sounds the alarm, and the soul shall tremble and be driven to repentance. A man is not meant to sin and feel no shame. Let that be understood. You’re not meant to sin and feel no shame. To do so—as if you repeatedly do it—you’ll end up searing your conscience, which is what we’re warned about in 1 Timothy 4: “Don’t sear your conscience.” This is where you’re doing something wrong repeatedly, and you’re not repenting, and it begins to sear the conscience, and you no longer can feel. And so you go to the language of Ephesians again—your past feeling—and you’re doing things, and you don’t even feel the wrongness of it. A thief must not despise a sense of shame when he steals. It’s the one thing that can save him when he begins to feel that he’s been doing something wrong. The liar must not harden his heart against the disgrace of his deception when he goes away and realizes he’s told a complete fabrication and he thinks about it and feels ashamed. To avoid all shame is to avoid accountability. To avoid accountability is to resist the chastening of the Lord. The Lord wants to keep us accountable. He uses even our accountability to one another in order to help in the chastening process, making us feel our wrongdoing and putting wrongs right, and so on. And so God, in His fatherly love, wants us to feel that way so we correct things and do what is right.

So we’re not to despise this shame—the shame that produces repentance. This is a gift, an instrument that leads us to Christ. There’s a legitimate shame, right? So just understand that.

But there are illegitimate causes. Illegitimate cause—I have five of them here.

First, the shame that we feel from the sin of others. Again, feeling shame about something that someone else has done. I mentioned Tamar already (2 Samuel 13). You go and read that passage, and you ask yourself, should she have felt shame? I think the answer, definitively—as I understand it, and as I read it, though I’ve never studied it in depth and preached it—would appear to me in my knowledge of that passage: why would this young woman feel any shame? He’s the monster. But she felt shame, that’s what it says.

And some carry a sense of reproach because of things—again, that are outside of them, things that others have done—how parents, again, will feel towards their children, and they grow up and they make their own choices, and you feel shame, but you’re not guilty. You didn’t do anything there. You didn’t lead them down that path. You didn’t tell them to go that way or make that decision and those choices. If anything, you tried to stop them. You tried to stand in their way, and they pursue on. So that’s illegitimate.

We start feeling forms of shame about what other people are doing. You have to be careful. And again, I understand there’s a sense in which we can have a communal shame. There is a place at times and occasions— you need to be very careful—where we talk about the sins of a nation or the sins of a church. And individuals within the church may not be particularly guilty about it, but we all get lumped in and we can all repent together. There are some circumstances for that, but you need to be very careful.

But that really isn’t what I’m addressing. It is more when an individual is looking about what other people have done and feeling shame. There’s shame from the world’s false standards as well. The world shames where God does not. Hannah was mocked, it would appear, for her barrenness in 1 Samuel. So here you have this righteous person being scorned in a way that was not legitimate. It should not have been going on. It was a mistreatment of her, heaping this sense of shame upon her, trying to make her feel more miserable than she already naturally felt.

And the world will heap shame upon the Lord’s people. And we are encouraged to rejoice when we’re under such persecution, because whosoever believeth in Him shall not be ashamed.

Now, when I was thinking about this—thinking about the standards of the world and how they have certain expectations and so on—and then they will shame us because we don’t meet those standards—I had this thought that really some of these false standards that the world sets, and you’ll understand what I mean in just a moment when I explain it, but these false standards gain their power because they are inwardly believed. It’s not just believed by the world; they’re inwardly believed by us, and then we project. Now, this is subtle, and I think it needs to be pointed out because I see this—I don’t think everyone’s aware of it, I don’t think they discern their own projection—but I believe it to be a real problem.

You think of the false standard that says that a woman’s worth is found in her physical form. And we all know that—it was body shaming, right? And this is a real thing and it’s felt, but it’s not just the world out there. Even others—even God’s people—can come to a point where they are thinking a shame about themselves and how they look and so on, but it’s because they have adopted the world and then they’re projecting that. No one’s said anything. No one has uttered anything in relation to how you look or whatever. No one has said it, but you feel it in the voice because you’ve internalized the world standard—false standard—and you’ve internalized it, and then you begin to project it. And as you look at yourself, you’re judging in that way, saying, “This is how people look at me.” But it may not be true at all.

Same for a man in terms of his economic success. And he’s imbibed the world standard of what economic success looks like. And then, again, he internalizes that message, and then he begins to look, and maybe if he goes through a downturn or a difficult period, he begins to project that this is how people are thinking about me, when they may not be thinking it at all. And so shame comes into the heart, but we have actually been the genesis of it. Yes, it’s out there. There are reasons why it may infiltrate into our thinking, but we have opened the door that we don’t need to open. And I say this, I could go down lists of application here and fill the sermon with various ways in which we in our society feel or communicate shame. But sometimes—and again, this is not something you’re often gonna see in some of the secular addresses of this issue—is that we have bought into it ourselves, and we’re projecting on others something that isn’t true. So we won’t let someone into our home until we’ve tidied the place from top to bottom. If someone comes into our home, or knocks on the door, and we weren’t expecting them, and the house isn’t quite right, and we’re thinking they’re going to be judging me because there’s a few toys on the floor, or something else isn’t quite right, they’re going to be judging—and maybe they’re not judging at all. It’s a projection. You have internalized a certain standard and now you’re projecting it onto a person who innocently just came to come and see you and isn’t thinking—maybe doesn’t even see. If they’re like me, I can walk into a space, I won’t even notice. I’m oblivious. I’m there for a particular reason. That’s what my mind is on, and I may not even see that there are toys all over the floor or there’s maybe a bit of dust along the skirting boards or whatever. But we project it.

If you struggle with that, I’m gonna tell you something. Listen to me. This is idolatry—idolatry of self-image, human approval, and achievement by standards set by men, not by God. You need to repent of it. If you want deliverance, you need to repent of it. Shame is a tool of Satan. Yes, that’s another one. The accuser knows how to twist the knife. We dealt with this last time, I doubt. He points to past sins; he whispers, “You’re beyond grace.” He binds our soul in fear, lumps and shovels the shame onto our hearts. But I think also, again, there’s an aspect of projection in this that he uses. He harnesses how we feel and how we imbibe false messaging, and then he makes use of it. So we’re almost giving him tools to help. So shame is a deceiver. It doesn’t always wear its own face, as it were. So we imagine that this is being said or believed, and Satan says, “Yes, that’s what they’re thinking. Yeah, that’s how the world looks at you. That’s how your husband looks at you. That’s how your wife looks at you. That’s how your parents look at you. They see you as a failure.” And their parents and their children—and the dynamic has been caused by nothing that was ever said, but it was imagined and then inflated by Satan himself. We cast our own secret judgments upon others, imagining they’re saying this and that, and Satan’s going, “Yes, that’s how the world looks at you.” I mean, he was right there, he did it, remember? Remember the woman who brought the alabaster box—avoidment? And it tells us in one of the passages that all the disciples murmured against her. This could have been sold for 300 pence and given to the poor. But one of the Gospels tells us that Judas was the first to say it. And Jesus makes it clear—the character of Judas. Long before, one of you has a devil. And so Judas is there, influenced by the devil, a demonic influence right there in the party of the disciples. And he’s the one who says, “This could have been sold for 300 pence and given to the poor,” and then all the other disciples—and it kind of has this ripple effect around them all—and they all murmured against her. Satan’s voice, framing how we look, whether it be at others or ourselves—what torment he brings. And if you would be rid of this kind of shame, these thoughts, if you want to silence the accuser, then you must lay the axe to the root. You humble yourself. You confess your hidden fears. Stop accusing others of assumptions. Stop allowing Satan to come and harness that. Be delivered from it.

Fourthly, there’s shame imposed by misguided churches—shame imposed by misguided churches. They’re churches that bind where God is loosed. They turn rebuke, which is legitimate, into condemnation. They make repentance impossible by the way they handle things. Legalism burdens. Licentiousness excuses. And these are the two pitfalls that churches and everyone can fall into—piling burdens on, increasing shame, allowing licentiousness so that we numb the very thing that is a tool to bring us to where we are meant to be.

And then fifth is shame from failing to trust in Christ. Another illegitimate form of shame. When we fail to trust Christ, we refuse to believe that all God’s grace available in Christ is for you. And you say, “Well, it’s for them, but it’s not for me.” We continue to wrestle with sin. We continue to struggle in ways as if our guilt is of greater power than the cross. We’re not to think this. There’s no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. So this again is another illegitimate form of shame.

So, shame from the sin of others, shame from the world’s false standards, shame as a tool of Satan, shame imposed by misguided churches, and shame from failing to trust in Christ— that brings us then to the cure. What’s the cure? The cure, unsurprisingly, is found in the atoning work of Jesus Christ our Lord. The wonderful balance in which the cross work of Jesus Christ addresses and helps us navigate the perplexity of the feeling of shame, its distinction from guilt, and how we are to view ourselves before God as well as before men.

Our Lord Jesus Christ bore shame, experienced shame. He had laid on Him our sin. He was made a curse for us—not just what He went through in leading up to the cross, but the very death itself. The cross was a shameful form of death. There was no honour in it. In the ancient world, there were ways to die that were considered honourable deaths. There were ways to die that were considered shameful deaths. The cross was a shameful death. And our Lord Jesus bears that, embraces that, takes the full weight of the dishonour, the mockery, the nakedness, the rejection, the isolation. He goes through all of that—that our sins are being laid on Him. He has made sin for us, who Himself knew no sin. And so He is taking the guilt and He is taking the shame associated with the guilt, bearing all of that, though innocent Himself, your guilt and the shame of that laid on Him.

So let’s think about this and what it accomplishes for us. Four things.

First, justification grants freedom from legal shame. Justification grants freedom from legal shame. Again, Romans 8 says, “there is therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” Christ deals with the guilt and can produce a genuine— that guilt that can produce a genuine feeling of shame. We’re actually guilty, and so we should feel shame. But Christ deals with that. He addresses that. God can declare those who believe in His Son as righteous. We read, “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” Romans 3:24. And so when we understand justification, what’s going on there in terms of the legal justification—because our guilt is a legal standing, our guilt is a legal problem, and the wages of sin is death, Romans 6—but that is transferred to Christ, given to Christ, and so the legal standing becomes one of justification. He is both just and the justifier of them that believe in Jesus. And so we stand in this position of full, free pardon, justified freely by His grace, clothed by the righteousness of Jesus Christ, put upon us as the garment of His salvation, clothed with the robe of His righteousness, Isaiah 61. And we stand then complete in Him. We have freedom then from this legal sense of guilt. Now, again, we have to understand—it doesn’t mean that by justification we eliminate shame. We are still daily to confess our sins. It’s in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” There’s a recognition that God is looking. God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble. “Become low, you’ll be exalted in due course.” And so God is always looking for the posture of appreciation, of gratitude—the woman weeping there. I don’t see the Lord Jesus looking at the woman weeping over her sin at the feet of Jesus, washing His feet with her hair and her tears, Him saying, “This is shame. Shame is a wicked thing. Shame is a tool of the devil. Get up. Stop that.” He uses her as an example to expose the proud religious heart of the Pharisee in the midst. And this is one who understands that she has been forgiven much, and so she loves much. And if you eliminate that, if you diminish that, if you remove that and say, “I cannot ever feel a sense of shame,” then you remove that which becomes a platform for gratitude and enables you to come daily, “Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul.” Once again, I show myself to be what I am by nature, but I come in Christ to find rest and peace and stand complete in Him. So there’s freedom from the legal shame. We don’t have to fear the consequences of our sin in the sense of it bringing absolute and final judgment upon our hearts. So we need to know our justification, right? You need to know this doctrine. You need to understand it. You need to understand in terms of even the positionally what it does for us, and then practically what it means for us. It doesn’t mean the elimination of all shame, but it does mean that we will never be ashamed of—look at the text—Romans 10:11, “whosoever believeth in Him shall not be ashamed.” In relation to Him, in relation to how we stand in Him, in relation to our confidence that it’s because of Him, we will never be ashamed of that. It doesn’t take away the need for Peter to weep bitterly for his denial. Peter does not get a pass and just laugh his way out of that scene saying, “Well, Lee, I’m forgiven.” Justification grants freedom from legal shame.

Secondly, adoption replaces shame with sonship. Adoption replaces shame with sonship. So we become children, right? We become—we are converted. No one who’s ever justified isn’t also adopted into the family of God. And so you have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, “Abba, Father,” Romans 8:15. And the Spirit testifies to our acceptance. The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, Romans 8:16. And so whereas shame on its own isolates, adoption integrates—tells us that we belong to the Father no matter what, that we have an honor in being the children of God, and we can say with John, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” And the expression of John there—the heart of John—is not to say in some way we have earned this or we can take this for granted. It’s a sense—I read it as a sense of amazement, of joyful amazement—that we should be called the sons of God. We, the guilty, should be called the sons of God. What an amazing, glorious truth there is in this. So we have that knowledge. We belong to Him. He has taken you in. And so again, even shame as it plays out its course, it is a sense of a child coming to a father and recognizing his wrong and pleading, “Lord, please help me not to disobey You. I repent in the ways that I do.” And we look for that in our children, don’t we? When they’re wrong and they do, we don’t look for them to proudly go around saying, “I’m a child and nothing can happen to me. There are no consequences for me.” We look for them to sense a feeling of the wrongness—a sense of shame that they threw that thing and struck their sibling in the head, whatever the case might be. We don’t want them to feel proud about it or think that they can get away with that. There are no consequences for that. There’s discipline involved. And so it is before God. And so we always have the sense of amazement—“He took me in, I’m adopted”—which alleviates the burden of shame. It allows us to have a shame. Knowing you’re adopted allows you to have the shame of a child that’s confident that though they’ve done wrong, they’re not questioning the underlying love. And that’s different, isn’t it? The child that looks at the parent trying to put things right, but there’s this question mark in its heart: “Does the father even love me?” That shouldn’t be a question in the mind. Parents, we need to keep that in mind. In all of our disciplining, in all of our addressing the needs of our children, they ought not ever to question our love. And again, they may. It’s quite possible for us to show a lavish love upon them and create a secure environment and then still accuse us of not loving them. I mean, that’s possible. But when rightly understood and rightly practiced, then adoption puts us in a place where we can feel a measure of shame relating to the thing we’ve done and yet supported and undergirded by the knowledge of the covenant love of our God.

Thirdly, sanctification promises ongoing change. Sanctification promises ongoing change. We are going to be sanctified. And so there is this godly sorrow that works repentance. And so our shame that we may feel because of our wrong humbles us before Christ and leads us to grow in holiness. We want to honor God with our lives. We want to be more like His Son. That’s His desire for us, and when we deviate from that, we should feel a sense of shame, repent, and ask for grace. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And with the indwelling Spirit, He will break the remaining chains that bind. He will help us. The Spirit is there. Make use of Him, Christian. Make use of the Spirit. Appeal to Him for His help and strength every day. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

And finally, community supports our biblical identity and purpose. Community supports our biblical identity and purpose. These are the cures. You have justification, adoption, sanctification, and then you’ve got covenant community. It’s part of it. Being part of a healthy community is key to restoration without condemnation. “Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness” (Galatians 6:1). So you need it then. You need to be restored by others and to do it in a manner that doesn’t add more shame—do it in the spirit of meekness, do it with humility, do it with a recognition that any of us at any point could fall.

So again, a licentious church denies all shame. A legalistic church creates shame. A biblical church addresses shame with the gospel without undermining shame’s God-intended role. So we can confess our faults to one another without multiplying shame (James 5:16). Shame thrives in secrecy, but when you confess that you’ve wronged, go to someone and say, “Brother, I’ve wronged you. Will you forgive me?” and it dissolves the power. We’ve all had that moment when we have said or done something wrong to someone and we feel that we’ve done it, and then we want to communicate with them to put things right. And maybe they shut the door and they won’t talk to us, and we feel this massive burden—we’re just desperate to get talking to them to be alleviated of this. And that’s a right thing. At church, we gather together; we observe the Lord’s table— that time signifies the sufficiency of the gospel to bring sinners into the presence of God. And they do not come to that table with a sense of shame; they come to that table with gratitude, their sins forgiven, the blood that was shed that signified washing away their sin. And all the sufficiency of Christ is communicated in that ordinance. And we come to that table embracing by faith all that it communicates and alleviates and removes that sense of shame. Yes, Jesus Christ is enough. He’s given me a place of honor and acceptance and joy.

I need to wrap this up, our time is gone. If you’re a Christian and there is shame that you feel or you experience or you really battle with a sense of shame, understand there’s a place for it. But also recognize that no shame—or let me rephrase that—all shame should first of all be assessed in terms of whether it’s legitimate or not. And then, if it’s legitimate, we go to Christ. Go to Christ, go and get it dealt with. If shame drives you away from Christ, then know that’s the whisper of the enemy and the carnality of your own flesh. It’s not what God is saying to you. God is not saying, amidst your shame, “Don’t come to me.” He’s saying the opposite: “Come to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, laden with shame, I will give you rest.” The world says, “Tell your shame story and be vulnerable.” The gospel says, “Confess your sins and be washed clean in the blood of Jesus Christ.” The world says, “Accept yourself.” The gospel says, “Die to self.” And that, I think, really is a big part of the root problem. There’s too much self that is yet to be crucified, and it rises up—in forms of projection and imagining things and feeling shame about things where there’s no real guilt—and ignoring the feeling of shame where there ought to be shame because there is real guilt. We’re all topsy-turvy and upside down and getting it all wrong. And when we die to self and we’re living in Christ—and we don’t need to find our validation in the world because we know we’re justified and we’re in Christ and accepted in the beloved, and we know that as a position of strength—and when you can get there, it is so free. Oh, oh, the liberty and the joy of dying to self and living—in this position where the only problems you need to be concerned about are real problems, ones exposed by God’s Spirit and the Word, ones that you always have a solution for in Jesus Christ. The rest of it, give up the lies. Be set free from the bondage, and come and stand in the liberty wherewith Christ makes us free.

Let’s bow together in prayer.

Let me speak to Christians here tonight: If you’re wrestling over this, if you are in some way feeling yourself handicapped by shame, I hope what has been said tonight will help you navigate through it and get to a place of freedom. But if you struggle, if you’re still struggling, then please don’t struggle in silence. Let me know. Let’s get together. Let’s open God’s word. Let’s get another voice that has your interests, God’s honor, governing. I’ll minister to you.

Lord, we pray, bless your word. No doubt there are many aspects to this that have escaped our best effort to try and give answers and clarity. So I pray that, again, each one here would be surrendered to hear and respond to the instruction of the Word of God alone. Deliver our hearts and our minds from the restlessness of a world that is always trying to find a solution outside of Scripture. We ask that you’ll help us to fully embrace our fallen condition and to run to Jesus Christ, who can restore the image of God in man and give purpose and identity to each of us so we might live for the glory of God and live an honorable life in the presence of God. So bless us, help us. May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of all the people of God now and evermore. Amen.