Recapitulation – The problem of shame

Do you know why we as humanity are separated from God? It’s because of sin. Sin is the root problem because sin leads to shame. Shame leads to unbelief. And unbelief leads to death.

Sin produces shame and shame produces sin and these produce fear. And fear is the opposite of faith so wherever your fears are, that’s where your faith is lacking. So where there is fear, there is unbelief. Where there is unbelief, there is death.

Oftentimes you may hear new believers telling everyone, “Jesus loves you!” which often is mocked by many Christians today but these new believers realize a profound spiritual truth even if they can’t fully flesh out their thoughts. Telling people that Jesus loves them can often take away the shame problem which then transfers to take away both the sin problem and the death problem as we confidently draw near to God because we believe He accepts us as we are saved through faith. God wants to cover our shame by the blood of Jesus so we can look to God again, be united to Him, and find our identity in Him. Shame is our enemy and it is the devil’s best strategy to lead people away from God and destroy the image bearers. Is that not what we see so common in our culture today in what the devil is doing? Sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, trauma, sin, shame, sexual perversion, and identity crisis is at a record high. This is the devil’s work to destroy us and to rob us of our power and joy and everything that God created us to become in Him.

It is even seen in the church which was supposed to be a place of safety and a hospital for the sick and sinners but these hurt people who have lost their identity turn to hurt others out of their pain and seeking to build their own confidence because of their insecurity, not realizing, they must look to Christ for their identity, acceptance, and confidence in Him. How often though do we hear condemnation from some pulpits? The sheep have not received the healing they need from their shepherds. Sometimes, even the shepherds wound the sheep and beat them with their rods when perhaps all they needed was to be picked up, carried, hugged, and loved. In some church pulpits, the shepherds and worship team often speak of a God that is often too transcendent to be a friend of sinners. Yet Jesus came down to the earth in our own flesh to get down on our level to communicate to us His immanence, to tell us that He is for us and He loves us. Yet, in these particular pulpits, the transcendence of God has an unhealthy focus at the expense of Jesus’ immanence as if they’re still stuck on the Old Covenant. Yet the immanence of God is so important because it is this immanence that reconciles the world to Himself. A God so holy and lofty high above the heavens and universe couldn’t possibly love and accept little nobodies like us in this grand cosmos, could He? He certainly can and He does. He proved it by coming to the earth in our own flesh and blood, to live among us in our own sufferings, to understand us and experience life with us. To eat with us and bear our burdens, shame, and guilt. His love for us is not only possible. It was actualized materially in the body of Christ. His death on the cross was the proof and confirmation of His oath to forgive us in the new covenant of His blood. The entrance into this covenant is through faith (John 6).

Other things I have seen in churches whether it be in-person or online, in the pulpit or in the body, is that the church is very good at being a shame producing environment. Do you have Holy Spirit confidence? That will be labeled as pride. Are you not confessing enough sins to each other? They will say you’re prideful. Did you make a mistake? They will blow it out of proportion. Are you expressing emotions too much or too intensely? They will think you’re seeking attention. Did you make an observation of how hot it is outside? They will think you’re sinfully complaining. Did you have an encouraging thing that the Lord showed you when you were reading His Word and you want to share it? They will criticize it or if they can’t find anything wrong about it, they’ll find a way to find something wrong and just so they can argue, they will create a strawman. They will also shame your personal convictions, choice of Christian music, and shame other churches for jumping up and down for joy, being joyfully expressive, giddy for God, having presence of God encounters, having different doctrine, speaking about the love of God too much, and the list goes on. How twisted can it be though that the church criticizes others in such a way that makes them feel guilty to speak of God’s love? In all this shame culture, this one is the highest of the devil’s work. If I were the devil, that is what I would make people do: repress their words, feelings, and love so that they stay pushed down in their shame, continue to feel condemned, unworthy, unloved, unaccepted, and never rise to their potential. Afterall, how can they if they always have to look behind their shoulder looking for the next person that’s going to hurt them or be as their enemy? And if you want to add icing on top of the cake, have the preacher speak of God’s hate for people and preach their self-deprecation “worm theology,” and encourage the congregation to be so introspective and navel gazers that they never rise out of their shame to die to themselves in order that they might live to God. These things are the manifested work of the accuser of the brethren.

It is a work that began in the Garden of Eden when the devil convinced Eve to eat of the fruit that was forbidden. Both Adam and Eve ate and their eyes were opened and they saw the shame of their nakedness. But it isn’t literal nakedness that is the point. The literal is a representation of the spiritual. Nakedness represents shame—spiritual shame. Now that there was sin in humanity, and absolute pure light and holiness in God, they could not come to the light for fear that their wickedness would be exposed, so they hid themselves and make-shifted something of their own design to cover themselves. And what was it that they covered themselves with? Self-righteousness. Man-made religion. Our own pride and glory. Since as humanity we have lost the full light and glory of God within ourselves when Adam ate from that tree, we are now left to seeking to fill the void with anything we can find. But we find ourselves broken because every bit of water we pour into our cups leaks out and so we’re left dry, thirsty, and empty. All of us like sheep have gone astray and each of us has turned to his own way. We’re lost in this world chasing after the wind, grasping for what cannot be held onto. Yet God has set eternity in our hearts and so we walk our way stumbling in the dark to try and find out the meaning of life, who we are, why we’re here, and what our purpose is. But God is our Father and all of humanity, His children. We were made in His image and in His likeness, according to His intricate, unique, and purposeful design. Our fulfillment can only be found in Him. We were made to be glory carriers of God—to carry His light.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they hid themselves from God. But notice, God wasn’t hiding from them. God didn’t give up on them. In fact, He offered them a better covering because their own covering wasn’t good enough. If it was good enough, there would be no need for a better covering. But what am I saying? This better covering is representative of the covering God would provide for humanity later through the body and blood of Jesus through His death on the cross. God knew that the only way to adequately cover the shame of our spiritual nakedness was to provide His own Son to do the covering. How does He cover us? By offering us the love, forgiveness, acceptance, and identity we need so that we can operate fully and efficiently according to the design of our manufacture’s specifications. We weren’t meant to carry the weight of the world but Jesus carried that weight to the cross so that we might have rest in Him. But to achieve that rest, we must give our sin, fear, and shame to Jesus so that He can nail it to the cross. That is, we must trust in Him and find our identity in Him to be set free so that we can once again carry the divine glory. We must die to our shame and the opinions of others so that we can live in the joy God has for us.

The truth is, God has always been for us. He has always been the Father of the prodigal son, sitting on the porch, looking into the distance waiting and longing for his children to someday return to Him. Even in the Old Testament, He says, “All the day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people” (Ro. 10:21; Isa. 65:2). John 3:16 says that it was the Father who sent His Son into the world because of His great love for the world, so that He could redeem it. And when Jesus was stepping on the same soil, face to face with His disciples, He said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9) and “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:30; 17:21), and John wrote of Him, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (Jn. 1:18). That is, Jesus has showed us who the Father is by His life, words, and works. The Father is for us. So what about all of God’s judgements in the Old Testament? How do we reconcile that with God’s love? These judgements were to fulfill a greater redemptive purpose. His judgements were to prove to all the nations that He was God so that all the ends of the earth might be saved. His judgements were to uphold order and restrain evil in the world to prevent our further suffering and self-destruction. His judgements were for our benefit because without them the world would turn to chaos. Someone needs to punish or else there is no justice for wrongdoing. But oh how great the love of God is that He would choose to implement a better covenant where He acts through His sons and daughters to restrain the evil in this world so that He doesn’t have to be so severe in His judgements. He is the Prince of Peace who wants to bring peace to the world, to conquer evil with good and hate with love. Do you see who the Father is now?

God has always been working to win our hearts back to Him. Before the time of Christ, He sends prophets to turn the hearts of His people back to Him but they stoned and killed the prophets. So He sent His One and only Son and they even killed Him. Yet as His Son was breathing His last, He said, “Father, forgive them. For they know not what they do.” Then the earth quaked. The veil of the temple was torn in two and then three days later Jesus rose from the grave as the victor.

From the garden until now, Jesus has been seeking to save those who are lost. And if you’re willing to accept it, Jesus was the calf (the young bull) in the story of the prodigal son. This the early church fathers would attest to. Jesus was the sacrifice that offered us acceptance and covering for our sin and shame to restore our relationship back to the Father. Jesus Himself said that if you eat His flesh and drink His blood, you will have life in yourselves. This He was speaking of His sacrifice of reconciliation. All along, it wasn’t God that needed to be reconciled to us but we who needed to be reconciled to God. God was never the problem. We were. Faith in Jesus is the only acceptable covering for our shame because it is only by the goodness and love of God that we can draw near to Him. It is a grace freely given without any payment simply because “the Son of Man has authority to forgive sin.” This Jesus said before He died on the cross and He freely forgave people and withheld judgement before the cross. The animal sacrifices of the old covenant never took away sins (Heb. 10:11). The Old Testament saints were saved through faith, not by works. This faith brought them to God and made them acceptable in His sight. God considered them righteous because of it (Romans 4). This is also how we are saved in the new covenant, through faith. Yet this new covenant is better because it has been enacted on better promises. It is a covenant that calls our faith higher from being sons and daughters of Abraham to being sons of God to take our rightful dominion back on the earth from the devil who stole it from us. This power we receive not from ourselves, but from the Godman who was the only one who could make this possible.

But to have the faith to believe all this, we can’t continue shaming ourselves. We have to give that shame to Jesus and accept Him for our identity. Humility is the way to God not because humility produces shame but because true humility can more easily accept in faith what God has for us. Humility is not self-deprecation. What good did it do for the prodigal son to wallow in his filth and talk about his unworthiness? Or for the elder brother to sit outside his Father’s house in a pity-party of unbelief? What good did it do for Adam and Eve to makeshift their own coverings? False-humility leads to shame and shame can lead to self-hatred and self-deprecation which is exactly where the devil wants us so that he can maintain dominion over us and this world. As long as we don’t realize our value and identity, then we won’t step into the authority God has for us as sons.

The truth speaks this: you are the prodigal son or the elder brother. You are the lost sheep that Jesus searches for until He finds it and then rejoices when it is found. You are the lost coin who although your face-value may not be that much, God is sentimental and so it’s not about the face-value of what other people think you’re worth, it’s about the value Jesus places on your worth. It’s about you being His and that He wants you. He likes you. “For the Lord whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Ex. 34:14) and He jealously desires your affection. You’re not just a drop of water in the vast ocean. And if you don’t hate yourself too much to be blinded to the inconceivability of this truth to believe it, you are the lost treasure in the field which the Man, Jesus, sold everything He had, left heaven’s throne—to set you free. Do not be unbelieving but believe that the Father loves you so much to sing songs of joy over you.

Zephaniah 3:17 (NLT)
For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.

Oh how deep the love of Jesus is
Vast
Unmeasured
Boundless
And free
That He would offer up Himself
As a sacrifice for me
To cover my shame
To heal my hurt
To be accepted to the Father
…because that’s what it would take
This sacrifice
…for me to finally believe
The love the Father has always had for me
That He has always been for me

Though I was the offender and expected the Father’s wrath
I was met with arms opened wide running to meet me
I thought that He was too holy
That His light was too bright
Surely I couldn’t approach the Most High
But He ignored my bargains, my pleas, and my deals
He offered only Himself and the fullness of His house
Now I am accepted
Forgiven and free
He is my identity
Christ in me

Grace that is free
Without Cost
Without Price
Workings and strivings
Are not His delight
His delight is me
My heart and my life
United in Him
The source of my life
And the end of my strife

John 6:40
For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.

John 8:31-36
So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 33 They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?” 34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. 36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

This is the true gospel message that will set the captives free. Forget what you learned in seminary, theology books, and church about Calvinism, Divine Exhaustive Determinism, Lordship Salvation, Cessationism, Penal Substitutionary Atonement, and Eternal Conscious Torment. All of these doctrines are stumbling blocks to receiving the true and pure gospel. They will paint a dark picture of who the Father is which will prevent you from believing with a full heart of faith and love and without fear. 1 John 4:18 says “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”

Strive towards the faith of this salvation. Ask for wisdom in the Holy Spirit, for God to send you and lead you to the right people to pray for you and speak truth into you and be united to His body, the church. And I don’t mean just the physical building. Seek out the body who are really alive and be united to those individuals in fellowship. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Mt. 16:6). Many people just teach the things that have been passed down to them and these things haven’t been approved by the Spirit. If you are a new believer and have received the blessing of the Holy Spirit, listen to His still and quite voice. Listen to your intuition. If something seems off, search the Bible intently with humility, prayer, faith, and diligence to seek the truth. Don’t just take a pastor’s word for it. Abide by what you know to be true in the Spirit, in the Word, and from the first few centuries of what our church fathers’ have said about this faith we believe in. This gospel that I am preaching is truth and life. Only the truth will set the captives free and bind up their wounds. Let this be a testimony to the effectiveness of this gospel that also proves the falsehood of the previous doctrines I have mentioned which are stumbling blocks and extra baggage that even if you are moved by this message, the devil will use those doctrines to steal the seed of faith within your heart. So tear down every stronghold for the sake of the life of your soul and for the healing of your body. Do not give the devil an opportunity. Be delivered. Be set free. And commune with your Lord.

If you’re willing to accept this, God’s holiness is actually His love. That is, His love is so good and so pure that it either dispels the darkness or destroys it. His love is fire. Fire to purge the dross. Or fire to consume what there is to nothing. Understand this unconditional love that has always been for you to want your success. The Father has always loved you, wanted you, and accepted you. Even in light of who you are in your filthy mess, shame, brokenness, loss of value, worth, or depravity, He has chosen to love you because He wants to have a relationship with you and call you His friend.

God’s love is light and that light hurts us because it’s just so holy and so bright. But if we accept it from Him to cover us, He can wash us and cleanse us from all our sin and shame. Open your heart to Him and let the light in so that light can purify your soul. The transformation of your heart may not come all at once but as you continue to open your heart to God and let His light in, He can begin the healing process. Continue to meditate on this gospel and have faith in a full restoration into the joy of His house. The process may start with grieving but it will end in rejoicing.

Throughout my Christian life, I never gave up on God. I doubted at times but I never gave up on Him. I did, however, give up on myself and so through this I lost my identity. But I have now come to realize who I am again because of His love and only through His love. It awakens me to be me again. To embrace my personality and to live up to the calling that God has for me. To take dominion over the earth and crush the head of the serpent through Christ in me.

To take your rightful dominion back and to have victory over sin and death, you must realize that God has always loved you and wanted you. The angry and spiteful god that many Christians have described is a false image of the Father. His anger is out of love and His love is fierce. His hatred is not personal. Even the early church fathers acknowledge this. It’s not that He hates your guts—it’s that He hates what you have become and how far you have fallen. His hatred and wrath are about position—your position—as His enemy or as a wayward son. He may bless His enemies out of His abundant grace but whatever they sow, they shall also reap. If they choose to destroy themselves, they have the free-will to go down that path. Therefore, at the end of the age, God will not save those who do not want to be with Him. If they choose death, then they will receive death. If they do not choose God, then their end result will be the absence of all that God is because they have chosen not to be sons of His house. Understand the raw truth of these words in John chapter 3 where it says that humanity has already been judged because of their unbelief of God who is the only source of life. In their shame, they hid from the light rather than let the light purify their hearts from a dead conscience to serve the living God. They were already condemned.

This light is love and this is how it works: the truth of God from His Word plants within you a seed of truth. You acknowledge and understand it with your mind. Then it reaches your heart. From the heart, it is received in faith which is trust, rest, and acceptance. Then as the mind continues to meditate on the truth of God’s love, the doors of the heart open up to receive the healing of God’s pure love. It may be painful but the pain is just the antiseptic. Broken hearts may take time to heal but as we continue to open our hearts wide to God, He will heal us, cleanse us, and fill us. And once we are healed, we can be fueled by the love of God to truly walk before Him and live for Him as we were originally intended to do. The love of God will motivate us to good deeds and as we feast upon Jesus through His Word, prayer, praise, meditation, Spirit-filled community, the exercise of love and spiritual gifts, and communion, we shall be filled up to all the fullness of God to understand the length, breadth, width, and depth of His love and to know His peace and rest which surpasses all understanding. We shall be become wells of water filled up and overflowing. Joy will be our portion but don’t be ashamed of your joy in this dark world since it is offensive to people because to be ashamed is to go back to where we were in our brokenness. Do not hide this light but let it shine and speak to everyone of the goodness of God.

The reason humanity is afraid of God is because we think God is like us. We think that He loves the way we love. He gets mad the way we get mad. We think that He needs to satisfy His desire for blood, for violence, because that’s who we are as humanity. But God is nothing like us. His love is so pure and so holy and so good. Coming face to face with this truth, we come to realize that we are so far from that perfection and this causes us to become undone. We thought the sacrifice of Jesus was all about His need for blood but the opposite is true, His sacrifice was all about His love. The payment that was paid for our sins wasn’t literal—wasn’t mechanical. It was symbolic. Our hearts were purchased with His blood which is His life because it’s the life that’s in the blood and His life was love. The price of our redemption was about convincing us that God actually did care about us. He had to come to earth as a man and suffer the things we suffer because otherwise we would not be convinced. The chasm was far too wide. Our shame was too great. The hardness of our wicked hearts needed to be broken. The price Jesus paid in His humanity was the cost for our salvation to bridge the divide and to win us by His love.

Both a warning and a blessing:

Revelation 2:1-7
The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this:

2 ‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; 3 and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary. 4 But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. 5 Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent. 6 Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.’

Hosea 6:1-3

Come, let us return to the Lord.
For He has torn us, but He will heal us;
He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
He will revive us after two days;
He will raise us up on the third day,
That we may live before Him.
So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.
His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain,
Like the spring rain watering the earth.