Intro – Selected texts
And today, I want us to talk about and address from a biblical perspective where shame comes from. It may come from the result of a sin or wrongdoing that you have committed OR your shame could be coming from a sin or wrongdoing that was committed against you.
Either way, what we’re going to discover today is that you were never meant to live in…to walk in shame. It’s not how you were designed nor is it what God originally intended.
In fact, we see God’s original intent for our lives in the creation story in the very first book of the Bible. We were created to feel no shame. Do you remember?
God creates man and woman and puts them in the Garden of Eden together. And Genesis 2:25 – “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
Genesis two comes BEFORE Genesis three and the “fall of man”…BEFORE the introduction of sin into the world. And before sin existed:
there was nothing to hide…
there was nothing to fear…
there was nothing to be ashamed of…
And then, sin enters the world due to disobedience by Adam and Eve and EVERYTHING changes. And we see for the first time the consequences of sin which seen and felt in the guilt and shame that follows.
Genesis 3:6-11 – “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Notice the shame – they attempt to cover themselves up!)8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” (This is what shame does – causes fear and makes us want to hide and not be found out! We’ll see in a moment that shame prevents vulnerability and transparency in our lives which godliness actually fuels!) 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Guilt and shame. Now, I think it’s important as we get going this evening that we determine and define what we are talking about.
Probably the best definition of GUILT that I have found is this: inner awareness of wrongdoing. In our context an inner awareness of sin – either sin you have committed or a sin against you.
SHAME – a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by a strong sense of guilt.
It’s important to know that you can have guilt and NOT feel shame, but you can never feel shame and not have guilt. In fact, SHAME flows from guilt that is not dealt with in a healthy way.
SHAME flows from guilt when that guilt is NOT dealt with in a healthy way. And for our purposes as Christians, that healthy way that I refer to is the way that is suggested to us in the Bible.
Let me work it out this way and I’ll come back and talk through exactly what I’m talking about.
So, let’s talk this through. We are hard-wired for a relationship with God. Ecclesiastes 3:11b – “…he has put eternity into man’s heart…”
We were made for a relationship with the God who made us. But sin entered into the world and guilt came right along with it.
And so just a theological lesson here. We inherited from Adam and Eve – our great, great, great, great grandparents a sin nature. It’s called an imputed unrighteousness – it’s ours!
Paul put it like this in Romans 5:12 – “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”
Now, ALL guilt is a result of sin. And it is the guilt over sin that weighs heavy upon us as humans.
God made it this way so that when we sin against him, there is this inner awareness of wrongdoing/sin while simultaneously an inner desire for that wrongdoing/sin to be absolved.
So, when we sin and guilt (the inner awareness of wrongdoing) comes with it, we will feel, hear and walk in one of two things: Either conviction or condemnation.
Now, as we wrote here conviction usually has to do with our behavior – we are cognitively and acutely aware that what we did, what we said, what we thought was wrong.
Note this about conviction – it comes from the Holy Spirit. This is his role and his job to convict us of sin…to ensure that what we did weighs heavy on us.
John 16:7-8 – “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”
This is one of the main roles of the Holy Spirit – to convict us of sin…wrongdoing against God and man.
The other way we go with this is to feel, hear or walk in condemnation. Where conviction is usually about the BEHAVIOR (what we did was wrong, bad wicked), condemnation here is usually about IDENTITY (WE are wrong, bad and wicked).
Where conviction comes from the Holy Spirit, condemnation comes from Satan…this is why one of the names he goes by is the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev. 12:10).
This is one of Satan’s oldest tricks in his handbook. He wants to do anything and everything he can to tear away at our identity as children of God. He wants us:
to doubt God’s love for us…
not believe God’s promises to us…
And so what he does is attack us at our identity as children of God and his accusations will always be pointed toward that…it will sound something like this:
“How could you?!”
“I can’t believe you just did that…and you say you’re a Christian?”
“No way can God forgive you of that!”
“All these years and YOU still can’t beat that sin.”
“You are worthless.”
“You are hopeless.”
“You are so dirty and disgusting.”
“You must be such a disappointment to God.”
THIS is the voice of the Enemy. In contrast to the gentleness of the Holy Spirit and the truth in love that will come from him, the Enemy will always be harsh…always condemns and again, usually attacks our identity as children of God.
And it is at this point that you and I have a BIG choice to make. If we follow the Holy Spirit, and the conviction he brings over our behavior, we will repent…this is salvation.
2 Corinthians 7:10 – “ For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”
When we repent from our sin, it is proof of salvation and the sanctifying effect Jesus is having in our life. God is making us more like his son and conforming us to his image.
If we make the choice to listen to the lies of the Enemy, we will live in regret…and this is where SHAME lives and breathes.
And sadly, this is where so many Christians are living today. It could be because of a wrongdoing that you have done and you can’t forgive yourself and/or you don’t think God can forgive you either.
Regret has become your middle name. OR you could be living over here because of the wrongdoing that has been committed against you.
Let me share with you why living in shame is so dangerous. It prevents transparency and vulnerability. When we live in shame, all we want to do is hide, cover up our sin or the sin that has been committed against us. We live in fear of exposure.
And this can work itself out in a number of different ways.
Others are critics – hard on yourself and hard on others…
Some turn out to be perfectionists because they don’t think they’d be accepted any other way…
Some turn inward toward isolation and become loners – feel no self-worth and don’t want to be rejected…
And there is this overarching fear of being exposed. What would happen if someone really knew me…and what this leads to is bondage and increased guilt. We live here and this cycle starts over.
Whereas, repentance…working out our salvation with “fear and trembling”, it doesn’t prevent transparency and vulnerability, it promotes it!
Instead of keeping it inside and living in regret, we confess it to God and to others and we get it out in the open! This type of living leads to freedom and increasing grace!
It fuels our relationship with God and ministry to others because we are confident in our identity…we’re not listening to the voice of the Enemy, instead we are making the choice to listen to the Spirit.
And we learn just as Paul did in (Rom. 5:20) – “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.”
So, how can we assure that we live in repentance and not in shame and regret. I want to encourage us to make three choices…and it’s important to note that we will have to make these choices EVERY SINGLE DAY of our lives.
Choose the gospel over guilt
iIn scripture God made a way for the guilt to be absolved. IN the Old Testament is was in the institution of the Law and commanding in the Law a “sin offering” and a “guilt offering” be made – and it was in the sacrifice of an unblemished animal – that animal’s blood poured out that sin and wrongdoing was atoned for and guilt removed.
When you have time, read Leviticus 16 and study what took place on the Day of Atonement – two unblemished goats are offered. On one goat, the High Priest confesses the sins of the people and then slaughters that goat as a sacrifice for sins – we call this propitiation – that act…the blood of that goat appeased the wrath of God that was warranted due to the sins of the people of Israel.
On the second goat, the High Priest puts both his hands on the head of that goat and confesses the sins of the people. He doesn’t kill this goat…this is the scapegoat. And this goat is sent away into the wilderness – symbolizing the sins of the people being carried away. We call this expiation.
So sin and it’s guilt is both atoned for and carried away on the Day of Atonement. In the New Testament, it’s easy to see how Jesus is our final and full sacrifice, isn’t it?
When John the Baptist first laid eyes on Jesus, he said in John 1:29 – “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
In the sacrifice of Jesus, we have both propitiation – the appeasement of God’s wrath due to the shedding of his blood and we have expiation – Jesus taking our sin and guilt and removing it far from us.
The GOSPEL is God’s answer to sin and guilt. The reason the resurrection of Jesus is so powerful is NOT just that he was raised from the dead, but in raising Jesus from the dead, God is declaring the acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice of his life for all to see and demonstrating once and for all sin and guilt has been dealt with – finally and fully!
Hear this: The answer to guilt is the GOSPEL. If you have placed your faith and trust in Jesus and his death, burial and resurrection to make you right with God – the guilt of your sin has been absolved…done away with…and shame should have no place in your life.
Jesus is the answer to guilt and to shame. When you sense the weight of guilt that comes from sin, make sure that you are doing the right thing with it! And the right thing is leaving it at the cross of Jesus.
Illus. The Gospel According to God – John MacArthur
Isaiah 53:4-6 – “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
John MacArthur - “The servant of Isaiah 53 is suffering because he has taken on himself the full burden of his people’s sin and guilt, with all its consequences – up to and including the wages of sin: death.”
Gavin Ortlund - When I think about God’s innocent Son hanging helpless on a tree, I feel broken, undeserving, and, at times, ashamed. Yet that which breaks me also equips me to deal with my shame. In Christ, my representative before God, I am already exposed. The fear animating my shame has already come true: I am fully, completely, exhaustively, and perfectly known by my Substitute. The battle is over. The bomb has detonated. The rumor has made it rounds. The truth has been uncovered. Christ bore my shame, and now he covers me in his perfect righteousness. In him, there is a hiding place – a covering – for sin, and it is perfect. He is perfect.”
Choose the gospel over guilt. It will free you up and enable you to minister to those suffering from guilt and shame.
Choose confession over concealment
You see the differences here: One prevents transparency and vulnerability, the other promotes it…go with the one that promotes it!
Whatever we try to keep in the dark is usually trying to kill us…maybe not literally, but certainly spiritually. Get good at confession of sin. All confession is, is agreeing with God that the wrongdoing that was committed, was wrongdoing…and it was a wrongdoing against him.
Don’t try to hide your sin. David did this and it didn’t work out very well at all!
Psalm 32:1-5 – “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 5 I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”
You choose to conceal your sin and it will negatively affect you spiritually, physically, emotionally. Don’t conceal your sin…you are only hurting yourself.
What sin needs more than anything else is exposure to the light…this is where healing comes from.
This is what James meant when he wrote in James 5:16 – “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
Don’t conceal your sin OR the sin that has been committed against you. Instead confess the sin of another to someone you trust OR if it’s your sin, confess it as soon as there is conviction and move on!
1 John 1:9 – “ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
You say, I have trouble with this…I just don’t know how God can keep forgiving me of my sin if I keep messing up over and over again.
Well, this third and final choice is for you, then:
Choose the gospel over guilt.
Choose confession over concealment.
Choose fact over feeling.
You have to choose FACT over what you FEEL. How do you choose what to believe and walk in here? You have to choose FACT over what you FEEL.
The FACT is Rom. 8:1…the FACT is 1 John 1:9. The FACT is God doesn’t want me carrying guilt that he already took with him to the cross.
THIS is the way to freedom and increased grace in our life. And listen – LIFE – especially for the Christian - abundance of life hangs in the balance!
Let’s commit today to choose the gospel over guilt. Let’s choose confession over concealment. Let’s choose fact over feeling. And in doing so, we will live in freedom and increasing grace in our lives.
Let’s pray together.
(If you have a moment, check out my new book, THE ALWAYS GOD, available now)
