At Home with Beverly: What I Wish I had Told the Girls at Elevate

Recently I got to hang out with some amazing young adults who are learning what it means to follow Jesus. During a panel about sex and dating, a courageous young woman asked:

How do you deal with the shame?

Although it’s a big question to answer quickly and the panelists answered well, I can’t shake the question. Here is what I wish I would have said.

There is a beautiful hymn that was written by a man with the ridiculous name of Horatio Spafford. Written as an act of faith after facing terrible heartache, it still speaks to and for us today. The older I am, the weepier I get singing the second and third verses:

‘Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blessed assurance control: that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed his own blood for my soul.

My sin—oh the bliss of this glorious thought!—my sin, not in part, but the whole, Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Oh my soul!

And that, my dear ones, is how you deal with the shame.

It’s all in the focus of that third verse.

In Jesus’s day, crucifixions were designed to send a message to the masses. The Romans liked to have their executions on public thoroughfares. That way they could intimidate the passersby while getting rid of the criminal. Two birds, one stone.

The gospels recount some details of Jesus’s crucifixion: scourging; taking off a robe; robe back on; robe off; gambling for robe. Understand it: beneath the robe was not much else. He was naked.

A quick search pulls up at least 39 references to “uncovering nakedness”. The first consequence of the first sin was shame. When Noah’s post-flood bender left him passed out naked, his son Ham outed him to his brothers, who covered him up. When Noah sobered up, he cursed Ham for uncovering his nakedness—for shaming him. God promises to “uncover the nakedness” of rebellious nations.

Nakedness meant shame.

When Jesus hung on the cross, he was likely not wearing the little towel that the Renaissance artists so politely painted on his nether parts. Hanging at least a few feet off the ground (crucifixion is a slow death), bringing his “nakedness”, possibly, to…eye level.

This was purposeful, a complete humiliation. Arms stretched out of socket, with no way to cover himself with his hands. Legs nailed in place, unable to hunch into a protective curl. No barrier of any kind to shield his body from the view of anyone who had to journey that way.

Even today, most of us have had at least one nightmare where we are wearing only underwear (or nothing) in public. But because Jesus was a good 1st-century Jewish man, a sinless Jewish man, very few people would have even glimpsed Jesus’s knees. Now anyone who happened by—his followers, his siblings, strangers, his mother—couldn’t help but see it all.

Have I made the depth of Jesus’s humiliation clear?

Because there’s more.

The physical shame was only the beginning. We read “He who knew no sin became sin so that we may know his righteousness…” Born guilty, we have all sinned. Imagine it—if you had never once committed sin. Never once done a single selfish thing in your life—not even one little white lie. And then, having never known any guilt, having perfect unity with our good and holy God, imagine it: taking on the sin of everyone who ever lived and ever will live upon yourself. The sin of the entire world.

Take the weight of your shame. The difficulty you have carrying it. Multiply that by 8 billion people alive today. Add all the people who lived before. The people yet to come. Remind yourself how vile many folks are. Remind yourself that yours was on that heap he carried.

This is the shame that Jesus knew.

How do you deal with the shame? You don’t.

Because Jesus knew your shame, and he took it away from you and put it on himself when he hung naked on a cross on a roadside in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago. He took your physical shame. Your emotional shame. Your spiritual shame. Your intellectual shame.

Sister, your shame is gone. Brother, your shame is gone. Jesus did away with it at Calvary.

My sin—oh the bliss of the glorious thought!—my sin not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord Oh my soul!

Can you imagine the enemy’s delight seeing Jesus on that cross? Can you imagine how devasted he must have been to realize the resurrection’s every implication?

The enemy cannot undo the resurrection. He cannot undo what Jesus did when he took our sin and gave us his righteousness. What the enemy meant for evil, the Lord turned to good.

You had shame that Jesus took on (we all do, you know). So the enemy, the accuser of the brethren, torments us with shame-filled memories. He tries to make us lose sight of Jesus’s fierce act of love on our behalf. He magnifies our sin in a futile attempt to diminish the glory of God.

He tries to resurrect the shame that died with Jesus but did not rise with Him.

And when you fall, the enemy will mock you with your failure. He’ll suggest, maybe what happened before you got saved got taken care of, but what happened since…well, if you fail God, then, you know…can God still love you?

[Notice: when the enemy does this, he omits the reality that Jesus died for all your sins before you had ever committed one of them. Jesus took on all your shame before you were born, or before electricity or even indoor plumbing. The enemy leaves this part out because he is a liar. He never lets the truth get in the way of a sucker punch to the soul]

So when the enemy comes at you (often mimicking your own voice or that of someone significant to you), here’s what you do. You remember. And you say it out loud. You write it down. You yell it if you have to.

“2 Corinthians 5: 21 says He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of Christ!!”

“Romans 8:1 says there is no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus!!”

Sing it:

My sin—oh the bliss of this glorious thought!—my sin not in part but the whole

Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord O my soul!

When the enemy accosts you with shame, turn to the cross.

When he whispers, talk louder. Tell yourself the truth: Jesus dealt with it all—past, present and future—at the cross.

“Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let’s rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1 - 2

This is what I wish I had told the women at Elevate. It’s what I pray that they—and you, dear reader—could know to the depths of your inmost being.