What It Looks Like to Live Free from Shame
Come with me in your mind’s eye to the garden of Eden. Survey the landscape—every living thing that Creator God spoke into being with His breath. Flowers flourish and mankind is charged with maintaining what God has placed under their dominion. Feel now, if you can, the breeze across your face in the cool of the day.
Now, lend your ears to the sound of divine footsteps approaching in the garden grounds—familiar, but today, haunting (Genesis 3:8). Instead of the delight they usually feel as God comes near, Adam and Eve feel dread. For instead of obeying God’s command not to eat from the tree in the center of the garden, the first humans chose to test God and to take and eat. Instead of safety, they now felt exposed. They had tarnished the relationship between themselves and the Father. They were naked and they were ashamed.
We are all familiar with what Adam and Eve experienced that day in the garden after having yielded to the serpent’s temptation. We’ve all felt the weight of knowing that we’ve done something we shouldn’t have. We’ve also experienced the shame that comes from sin that others have committed against us. We fear that everyone is going to find out who we really are and what we’ve done.
Like Adam and Eve who tried to cover their nakedness with leaves, we attempt to cover our shame with excuses, or substances, or people—anything to try to escape the feeling of exposure that we feel. We are afraid to approach God, the very one who gave the commands that we’ve disobeyed over and over again. Shame is a sunless cloud that will never cease to hover over our heads if we do not seek divine intervention. Do you want to live free from shame?
Come with me to another garden. This time, divine footsteps seek solitude as the Savior begins to pray (Matthew 26:36–39). The only One who has ever been innocent prepares to take on the sin of the world. Fully God and fully man, Jesus is the only one who is able to save us from shame’s threatening taunts.
In Him, not only is our shame put to death and buried in the grave, but Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and glorious ascension has made a mockery of every evil power and authority (Colossians 2:15). Now shame belongs to the very enemy who has attempted to shame us day after day. Jesus died so that we would never again have to live ashamed.
When you place your faith in Jesus, He clothes you with His very own righteousness. When God looks at you, He is now just as pleased with you as He is with His son. You are no longer defined by what you’ve done or what has been done to you. You are now defined by what Christ has done on your behalf. Those who place their faith in Jesus will never be put to shame (Romans 10:11).
There will be times, of course, when Satan attempts to remind you of the past. He will attempt to shift your focus and tempt you to dwell on your worst and darkest moments. When that happens, choose to dwell on the cross—where every iniquity, sin, and violation lost their power.
Living free from shame means that we no longer hide from God, but we approach His throne boldly to receive His mercy and grace (Hebrews 4:16). We are restored, once again, to a harmonious relationship with the God who created us. We no longer have to fear the sound of His footsteps as He approaches us. His presence beside us and within us reminds us that we are eternally free from shame.
Additional Resources for Fighting Shame:
