“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’”
-Romans 1:16-17
If you follow Christ for long enough, you will eventually see friends walk away from the faith. Theologically, we know why this is: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19). But how does it happen practically? Some leave after the appeal of trendy youth ministries gives way to the hostilities of college life. Others leave after experiencing a great loss, blaming God for their circumstance. Yet as I survey my own life, one consistent theme persists among those I’ve known who’ve walked away: shame over the simple message of the Cross.
Shame represented a threat that the early Christians in general, and Paul in particular, wrestled with. They were staking their lives on a man, the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Doing so could invite immense cultural repercussions. Not only were they subject to the shame of ridicule and of forfeiting their public reputation, (so important in First Century Roman life) but the threat of imprisonment loomed large as well. Perhaps bearing a humiliation second only to that of crucifixion in Roman life, imprisonment caused Paul to write from one prison stay that he had confidence that he would “not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20).
What does it mean to be “ashamed of the Gospel?” We can know that we have become ashamed of the Gospel when we doubt that the goodness of the Gospel is worth the hardship, scorn, and loss that holding the Gospel may invite.
Practically, that might look something like the following:
1) A man pulling back from an evangelistic encounter over fear of what the response might be.
2) A college student amending the faith claims of the Bible to appear more palatable to peers.
3) A pastor’s reluctance to identify as good and bad what God identifies as good and bad.
The Scriptures are clear that the strangeness of our message to unconverted ears will elicit a kind of worldly “shame” from the culture. However, even when we are misunderstood and rejected, we do not have to respond in an ashamed way. Indeed, although derision and ridicule may be directed our way here and now, it is God who “chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27).
We can live unashamed here and now not because we are on the “right side of history” relative to our own lifespans, but rather because we are on the right side of eternity. And if the Bible’s message about eternity is true – and we certainly believe it is – our souls can be fortified by the confidence that our hope is placed in the most secure object imaginable: the risen Christ himself. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
Comments