Friday | 24 July 2026

Despising the shame

When the word of God is proclaimed to us, and we respond to the conviction of the Holy Spirit by walking in open-hearted fellowship with our brethren, the grace to repent from our evil deeds, and to walk in a new way, is found in the fellowship of Christ’s offering. The apostle John declared, ‘If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.’ 1Jn 1:7.

We know that Jesus has already pioneered the pathway of our repentance, and our obedience, on His offering journey from the garden of Gethsemane to the cross. Furthermore, on His offering journey, Jesus Christ has already overcome the shame that causes us to recoil to the darkness of our own religious projection. The apostle Paul declared that we are ‘looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God’. Heb 12:2. Jesus did not despise the fact that He was humiliated because of our sin. He willingly embraced and endured the humiliation of the cross for the joy of recovering us as sons of God. Rather, Jesus despised our self-righteous shame which causes us to hide ourselves because we are afraid of humiliation.

The Lord testified about how He despised our shame, by saying, through the prophet Isaiah, ‘I did not hide My face from shame and spitting.’ Isa 50:6. This is a wonderful point. Jesus has already overcome the shame that causes us to hide our face because of our fear of being exposed in the light. This means that when the word of the cross is proclaimed to us, there is grace for us to, likewise, despise our self-righteous shame and walk in the light of fellowship with our brethren. We renounce the hidden things of shame when we willingly confess our faults to one another. Jas 5:16.