I am not ashamed

Nor should I be

To be sure, there are things in life about which we all should feel shame. Frankly, a lot of the debauchery, deviancy, and degeneracy we regularly see on display today (especially in the month of June) would all but disappear if people had an appropriate sense of shame.

There are many things in my own past for which I have, at one time or another, felt shame. I have felt shame for mistreating others, and still feel that shame if I do today. I have felt shame for inappropriate behavior and use of inappropriate language, and I still feel that same shame if and when I fall into such behavior.

We’re all human, and we all err. Shame helps us turn the boat. It helps us to right the wrongs. It helps us to recognize when we’ve done something we know or knew we shouldn’t but did so anyway. Shame is evidence that one possesses a conscience and a sense of objective morality.

So, while there are things about which we all should feel shame, ”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” (Romans 1:16).

And why should I feel shame at God’s message of salvation? It is this message that saved me and released me from the shame of my past, from wallowing in depression, drunkenness, and drug abuse. It is this message that lifted me out of my enslavement to sin. It is this message that made me a citizen of God’s Kingdom and guarantees me eternal life.

What is this message?

Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

1 Corinthians 15:1-5

Yes, it really is that simple. Jesus, who showed Himself to be the Son of God, condescended to take human form and to live the sinless life we could not so that He could offer up His life as a sacrifice on the cross, our unblemished Passover Lamb, to reconcile us to God:

And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach— if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.

Colossians 1:21-23

This salvation is a gift: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

How do you receive this gift?

if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

Romans 10:9-10

Receive the Lord Jesus Christ in faith and the gift is yours. As Paul told his jailer in Acts 16:31, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”

Immediately prior to His ascension, Jesus told His disciples that, after He left, they would receive power, by way of the Holy Spirit, to be witnesses for Him throughout the earth (Acts 1:6-8). And this is a task to which all Christians are called, to bear witness, which is to relate what God has done in our lives through Jesus, and to preach the gospel, making disciples of “all the nations” (Matthew 28:18-20).

My shame at present is that I have not put more effort into proclaiming God’s word and sharing my witness. But I will not remain in that shame. I will continue to publish political pieces and other writings, but preaching the message of salvation through Christ and expounding the evangel (from Greek εὐαγγέλιον - euangellion - the prefix “eu” meaning “good” and “angellion” meaning “message”) and the Scriptures will take a more prominent place in my posts.