This week was the inaugral Honor-Shame conference in Chicago, which due to unavoidable reasons we were not able to attend.
But it was to be 3 days of wonderful sessions, seminars and discussions with authors, professors, mission practicioners, researchers and others with the common interest of the vital relevance of honour-shame dynamics in Scripture to reaching our world with the gospel, not least those areas whose cultures are steeped in honour-shame dynamics.
The Gospel: its a term much used in evangelical circles of late.
And rightly so…..without the gospel - the good news - we are hopelessly lost for eternity.
However when we use the term 'the gospel' what do we mean?…what do we hope others will understand by it? Do we truly understand it?
Once again a passage of scripture 'jumped out at me' in a new way this morning as I read 'with my honor-shame' eyes open. This time in Romans chapter 10. I find it is so easy to miss the obvious when we come to scripture with 'guilt-innocence' presumptions.
The gospel is all about rescue. The good news is that a Saviour was born, died and rose again.
But what did He come to save us from?
"Sin", you say.
Correct!
But…..
….what does John 3:16 say God sent His son into the world to do?
"give us eternal life"-
"whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life"
Yes, Correct again! but in this verse we are told that Jesus came to bring us eternal life so that we didn't have to….PERISH! In other words we have been saved from 'death'.
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23)
So its not just sin that we have been saved from, but the wages of sin, the inevitable results of sin—death.
…and we Westerners understand that to mean that physical end of life when we stop breathing and then go to a place of forever physical torture where any sense of physical enjoyment of life is totally finished. But some other parts of the world, in fact the majority of the world, find relational death (full shaming by separation/rejection/isolation) more significant and severe than physical death.
But if we look again at Romans, this time in chapter 10, verses 9 then verse 11 then verse 13 we see what the Apostle Paul explains we are saved from.
In verse 9 and 13 he says what 'will' happen, and sandwiched between these two verses in verse 11 he says what 'will not' happen to us in the process of explaining the impact and effect of this salvation that 'will' happen to us.
Verse 9 says….we will be saved
Verse 11 says ….we will not be put to shame
Verse 13 says ….we will be saved
He doesn't say we will be saved from sin, or from guilt, or from hell, or from judgement or from death or from fear, as much as they may all be part of the 'rescue package'. Instead he does a commentary on a verse from the Old Testament in Isaiah 28:16 that talks about the 'rock of offence' that God has laid down and goes on to say that…
"everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame".
Paul is saying that to be saved, is to avoid being 'put to shame'. We are rescued according to Paul, from shame.
Remember it is also Paul who explains to us in Romans 3:23 that
"all have sinned and come short of the glory of God".
In otherwords, the impact of the sin we are in is our not attaining (coming short of) the glory (honour) of God. If we don't attain honour, by default, we are in the opposite state of shame.
Honour lost, is shame gained.
We often think about Romans as a book about the law. However, the extensive treatment of the law that Paul gives us in Romans is not to have us think the gospel is all about the law. NO its about showing us that the law was only there to show us how far short we are of the standard we are supposed to be at if we are to have the honour of holiness that God created us to have when He made us in His image.
The law simply reveals our shame. The shame that points us to our sin.
So when we read in Daniel 12:2 that the contrast of eternal life is eternal shame,
"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."
or in another translation
"Many sleeping in the ground will wake up. Some will wake up to live forever, but others will wake up to be ashamed and disgraced forever." (God's Word translation)
...Paul is totally consistent with what God was saying all along. And to go back to the beginning, it is also totally consistent with the fact that lack of sin before the fall of mankind was described as a state of being 'naked and not ashamed.' (Genesis 2:25)
Sadly, the prosperity gospel has hijacked the African's natural inclination to see references to 'lack of shame' in Scripture. 'Lack of shame' is of great interest to a people who's lives are controlled in every dimension by an avoidance of shame. But because we have brought a gospel as evangelicals that doesn't really touch the issue of shame, when the prosperity gospel promises that they 'will not be put to shame' in an earthly cultural sense and instead will be given the honour of wealth and good health/healing, the erroneous teaching is embraced with great eagerness.
The gospel is the good news, that is true. But it is the good news primarily that Jesus came to be 'our rock of offence' - the spotless, holy and innocent One who endured all shame not just from those on earth but also from His father in heaven….so that He could rescue us from the eternal shame (separation/rejection) that we deserved.
We will be saved…..because we will not be shamed!
Shame lost, is honour gained.
Like Adam and Eve before the fall, we will stand once again unashamed, this time clothed in the honour robes of Jesus Christ our Saviour!
This is the message of the Gospel!
No comments:
Post a Comment