So when we might wonder what these issues of honour and shame are all about, or if they are critical to making disciples and having a right gospel understanding of salvation and sanctification, or if they might have a vital part to play in solving the problems of our world, we will not go wrong to look in Genesis.
We don't have to go far into that first book of the Bible to discover God's great honourable plan of creation, and then the entry of shameful sin into our world. And in the midst of the story we also begin to see the first glimpses of what would be required to provide a solution to the sin problem which damaged God's honourable creation. Let me summarise in 3 points.
Honour in the beginning
1. In the beginning God…
- that's the first statement of honour….God's holy and honourable presence is the foundational setting for the entire universe, including us
2. God created…and it was good
- all that God created was good - God's good creation gives glory (honour) to God because it reflects Him and fulfils the creator's purpose and carries out His will
3. In His image
- God created human beings 'in his image'. Human beings were created with an honourable status above all other creation - of being in God's image. Human beings were the crowning glory of God displaying His glory. Humans were created in his glory for his glory.
4. Unashamed
The final word of chapter 2 is 'unashamed'. The final word of how God describes his pre-fall sin-free world in Scripture, is 'unashamed'. To be without shame is to be in a place of full honour. People were able to live as God created them with no barriers between them and God and between each other as humans. They were free to live in the honour in which they were created.
Shame enters the story
1. The Situation Changes
The serpent comes with the temptation to eat the fruit. Some will say it was a temptation of disobedience to God's command. And that certainly was part of it. But a temptation to disobey a command is just a result of something else happening prior to this…and that is a disregard or 'dishonouring' of the command-giver.
Adam and Eve failed to enquire of the Lord first (in other words 'pray'), to think about God first in their situation. Honouring God as God, their Creator and life-giver somehow vanished from their radar. In commenting on this another blogger noted that 'man doesn't account for God because he believes he doesn't need God'. So underneath the disobedience was a mind that aleady didn't adequately prioritise God or factor God in, and underneath that was a belief that God was not needed for and irrelevant to the situation.
Now all this can happen in our mind and thinking in a fraction of a second, like it probably did for Adam and Eve. But it happened because Eve had somehow been more pre-occupied with, and already moved closer to the tree that God had prohibited, rather than staying in what God had gifted. Without realising she had already increased her opportunity for temptation.
Maybe she had already allowed the eyes of her heart to wander away from thankfulness (honouring) and satisfaction in the sufficiency that God would provide for her, to dishonouring God by elevating/honouring her own opinions/assessments which in turn fed thoughts of dis-satisfaction that God was with-holding something from her.
I don't say this just from supposition, but also because in 2 Corinthians 11:3 Paul uses the context of Eve succumbing to the deceptive cunning of the serpent in the garden in Genesis to explain that we as Christians can be easily 'led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ'. He doesn't say anything about actions of disobedience but being 'corrupted' from a heart attitude of sincerity and purity in Christ. And that word 'corrupted' comes from the Greek phtheiró whose root meaning according to Helps Word Studies is a 'moving down from a higher level (quality, status) to a lower form'…in other words a loss of honour. Eve's problem, like ours, is a temptation to move away from God being the one to whom we give honour, and from whom we seek our honour.
Ken Ham in a message at an Easter conference in 2019 proposed what he calls the 'Genesis 3 Attack' and that Eve's problem was that she fell for the same temptation that we can all have to question the word of God. This I would suggest is simply another way of saying we have a temptation to not honour God and His Word as we should (Romans 1:21; 2 Thessalonians 3:1). So again, we have emerging in Genesis a context of 'dishonour' that enters the world and underlies the fruit of disobedience.
So by Genesis chapter 3 verse 10….just 10 verses later, Adam and Eve are in a vastly different situation. Honour is lost and shame enters.
Now, Adam and Eve are suddenly aware of something new (nakedness) they had never felt before. They felt vulnerable and exposed for the first time, and they instinctively wanted to cover themselves and hide in fear. No-one had yet explained why they felt this way…but it was such an overwhelming awareness and feeling that it dramatically changed how they acted toward God and his creation and toward each other. It was so powerful it consumed their focus and guided their decision making.
2. Alienation and fearful Separation emerges in place of Fellowship and Joyful Togetherness
What was joyful open relationship with God suddenly altered and they felt pulled away from the freedom of walking with God. We can only imagine what it must have felt like to suddenly sense shameful separation after only knowing the joy and honour of full fellowship with God.
3. Human efforts to cover our shame don't work
- Rev Clive …. the preacher at St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney last week (as I watched online), interestingly did not emphasise guilt in this Genesis story, but repeatedly emphasised shame. Maybe his Indian ethnic background and ministry focus helps him to recognise the presence and significance of shame in the 'Fall' story, and makes him less vulnerable to the Western presumptions of guilt as the main factor. His observation, I would suggest is 'spot-on'. The issue is primarily about shame.
Shame makes us want to hide and to cover. We can feel shame long before we understand any guilt-law association. Evidence of a law-breaking is helpful not because it is the critical factor, but because it reveals to us what God already knows before we know it, and shows us what we need to know. Disobeying a law simply reveals a heart that had moved to a place of dishonouring the law-giver. Adam and Eve ate the fruit because they first listened to and believed the lie of the tempter that it might be nice to have the honour of becoming what they were told was 'wise'. They were attracted to an idea that they could be 'more' or 'greater', and thus made a choice to try to access that potential higher status and power. But of course the lie only brought the opposite of honour….and they suddenly felt shame.
Salvation's picture presented
Genesis goes on to show us more of the honour-shame context of sin, and its remedy:
1. Only God Can Cover Our Shame
After his statement that 'human effort to cover our shame just won't work', Rev Clive in his sermon also then said 'human religion never works, God himself must cover our shame'..
there are two interesting issues to note here…
a. he insightfully equates 'human religion' with 'human effort to cover our shame'.Let's think about this a little more….Whatever the 'brand' or 'style' or 'cultural requirements', at the heart he recognises that any human religious effort is an effort to find a way to overcome, or outweigh, or cover-up or hide from our shame. Whether that is finding fig-leaves, or re-defining adultery to just being 'consensual sex' or denying that homosexuality is outside of God's plan, or lying to protect a risk of shame to our reputation, or avoiding showing up at a food van or homeless shelter even though we need help because we feel ashamed, or committing suicide rather than go home and face the family after being fired from a job, we are seeking ways to avoid or deny or rid ourselves of shame.Religion in its various forms offers ways to join a group or embrace an ideology or do good works or find absolution or redefine what is shameful and not shameful…and becomes a 'way' in which we follow and try to find peace, acceptance, and welcome for our hearts that at the deepest level are aware of some kind of inadequacy - a 'falling short'.b. The skin's covering was to cover shameRev Clive then read chapter 3 verse 21: 'the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them', and pointed out that God got the 'skin' from somewhere and it wasn't like animal skins were just lying around. The skin had to come from an animal. This is something that most Christians are fully aware of, but we often don't make the honour-shame connection. He goes on to unhesitantly say that 'the first sacrifice in the bible is actually performed by God, to cover the sin of humanity, to cover our shame'. He then later points out that this was just a small glimpse of the eternal plan of God to 'send His only Son Jesus to be the perfect sacrifice to cover the sins of the whole world'.He said:
'God's ways are higher than our ways, our ways are to grasp at being like God and to blame others to justify ourselves and try to cover our shame, but when the Son of God came into the world, he didn't grasp at being equal with God but humbled himself and made himself nothing'…'he didn't blame others but instead died to take the blame for all of our sins and cover our shame'
2.The Curse Foretells a Coming Honour Restoration
The curse given to the snake - of permanently travelling on his belly down in the dust, and the promise given that the woman's seed would have his heel bruised but Satan would have his head bruised (Genesis 3:14-15) are also a picture of a future hope of punishment and remedy for our sin-shame condition. Satan would not get away with his deception, but shame would be his lot, and ultimate victory honour would belong to a Saviour to come, who would conquer Satan. Satan may have thought he succeeded in messing up God's design and succeeded in separating humans from God and from each other and having them ejected and rejected from the garden. But in another garden the Saviour said 'not my will but yours be done' and became our shame-bearer, and then in yet another garden he rose victorious over the final shame-separation of death….so that we could join him in honour in a new garden one day in a new heavens and earth (Revelation 21:1; 22:2).
To Conclude…..
Verses like Romans 4:7 remind us that the gospel is not just about lawless deeds being forgiven but about sins being covered, so that as we are told in Romans 9:33 'whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame'.
Romans 8:21,30 and Colossians 1:27 remind us that the gospel is about restoring glory that was lost.
The gospel is the 'honour' answer to the 'shame' problem. It is the grace given to us in Christ - the second Adam (the one who would bruise the head of Satan and provide the perfect covering for sin) that provides undeserved honour in place of the shame (that began with the first Adam in the Garden of Eden).
Sin is inherently a shame problem.
Guilt is not meant to be the core of the story, guilt from disobedience is just the signpost that reveals and points us to the deeper issue, the deeper need and the deeper remedy.
Once again Genesis shows us the foundation of what we need to know….don't miss it!
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