Genesis 2:25. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Can you imagine living a life without shame? None of us can. Even though, like Adam and Eve, we were created to live completely vulnerable (naked) lives without shame, none of us has ever accomplished this. Why? Well, the simple answer is that their sin caused their shame. We can see this in their immediate reaction to sinning in the garden.
Genesis 3:6-7. 6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
Dr. Curt Thompson in his book, The Soul of Shame, argues that shame was already at work in Eve before she took of the Tree of Knowledge and ate its forbidden fruit. Shame is a feeling of self-doubt and unworthiness. It tells us that we are not enough. This is exactly the story the serpent told Eve on that terrible day. Notice his counter-narrative in Genesis 3:5.
Genesis 3:5. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
“Eve, you are not enough as you are. You need to be more. More like God than you already are.” Satan isn’t just deceiving her, he’s shaming her. And this shame causes her to drift in her relationship with God.
Shame captures our imaginations and writes a story in our minds and hearts that condemns and controls us. That’s what shame is: a sense of controlling condemnation, a self-judgment that makes us believe that we will never be good enough. Satan, the accuser, leverages our shame against us until all we can believe is that there is something deeply wrong with us, a worthlessness that leaves us beyond hope.
Condemnation. Hiding. Covering up. Blaming. Isolation. Division. These are all the result of our shame. This is why we must constantly pay attention to how shame hijacks our minds and tries to re-write our story from God’s love story to Satan’s horror story. The good news is that the more we pay attention to what is going on in our minds the more our mind can change (mind renewal). But that change can only come as we allow God to cover our shame, just as he did for Adam and Eve in the garden.
Genesis 3:21. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
In order to make skin garments for the first couple, something had to die. Blood had to be shed. And that blood, we can assume, atoned for their sins, while the flesh of that animal covered over their shame.
This is the beauty of our union with Christ, not only are our sins forgiven, but our shame is also covered. Christ’s blood covers over our guilt, and Christ’s life in the flesh covers over our shame. And yes, guilt and shame are two different things. Guilt speaks to what we have done; shame speaks to who we are. We are all guilty of sin, and we should all feel the shame of our unrighteousness. No, we are not enough.
But Jesus is! And in him, his “enoughness” covers our “not enoughness.” His honor covers over our shame. In him, we can be “naked yet not unashamed,” knowing that we have become one flesh with the Lord Jesus who put shame to shame when he conquered the grave and silenced the Accuser once and for all.
Questions: In what ways do you feel shame (that you are not enough)? How does the cross allow us to put our shame to shame and embrace his enoughness?
To Live is Christ 