Borne

The sun is out—it glances off. Untouchable.

The people are talking, laughing—a glass wall. Unseen. Unengaged.

No external fog, it rises up within you; it is you. Shame.

We know Jesus bears our shame—but I never could articulate how.

It is easy to depersonalize Jesus and salvation. For me at least, and I doubt I am alone, Jesus paid our sin, as if he paid off a general debt of All Sin and mine was lumped in there. Which is true—oh do not minimize the cosmic reaches of my Savior’s salvation! Yet it makes it a transaction over and above my head of which I partake and I’m just a tertiary participant.

Jesus’s sin-bearing was personal. My sin. My personal sin. What I did yesterday, am failing to do today, concrete, specific. He is my Head, my Priest, my Husband, I am one with him and thus my sin is his in an intimate, personal, oh horror-on-the-Pure-One whom I see! Can you see him taking it in his hands, on his shoulders? It is not a mere transaction in which we participate. Like the Jews, our hands would have been bloody with lambs we touched. This is Jesus.

Depersonalizing the sin-transaction made shame-bearing harder to articulate. Sin is often what I do (easy to forget my own total depravity sometimes; I know I’m a sinner, but guilt always felt less deep to me). Shame is me. Shame pervades. Shame is the choking smog that leaves me reeling. Shame is the fog that cuts off, blinds, alones. Shame cannot be covered by a mere external transaction. To get rid of shame, get rid of me, is the fog-blinding confusion. My childish hanging head, “How? The cross feels so distant.”

The cross is not distant. The theology of union must come to the fore. Union is not less than but more than adoption—for adoption is only by union. Union is not less than, but more than affirmations of my identity in Christ—for my identity only comes by his gloriousness shared in union. Those too can often only dig in shame, “Well, that’s not me. I don’t do this Christianity thing well.”

 

But union wraps you up in the most intimate Triune love. It tells you that you, that you are wanted in this community of Love. God, God who is Love, honors you (Rom. 2:7, 10; Hebrews 2:7, 10; John 12:27).

Instead of

Dishonor - you are honored

Exclusion - you are included by the King

Different - you are being formed into his likeness, sharing in his life, in his Spirit, his knowledge of the Father (Matt. 11:25-27)

Lonely - surrounded in a community of Love

Guilt - forgiveness, and a new heart, new life, new core in the depths of who you are

Why was Jesus’s death on the cross public? If it was just for our guilt alone, it could have been done in private. But it was for our shame as well, and he was stripped, naked, mocked, humiliated, called a criminal, dishonored, excluded, different, lonely, bore our guilt, separated. The public nature of the cross declares he bore our shame. Once and for all. You are spoken over, “Mine.”