I hate being put to shame. I hate eating crow. I hate betting and losing. I flippantly bet a friend 500 push-ups, thinking she would not go near that bet. I was pretty confident that I was right. I wasn’t. She said I didn’t have to do the push-ups, but a bet is a bet. Plus, it would be worse for me to be put to shame twice. Once for losing the bet, and twice for welching on the bet. That night I spent the better part of 40 minutes doing push-ups. I was sore the next day.
Evidently, there is a way to be shame-proof.
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
Without getting into an in-depth psychological discussion about shame, I would like to propose that Jesus is shame avoidance to the millionth degree. It is not merely “believing” as we westerners think, but putting our complete trust in Him. Jesus was chosen by The Father to confound people. That is why they rejected Him. They just didn’t understand. Today, the question is, do we understand? Do we understand what it means to never be put to shame?
When I am thinking of never being put to shame, I think of the concept of never losing a bet. When I completely trust Jesus, I will never lose a bet. This bet of which I speak is the eternal bet. The one I am betting my eternal life on, which will not disappoint. There is a lesson here. When we are so eternally focused, we will be filled with confidence because of Jesus. More on that another time. There is more than an eternal payoff for us. We take a position every day, every moment, in which we will not be put to shame when we trust Jesus completely. Living in and through Christ enables us to live without having to endure humiliation. What? No shame? Honestly, this world may shame you. They have many tools to do so. They shame you for being unworldly. They take every opportunity to shame you even when there is no good reason. Sometimes the church shames you. You think they would know better. Also, you shame yourself. Your brokenness and wrong thinking haunts you with shame at times. Besides the fact that God never shames His children, we, His children, will not be put to shame by Him when we trust in Jesus.
The grace from the Cornerstone, this mercy, this compassion that drove the Father to send Jesus, and that caused Jesus to endure the suffering of the cross for us is unquantifiable. Oh, to be on the winning side! No matter how unpopular our beliefs are, no matter how weird our godly behavior becomes, in Christ, we will never be put to shame by God Himself. And He is the one that matters.