That Ain’t a Shame

The devil never wastes a good temptation. First, he presents it. When we fall for it he is right there not to congratulate but to accuse. When our foolish sin leads to hardship, as it always will, he tempts us to doubt the Father’s love for us. He isn’t, however, done yet. Our sin becomes for him a tool to silence us when we seek to speak in defense of the truth.

While I like to think I’m maturing away from such things I have over the years engaged in some internet debate. One way I know I’ve won such a debate is when the person I’m debating sinks to ad hominem, attacking me rather than my argument. When they respond, “Yeah, well, you drove drunk with your kids in the car” I throw my hands up in victory. That said, it may well be that I’m not so much maturing away from internet debates but shrinking away in fear. Because I know sooner or later someone will throw an old sin in my face. I can take it, but, I confess, it stings.

I’m not, I suspect, alone on this. In fact I suspect we often allow ourselves to be led into more sin by the weight of past sin. I wonder if the evangelical church would have been so quick to fold on the origins debate had not the church not gotten egg on its face over geo-centrism. We folded against Darwin because the ghost of Galileo haunted us. Or consider the full-scale retreat of evangelicals in the wake of the woke. How many are afraid to stand up, say in defense of Martin Luther King’s dream of a colorblind society, because our ancestors were so horribly wrong on racial issues? We believe we’re not fit to speak to the issue because we were once wrong on the issue.

This, friends, is the devil’s work. Not only has the work of Jesus on the cross rescued us from the eternal penalty of our sins, it has freed us from such bondage (Heb. 2:14-15). Cowering before these reminders of our past sins, coming to us through the ministrations of demons in flesh suits, is a failure to believe in the power and work of the gospel. My shame, as much as my sin, was nailed to the cross. My acknowledgment of my sins remains. The burden, however, is gone. The devil’s use of my past as a weapon against me, and against us, has been neutralized. Jesus has set us free, and we are free indeed.

The devil, the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12: 10) has been defeated. As has been said by others, when the devil reminds us of our past, we ought to remind him of his future. Remind him as well that the sin he seeks to remind us of the Father has already forgotten about (Psalm 103). My prayer is that each of us, first, will stop joining the devil in accusing the brethren. Second, that we will hear only the Master’s voice as He calls us His beloved. Third, that we would without shame or fear speak all that He commands to the world that accuses us.