“Looking unto Jesus the author
and finisher of our faith;
who for the joy that was set
before him endured the cross,
despising the shame,
and is set down at the right hand
of the throne of God.”
Hebrews 12:2
Shame.
It first
shows up in Genesis 2:25. Adam and Eve,
prior to their fall, “were both naked . . .and were not ashamed.” Half a chapter later, though, they took the
forbidden fruit and immediately needed clothes to cover their shame. Lacking understanding of what had really just
taken place, Adam weakly admitted to God, “I was afraid because I was naked.”
The image of
Adam and Eve, crouched in brush, desperately trying to “sew” fig leaves
together, weaving them with thorns and vines and whatever they
could find, reminds us of our own hearts when we discover sin. Shame brings misery, even in the middle of a
perfect garden. I wonder how many forces
in history have been the result of shame—covering up sin, covering up damage,
covering up human frailty, covering up weaknesses. Six
thousand years later, we continue to sew fig leaves.
Shame is the
pebble in our shoe that forces us to face our sin and prompts us to get right
with God. It’s the reminder, sometimes
daily, that we are sinners, frail and needy, who can’t get very far without our
Shepherd. Shame protects us from further
damage by producing inhibitions in our behavior that protect us from sinful
scrutiny and evil. We cover up and thereby prevent further
shame.
And Jesus
despised His shame.
The word “despise”
doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Our modern usage would make it synonymous with “hate.” If someone “despises” cottage cheese, they
really, really don’t like it. If they despise
me, I feel loathed.
The Bible repeatedly
uses the word “despise” to mean “to think little of.” When we are told to “despise not” our
mothers when they are old, it’s not asking us to stop hating them. It’s telling us not to throw them, or their
advice, away as the years take their toll.
Esau “despised” his birthright.
He didn’t hate it—he just thought nothing of it. He could toss it aside for a bowl of
stew. Timothy was admonished to “let no
man despise” his youth. He was to “study
to shew himself approved of God,” so that no one could dismiss him as “just a
kid.” Leaning hard on the authority of
well-placed Scripture, he could stand tall and not be “thought little of.” The Bible even makes a word play on this
meaning when it says, “Despise not small things.” In other words—“Don’t think little of little
things.”
At the cross,
we see the juxtaposition of these two words:
Shame. Despise.
The
awfulness of shame—the nakedness,
the jeering, the robe being shredded into strips at the foot of the cross, a
public execution, visible enough from the top of Mount Calvary to stop an
entire city from its Passover preparation—and the triumph of despise—like Esau’s birthright, this horrible
death becoming a small thing compared to the joy that was set before Jesus that
day.
We often
sing about what our salvation means to us, but we do well to consider
what our salvation means to Jesus.
My redemption meant more to Jesus than the shame of the cross. As
awful and dark as that day was—enough to send fishermen into hiding and a Roman
governor into frenzied hand-washing and armed guards to the tomb of a poor Carpenter—the
suffering of the cross is a sub-theme of the real story. The mission of the cross is about my
salvation, and the love that drove that mission is so indescribable that it
makes thorns and spears and nails seem small.
“Thanks be
to God, for His unspeakable gift.” II
Corinthians 9:15
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