The Gospel Of Shame

Hello blessed child of God, I hope you are fine by God’s grace, and I hope you’ve experienced wonderful things this week.
As for me, I’m fine thanks to Him, and I had an interesting week. A few days ago, I tried to preach The Gospel to someone, and the person replied something like:
“No thanks, I don’t need a guilt trip tonight, I already have too many sins”.
I loved this person’s honesty, but it also confirmed to me something I had noticed for too long, and want to share about today with you.
Preaching The Gospel is something wonderful, it’s a privilege from God to us, and I think that too often we fail at how we approach people to talk about God.
This person who didn’t want me to preach The Gospel to him/her had been acquainted with what I call “The Gospel of Shame” or “The Gospel of Guilt”.
I don’t know if you’ve ever realized it, but you may be the first person through whom someone hears about God, and the perception of God which you give to this person may be the perception of God which they will carry on their mind all their life.
In our quest to share The Gospel with people, many of us have resorted to using guilt and shame to push people to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour by reciting the Salvation Prayer.
This post is absolutely not to judge you but to make you realize that when you give people the impression than God is an angry God who just wants to throw us in Hell and who wants us to feel the pain and shame due to all of our sins, you may convince them to become Christians. But somehow, the repentance and change you would have created in them will only be short-lived.
Shame can’t change someone. Guilt either. People who are ashame and guilty will change for sometime, because they really want God to accept them, but because they’ll be doing it with their own strength and to deserve God’s love, they will fail, they’re bound to fail, and they will be even more discouraged and won’t want to grow any closer to God because they’ll only feel like they’ve messed up one time too much and don’t deserve His forgiveness.
Taking people for a guilt trip to convert them to Christianity will compromise their view of God and their relationship with Him as a whole.
It’s wonderful to want people to love Jesus, but the approach you have also matters.
That’s why I made a list of 4 things you can do to avoid preaching The Gospel of Shame.

1. Let Them Know That You Too You Mess Up

A good number of the people to whom we preach The Gospel already have a conscience which tells them that they have sinned against God. Basing all your ministry on how screwed up they are will only make them feel that you clearly judge them and that you think that you’re way better than them.
On the other hand, if while speaking to them you let them know that you too you’re screwed up and that you too have had situations where you messed up even though you’re already a Christian, and that God has always been faithful to forgive you, cleanse you and teach you through His Holy Spirit to avoid sin and to obey Him will make a huge difference.
By doing so, you’re letting the other one realize that we’ve all sinned and that we all need Jesus, and that Christianity isn’t about perfection but about grace and submission to God.
This way, you’re showing the person a healthy way to deal with their guilt and ahame a.k.a taking it to Christ at The Cross.
Romans 3:23‭-‬24 NIV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

2. Tell Them That God Is Ready To Forgive All Of Their Sins

Most of us already carry shame in our hearts, and when your approach is focused on their sins and not on God’s ability to forgive, they may not realize that they’ll need God’s forgiveness all their lives.
For example, I can’t explain how, but I used to think that The Salvation Prayer is for God to forgive you ONCE and the rest of your life you have to manage on your own to make sure that you don’t sin anymore and that you remain a Christian. So, when I would screw up and do something really really wrong, instead of just confessing my sins to God and receiving His forgiveness, I would redo the Salvation Prayer because I thought it was “the prayer” which would make me start-over again with God afresh, a “reset” prayer.
Ok, the way I thought is kind of complicated, but the essence is this.
Make them realize that ONCE AND FOR ALL Jesus Christ carried ALL THEIR SINS and ALL THEIR SHAME at The Cross, for PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE SINS.
When they accept Jesus Christ in their lives as their personal Lord and Saviour, they are FORGIVEN, and their shame has been dealt with ONCE AND FOR ALL.
It will definitely relieve them to realize that whatever the sins they commited in their past, God can forgive them, and that they can be sure that God will never reject them even if they aren’t through the addiction yet, even if they screw up again.
That God will forgive them and that HE will change them not through their works but through His Word and The Holy Spirit.
Let them realize that in Christ they will have complete freedom from their failures because Christ Himself will be their victory.
Romans 5:8‭-‬9‭, ‬17 NIV

But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him! For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

3. Tell Them About God’s Complete Love And Acceptance

I know that in certain Christian environments when you tell them to preach about God’s love to sinners, they feel uneasy because they say:
” If you tell people about God’s love and grace they’ll go around saying they’re Christians while they continue sinning”
On the other hand, you can’t bring them to true Christianity by shaping God as someone who hates them and who accepts them only if they start doing good works and coming to Church.
If you don’t tell them about God’s unconditional love and acceptance, how will they do when they sin/fall short?
How will they deal with the devil telling them that it’s over and that they shouldn’t even waste time turning to God for forgiveness because they had only “one last chance and they screwed it up”
When you fail to let them know that God will forgive them and keep loving and accepting them no matter what happens so long as they still want to belong to Him, you are already giving the devil an upper hand because he’s good at convincing people that God will never accept them and never want them back.
The way you bring them to Christ may be the way they remain in Him.
If you brought them in shame they may feel as shameful Christians all of their lives.
If you brought them in the love and acceptance of God, they are better set to feel His love and acceptance all their lives.

4. Know God For Yourself

“The God you know is The God you preach.”

– Victoria Eyog

I can’t really blame people who preach shame and guilt to others because, that’s how the Gospel was preached to them and that’s how they see God.
For example, I used to say that “God forgives our sins” because I read it in The Bible but I didn’t really really believe it 100%. We usually say that sin is sin and all sin is rebellion and all sins are equal, but like many christians out there, I had categorised sins. Some of which I believed God could forgive and some of which I was sure that God couldn’t forgive.
Because I had a category of sins that God could not forgive, when I would hear that someone had commited those sins to me it was clearly impossible that God could ever forgive them if they were already Christians.
To me, God could forgive those sins if unbelievers commited them, but if a Christian commited them, then it would be over for this Christian’s life forver.
As such, I had categories of sins that if I committed, God would never ever forgive me.
With time I learned that God forgives every sin, even the worst sins on my category list, even if you’re a Christian, so long as you’re sincere when you repent.
However, so long as that was my perspective of God, I used to preach that way and that’s what I transmitted through what I said. Because that was my perspective of God, I am bound to admit that there are surely people whom I have discouraged on the way because in my mind I limited God and as such I limited them because I limited their perspective of God.
Eventually, if anyone of these people was a Christian and believed me and commited one of the sins in my category of sins which God can’t forgive, they would have had a hard time to believe that God can forgive them, because their perspective was affected by mine. The devil loves using that to make repentant sinners believe that God can not forgive x, y or z sin.
This isn’t to encourage anyone to sin in order to “test” God’s Forgiveness, but it’s to equip you because we all screw up and when we screw up The Holy Spirit will tell us our sins so that we repent but the devil will tell us our sins so that we give up.
If you don’t know that God is able to forgive you, you will believe the voice of the devil and give up on Christianity on the basis that you have “too many sins”.
In the same way, if your perspective of God is blurred, you’ll blur that of others and they’ll give up on Christianity when things get too difficult and when they stop believing that God can love and forgive them no matter what.
As such, read your Bible and ask God to reveal Himself to you, so that you’ll be able to present Him the best way possible to others.
James 3:1 NIV

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

Luke 11:46‭, ‬52 NIV

Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”

Finally, I know that I’ve not been given a diploma in Evangelisation, but I hope that this blogpost will bless you in the way you share God’s Word with people out there.

Prayer

Father Lord God Almighty, may Your Holy Spirit speak through me when I preach The Gospel, so that I preach it as the people infront of me need to hear it. Help me realize and share with others the fact that Christ’s death set us free once and for all from sin, guilt, shame and condemnation, and that it’s only Your grace which saves and which also makes us overcome sin. Forgive me for the times I limited people’s perspective of God because my own perspective was limited. Bless these people and help them know you as you are, in Jesus Christ’s Name. Amen.
Thank you so much for reading. Please let us know how your perspective about God has changed through reading this post, and how you intend to modify your way of preaching The Gospel.
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Thank you so much for reading
God bless you
Victoria Eyog