We all experience shame at one time or another. It either clings to us constantly, haunts us at certain times, or tries to nudge its way into our minds when we remember something that hurt us or something we did to hurt someone else.

Maybe you were teased about your body or shamed for something you said when you were younger. Or perhaps you were carelessly labeled by a parent or cruelly labeled by a bully in middle school and you’ve let those stinging words define you. Maybe you can’t forgive yourself for something you’ve done, or your shame was thrust on you from someone else and what they did to you.

Scientific American magazine defines shame as “the uncomfortable sensation we feel in the pit of our stomach when it seems we have no safe haven from the judging gaze of others. It makes us feel small and bad about ourselves and wish we could vanish.”

That, my friend, is not something coming from God if you are in relationship with His Son, Jesus, who bore your shame on the cross.

Shame is a universal emotion. And it was present in your life and mine before we met the healing power of the cross. But shame never needs to take residence in our hearts or minds again once we truly belong to Jesus. (Notice, I didn’t say once we never sin again.) When we are in relationship with Christ Jesus, trusting in His work on the cross to cover our sin nature, we have One who defends us (and our unchanging position in Him) before the throne of God (Romans 12:10; 1 John 2:1).  Jesus defends us day and night from the accusations of Satan, our enemy and chief accuser who wants nothing more than for us to keep living in shame and not experience the joy and freedom that comes through a relationship with Christ.

Scripture tells us, “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31).

Friend, you and I truly have, in what Jesus did for us, a “safe haven from the judging gaze of others.” God is not only with us. He is for us.

In my book, The New Loneliness, I explain that if you have sincerely repented of your sin condition (Romans 3:23), shame holds no power over you any longer. Sin—which naturally produces shame—was a disease you were born with, a condition you were redeemed of if you have received Jesus as your Savior, and something that can never touch you again as you stay in relationship with Jesus.

If you still struggle with shame today, it’s possible you are forgetting that Christ bore your shame for you and no longer holds it against you. Or, you are listening to accusations against you from your adversary, Satan. Satan is the accuser every time you mess up. But God’s Holy Spirit is the one who gently convicts your heart of sinful actions and motives that we inevitably continue to commit. That conviction by the Spirit is so we will confess that sin and our relationship (not our salvation) with Christ can be restored. There is a reason Jesus called the Holy Spirit our Comforter and our Counselor –not our Accuser. The Bible calls Satan a liar, a master of deception who comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). And Satan does that by trying to get us to ignore the beautiful white “robe of righteousness” that Scripture says Jesus has covered us with (Isaiah 61:10).

Jesus has set you eternally free from shame. On the cross, God treated Jesus as if He lived your life so He can now treat you as if you lived His. That’s a position before God that you and I didn’t earn on our own. And it’s a position before Him that we can do nothing to change. Our

God, who is incapable of forgetting anything, has fully chosen to forget just one thing—our sin, when we’ve repented of it and allowed Him to cover it through His Son’s death at Calvary.

In Psalm 103:12, we are assured of this:

As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our wrongdoings from us.

In addition, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah: “I, I alone, am the one who wipes out your wrongdoings for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (43:25).

Now if you and I could forget our past sins as God does, we could have far better relationships with God and those around us. Yet, as it is with most aspects of the Christian walk, faith is required to take God at His Word. Faith is required to really believe our shame and past sins are gone, and we can live fulfilling lives with God and others.

Wear you new identity this week—saint, as forgiven by the blood of Jesus. And watch for my blog next week when I address “The Difference Between Shame and God’s Gentle Conviction of Our Sin.”

For more on ridding yourself of the loneliness of shame, see my book The New Loneliness and my forthcoming hardback devotional, The New Loneliness Devotional: 50 Days to a Closer Connection with God.