Paul has one message and one method which always included a contrast between those who believe and those who do not. In our text we are told in a quotation from the OT book of Isaiah that those who believe will not be ashamed, and by implication, those who do not believe are shamed.
Shame is a concept which has become absent in our society and today’s church, as sin has been reduced to a crime and misdemeanor; but shame is an important Biblical concept. It comes from guilt and guilt comes from sin which is treason against God.
Shame is manifested in four ways in those who are not Christians:
1) Disappointment – being let down by someone you trust;
2) Confounded – speechless
3) Exposed – our sin being found out in the presence of God
4) Disgraced – extreme humiliation
Spurgeon said,
“It will be a sorry business if we have been trusting in our good temper, our charity, our patriotism, our courage or our honesty, and when we come to die shall be made to feel that these cannot satisfy the claims of divine justice or give us a passport to the skies. How sad to see robes turn to rags, and comeliness into corruption!
In that day the people who have had no shame here, who are like those described by the prophet Jeremiah–“they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush” (Jer. 6:15)–these shall be utterly confounded. They will find that the objects of their hopes are empty. They will have nothing to say. Their shame will be exposed, and they will be disgraced in their own eyes and the eyes of others forever.”
On the contrary, those who believe will find themselves satisfied, covered, graced, with a song of praise in our mouth.
