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How can we be set free from the bondage of shame?
First, let’s talk about the difference between guilt and shame. I’ve written a book on guilt—Why Do I Always Feel Guilty?—but I believe that shame is even more harmful than guilt. True guilt is recognizing what you’ve done that is wrong, while shame is seeing yourself as a failure because of what you’ve done or lies you have believed.
Shame is believing there is something wrong with you and you are basically defective in some way. The enemy of your soul wants to keep you and me in bondage to guilt and he wants to turn that guilt into shame. Guilt turns to shame when we think about it and keep remembering it, or when we fail to confess our guilt and find forgiveness. But sadly, many who have asked for and received forgiveness from God for something in their pasts still harbor the shame of that past.
Do you remember that Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were free from shame until they sinned? In Genesis 2:25 we read: “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” However, with sin shame entered their lives, and their eyes were opened to their nakedness. Then they ran from God and tried to hide. Shame caused them to try to isolate and cover up.
Shame almost always causes us to hide from others because we’re fearful of being found out. We don’t want others to see our shame, just like Adam and Eve. We might talk about our guilt, but we’re less likely to talk about our shame. So, we keep it inside and it begins to accumulate. Many people have accumulated shame from childhood for all kinds of reasons, and that accumulated shame doesn’t go away with time. Often it comes to the surface in very destructive ways in times of stress or fear.
The good news is that because of Jesus we can be set free from the bondage of shame. If you are a true Christ-follower, born into the family of God by faith in Jesus Christ, you have been given the pathway to freedom from shame.