From shame to glory

John 9:1 Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him… He then spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And He said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam”. So he went and washed, and came back seeing.

Jesus revolutionised their stance about this man’s sin or his parents’ sin being the cause of his blindness. He was prophesying His New Kingdom era whereby no sin could be passed on from one generation to another because he was cancelling all curses for all sin on the cross (Galatians 3:13, Ezekiel 18.3).

The mud was prophetic of the dust of the earth of mankind’s old creation humanity, made into mud with the living water out of the mouth of Jesus, to become a new creation. Jesus as the Son of God had performed that old creation about 4000 years earlier. He was now prophesying through this picture of putting the mud in the blind man’s eyes the man’s new creation eyes of faith. These new eyes would see who Jesus really was and in so doing the man would see who he himself really was in the eyes of Jesus, free from shame to now become who he was eternally meant to be (from shame to glory).

The blind man was a beggar who had been shamed all of his life. But he was created with a divine virtue that had never yet been truly expressed because he had become a poster child in that community as a reminder in their eyes of the curse of sin.

He and his neighbours and his parents are then subjected to a series of shameful interrogations by the Pharisees who were obsessed with sin and the Law because that was their weapon of intimidation, and they were intent on keeping sin and judgment alive. The Pharisees branded the man, his parents, and also Jesus as sinners, and they cast the man out of the temple.

The devil takes over the ministry of the Pharisees now in seeking to blind our eyes to the work of Jesus. He has filled the culture of today’s world with the torment of guilt and the weapon of shame, and just like the Pharisees he uses this as a weapon of intimidation. Shame is a negative emotion of feeling wrong about ourselves because of our imperfect humanity, which gets magnified by what we imagine other people think about us. God wants to magnify in us his thought about us.
John 9:35 Jesus heard that they had cast the man out; and when He had found him, He said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” He answered and said, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?”
And Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.” Then he said, “Lord, I believe!” And he worshiped Him.

The Old Testament could never take people from shame to glory in this way.
Hebrews 9:6 The sacrifices were symbolic for that time where gifts and sacrifices were offered which could not make them perfect in regard to the conscience (feeling right or wrong about yourself).
Hebrews 10:3… in those sacrifices for sins there was an ongoing reminder of sins (ongoing shame).
Hebrews 10:14… by one offering Jesus has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

Being sanctified is a process and we are all being given individual grace for our individual progress, invited by Jesus to walk alongside him every moment of the day. And we each have unique God given virtues and giftings for which God’s grace is present to us through faith. Our shame is in proportion to our not finding God’s grace, and setting our own unrealistic goals to be perfect or trying just as unrealistically to do someone else’s thing – wrong self-expectations. (Hebrews 4:16). But Paul used shame as a wake up call to the church in Corinth for his valid expectations of them to live righteously as Christian disciples and to stop living like they had no knowledge of God (1Corinthians 15:33)

Romans 12:6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with the faith as God has given you. If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing mercy to others, do it gladly.