00031 – Gospel of the Kingdom Transforms Shame
Willard, Dallas

Shame seems most widespread and deepest among the very people who take rightness and goodness most seriously. It is a dimension of condemnation that reaches into the deepest levels of our souls.

In shame we are self-condemned for being the person we are. It touches our identity and causes self-rejection. We feel ourselves to be a failure just for being the person we are. We wish to be someone else. But of course we cannot. We are trapped, and our life is made hopeless.

This explains why discrimination against people because of the kind of person they are, their identity, is so hateful and destructive. It also explains why the gospel of the kingdom has such transforming power in human life.

For that gospel opens the kingdom to everyone, no matter their classification, and it enables us really to become a different kind of person, beyond all condemnation blame, and shame, and to know it. (Isa. 61:3)

from The Divine Conspiracy

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