Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

When we think of Christ's work to bring salvation to the world, we rightly focus how on the cross Jesus

reconciles us to God by freeing us from the guilt that we have because of our sins.

On Good Friday, Jesus took our sin upon himself, He bore our punishment on the cross. On Easter Sunday, he rose again,

and that means he conquered sin and death. And then at Pentecost, he fulfilled his promise to always

be with us by sending the Holy Spirit who then

empowers us to truly love and follow God. Now in the midst of all these true and

very wonderful things about our salvation we might overlook or even forget another crucial part of our

redemption that we each desperately need. By his work Jesus not only takes our

guilt and exchanges it for his righteousness, as Paul wrote about in 2 Corinthians

chapter 5 verse 21 but he also takes our shame and exchanges it for his honor.

Now this aspect of the gospel is especially important in a culture like ours, one that's so

obsessed with erasing the very notion of shame. Earlier this year at the Grammy Awards

the red carpet was full of so-called sheer fashion. In fact, see-through dresses, shirts, and

pants, which display an awful lot of nudity, are the new celebrity fashion trend.

It's a trend that's not only odd given the basic purpose of clothes, but it reflects a kind of flaunt what you got attitude aimed at eliminating the notion of shame associated with our nakedness after the fall.

Now of course it's not just body shame but other forms as well,

moral, physical, vocational shame that are all seen as bad

as having in the first place and therefore has to be removed.

Shame, however, is a reality of the human condition after the fall.

It's a sign that something about us is not the way it's supposed to be.

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