Ray Ortlund writes: Every one of us knows the shame of guilty self-awareness and the fear of exposure. But we don’t want to live in the isolation of that darkness. We long for freeing relationships with others, especially God. But without the gospel, we hide, conceal, falsify ourselves, in order to appear better than we are. Or, conversely, we may trot out our failings with assertive self-display, demanding acceptance—a more modern response. The gospel says, “Your shame is real, even more real than you know. But this is what God has done. He put it all onto Christ at the cross, where your
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