Ignominy

Proverbs 18:3 KJV

When the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt, and with ignominy reproach.

I don't think I have ever heard the word ignominy used in modern conversation. It means disgrace, rebuke or reproach. That means the last part of this verse says something like "...with reproach, reproach." But this is more than repetition for emphasis. Ignominy refers to an outward characteristic. The meaning of the passage is then something of this nature, "The man who behaves disgracefully, will come to shame and disgrace."

This is, of course, a truth in this life. The person who lives a life of reproach will nearly certainly be rewarded with shame eventually. While some may live shamefully and never seem to fall into shame, the one who does so fall has no one but himself to blame for the fall. He must at the end say to himself, "I have sown the seeds of which I now reap."

More serious than that consequence is that this may well be the eternal consequence of ignominious behavior. The eyes of the Lord search the earth beholding the evil and the good. He has a record of our life's doings. The one who dies never having that record expunged in the blood of the Lamb faces God as His judge at the Great White Throne and his deeds are contrasted with those things written in the books of God's Word. Oh, the disgrace, worse than can be imagined, upon the one who is cast in such a case into the Lake of Fire.

But what of the professing believer? Is he free from his own ignominious behavior? Has his salvation rendered his disgraceful acts innocuous in eternal matters? Perhaps the most disgraceful behavior of all is to live having gold, silver and precious stones that could have been laid up in heaven, but to have laid up wood, hay and stubble instead. The Bible says he who has laid up the wood, hay and stubble shall suffer shame, being saved yet so as by fire.