"Virtue signaling" is a phrase coined in the early 2000s, and according to Merriam-Webster's is "the practice of conspicuously displaying one's awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action." In a world where false piety and hypocrisy existed, Jesus words on the cross may have seemed like virtue signaling: Look how good I am! Look how innocent I am! Look how unjustly I am being condemned! All the while, the Man accused of crimes against God and Rome, hung from His execution stake, unable (unwilling) to free Himself and barely able to speak. Easy to appear good when all opportunities to do otherwise have been removed. But if Jesus' motive for crying out such a request was not self-serving, we have to assume He really meant it! That He was really interceding on behalf of the crowd gawking at His battered body! That He was really asking His Father to pardon everyone before Him!
I think Luke wanted us to know that's exactly what Jesus was doing. Now, the Author of Scripture through the writers He hand-picked did not insert verses and chapters. But the above verse in Luke's Gospel doesn't end there. His very next thought is, "And the soldiers gambled for His clothes by throwing dice" (Luke 23:34b). There is a disturbing scene in the 1984 television adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The Ghost of Christmas Future is showing Scrooge what is to be. He takes Ebeneezer to the market where an opportunistic woman has stolen from "a dead man's" home. She presents a broker with silverware and other valuables which Scrooge recognizes as his own. She then shows him bed curtains. The broker asks incredulously, "You don't mean to say you took them down --rings and all --with him lying there?" "Why not?" the misery-hardened woman asks with a smirk. Scrooge is overcome by the lack of compassion and human decency; he fights back his fear by raging at the ghost whose vignettes are meant to transform him. Who is that greedy? That shallow? That disrespectful?
Those whom Jesus forgave.
The fact of the matter is, not much has changed. We are still a world where false piety and hypocrisy exist. The term "virtue signaling" came into use in our lifetime, not when Christ walked in body, among humanity. We put on smiling faces or use tender words when in the presence of those we wish to impress. We say what we think others want to hear to protect our own position or move ahead. We are champions in word. But inside, behind the closed doors of our homes or hearts, we are in need of forgiveness. Wretches all are we. In need of a true Savior, One willing to die an excruciating and humiliating death so that we might be forgiven. One willing to hang suffocating, bleeding, every bone aching and every muscle straining, and intercede for the most callous of us.
How does Jesus' cry resonate with you? Are you prepared to forgive as He forgives? Or are you just virtue signaling?
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