Painting Sin With Virtue Signals.
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INTRODUCTION
One of the most helpful books I have ever read was Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices by the great Puritan Thomas Brooks. In that book, which is more like a handbook on how to avoid the schemes of hell, Brooks lays out common ways the enemy so quickly entraps us, along with precious Gospel remedies we can employ to avoid the temptations he brings. Last week, we began looking more closely at the first of these devices and remedies and will continue again this week, looking at how Satan paints sin with virtuous colors.
PAINTING SIN WITH VIRTUE SIGNALS
In the deepest recesses of the human psyche, like a balrog sleeping in the depths of Moria, exists an unquenchable torrent of guilt that cannot be assuaged by the putting on of virtues. And yet, the madness of the human condition is this, although we cannot succeed in doing, surely we will try, try, again. In fact, virtue signaling exists to distract from the inherent guilt we all know is festering within us, like a boil ready to unleash its murky contents.
Imprinted upon the sickly soul of man is the unavoidable knowledge that all have sinned and fallen short of our creator's glory (Romans 3:23). But, instead of reckoning with this Holy God, the brittle soul suppresses this embarrassing knowledge in abject wickedness (Romans 1:18). Faced with the foul pollution of our contaminated character, we pretend we are virtuous because we cannot stand the terror of how sin has mangled us.
This is why Planned Parenthood when referring to the grizzly murder of a million infants per year, uses the benign phrase: women's healthcare. The human ego cannot bear the horror and culpability of creating the most extensive serial killing ring in human history. So, with euphemisms turned into ad campaigns, they disguise their awful corruptions and attempt to convince the onlooking world that they are, in fact, the righteous ones. And if you do not join them, you are the real monster.
This is why democrats in 2020 were wearing the "I can't breathe" t-shirts commemorating the death of George Floyd. Because, with a tattered legacy of being pro-slavery, pro-racism, pro-Jim Crow, and the perpetrator of a litany of violence against non-white races, the democrats must constantly play moral whack-a-mole, to forget who they were, and to convince everyone else they are unstained. And should you defy their clever wordsmithing? You will be thoroughly canceled, tossed into a "basket of deplorables," doxed, and then deemed unfit for polite society. Their guilt fuels their senselessness.
But let us not puff out hollow chests while doing a little conservative jig with the Pharisees. Everyone virtue signals to some degree or another because no one wants to face the dragons hiding within. We cannot, as Christians, pretend that this is just a game the pagans play. When we lie, we paint with the strokes called: "I was only kidding." When we foment anger, it is their stupidity that causes it. When we are cut off by a reckless driver, we deem him unfit for the road or travel, and yet, when we do the exact same thing, we are the ones who have an excellent reason. Perhaps, the most constant and revolting aspect of our sin is that it is so morbidly hideous that our souls not only scramble to hide it, cloak it, or redefine it, but it also forgoes true repentance in exchange for pitiful excuses and virtue signals. Without Christ, we are truly hopeless.
THE DEATH OF SIGNALING AND DAWN OF VIRTUE
Two thousand years ago, the divine author we rejected penned Himself into His own epic, taking upon Himself the weight of the tragedy, His characters deserved. And unlike us, He didn't participate in the charades or dawn the theater masks (Thalia and Melpomene). He did not feign righteousness or masquerade with contrived or pretended holinesses. Instead, he lived authentically as the God-man before us. Instead of pacifying guilt, which He had none, He assuaged the wrath of almighty God. For His elect, He came so that all who are in Christ could be set free from the toil of shame and misery to live in the glorious freedom of serving Him. Christ's death hammered the death nail into our hollow performances, pantomiming righteousness and our need to parody true virtues, and dawned the new creation era where we can have peace with God and life by His Holy Spirit.
Today, we are called to lift our heads from the slop buckets and the muck running up and over the troughs of sin. Instead, we are to look forever more to our redeemer, the Lord of true godliness and virtue. And to do that, we must understand four essential Gospel remedies for our sin, laid out by the Puritan pastor, Thomas Brooks, so that we can experience victory in our war against the world, our flesh, and the wily schemes of the devil.
REMEDY 1: SEEING SIN FOR WHAT IT IS
Brooks notes that we would break into an ugly panic-stricken run, screaming for the yonder hills, if we saw sin as it indeed appears. This is why Satan (and our flesh) incessantly downplay it and cloak it in virtuous colors because the actual sight of our rebellion is utterly detestable! Thus, no matter how alluring and honorable an evil may appear, we must remember that if we could see it with true sight, as God Himself sees it, it would be the most ghastly and revolting visage our eyes could ever behold. If we could see as Christ sees, we would spy the deranged wolf hiding under the lamb skins and the dragon breathing murderous threats under the cloak of an angel of light.
Therefore, the first remedy for the Christian against sin and temptation is to know what sin is. It is hemlock to the heart and raw sewage to the senses. It is radioactive isotopes upon the mind and iocane powder to the soul. If we do not recognize it for what it is, we are defenseless to the death it brings, even as Christians. While sin cannot ultimately separate us from God, it can sully our relationship with Him and rob us of thrilling joy.
REMEDY 2: ENDING THE VIRTUE SIGNALS
Knowing how aberrant sin is, Christians must be the very last people on earth who are virtue signaling. As Brooks says:
“The most dangerous vermin is too often to be found under the sweetest flowers, the fairest glove is often drawn upon the foulest hand, and the richest robes are often put upon the filthiest bodies. So are the fairest and sweetest names upon the greatest and the most horrible vices”
Instead of the empty signaling dead virtues, let us deal with our sin in the way Christ has already given us. Instead of hiding it, let us expose it. Instead of allowing it to fester in some buried cavern of the heart, let us dig it up and mortify it by the work of the Spirit (Romans 8:13). That is how we will live. That is how we will experience life in His name. Let us be encouraged to do that work in the power of the Spirit.
REMEDY 3: REMEMBERING SIN'S LOVLINESS IS ONLY TEMPORARY
Brooks notes:
“Until we have sinned, Satan is a parasite; but after we have sinned, he is a tyrant.”
Just as a fly drinks the sweet nectar of the Venus trap, we can be assured that sin's true form will be exposed to us in the end. In this life, the seeds of evil go down with a hint of honey but will soon grow into the most bitter wormwood. And, in the life to come, the robes of her malefaction will be completely thrown off, and the vile abominations of sin will torment the reprobate in hell forever. As Christians, we must remember that the loveliness of sin is but an illusion, a mirage amid scorching deserts, and an eternal razor blade hidden in a mass of tropical bubble yum. Let us recall the future miseries that will spawn from temporal pleasures so we can flee them all together in the present. May the Spirit aid us in the work!
REMEDY 4: RECALLING WHAT SIN DID TO OUR SAVIOR
Above all else, we must never forget what the faintest and smallest sins have done to our spotless, perfect Lord. Brooks tells us:
"Even those very sins that Satan paints, and puts new names and colors upon, cost the very best blood, the noblest blood, the life-blood, the heart-blood of the Lord Jesus."
It was for a single drop of fleeting pleasure that the ocean of God's wrath was poured on Him. It was for every "wittle whoopsies", all those times we made an "honest mistake", even the mildest microaggressions that slipped off our lips that thorny daggers mired the savior's brow. It was for our tritest iniquities that Christ was pierced through, scorned, and mocked on Calvary. It was for the whitest lies and minuscule tall tales that our savior bled and died! This is what it cost Him!
By remembering the awful brutality our dear savior encountered, and the spiritual suffering the author and perfecter of our faith endured, we can be encouraged to fly away from sin, all sin, even the ones that seem small, and to kill it where they still reign. As Brooks closes out the chapter by saying:
“So that when we consider that sin has slain our Lord Jesus, ah, how should it provoke our hearts to be revenged on sin—which has murdered the Lord of glory, and has done that mischief that all the devils in hell could never have done? It was good counsel one gave, "Never let go out of your minds the thoughts of a crucified Christ." Let these be food and drink unto you; let them be your sweetness and consolation, your honey and your desire, your reading and your meditation, your life, death, and resurrection.”
CONCLUSION
As we revisit the truths that Thomas Brooks discovered in 1652, let us be reinvigorated by them today. Let us make war with our sin. Let us avoid the veneer of virtue signaling and resist the temptation to tuck them away like poison without dealing with it adequately. Let us flee to the arms of our dear savior for comfort, and let us stand in the power of the Spirit to live differently in the days ahead. This is my prayer! Amen, and amen.
