THE ANGER OF JESUS

"The expression, the ( wrath of God,’ simply embodies this truth, that the relations of God’s love to the world are unsatisfied, unfulfilled. The expression is not merely anthropopathic, it is an appropriate description of the Divine pathos necessarily involved in the conception of a revelation of love restrained, hindered, and stayed through unrighteousness. For this wrath is holy love itself, feeling itself so far hindered, because they whom it would have received into its fellowship have turned away from its blessed influence. This restrained manifestation of love, which in one aspect of it may be designated wrath, in another aspect is called ‘grief’ in the Holy Spirit of love; — wrath is thus turned into compassion."

Martensen.

"And when He had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, He saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand." — St. Mark iii. 5.

The anger of Jesus! It seems foreign to His character. One of the hymns of our childhood taught that "no one marked an angry word who ever heard Him speak." And it is one of the surprises of the Gospels to find that He not only could be angry, but on several recorded occasions both displayed anger and acted upon it. It behoves us, therefore, to consider what anger properly is, what function it is intended to fulfil in our moral life, why Jesus Christ as the Perfect Man was capable, and why we as Christians ought to be capable, of anger.

1. The Natural Emotion.

Anger, to speak broadly, is the combative emotion. While compassion springs from the love by which we identify ourselves with others, anger is naturally aroused by our antagonisms, of whatsoever sort. And as the purpose of compassion is to enable us to do, and to do spontaneously or graciously, kind and self-sacrificing actions which otherwise we might not do, or might do coldly and ineffectively, so the natural use of anger is to enable us to perform actions which inflict pain on others, and which without its stimulus we might be prevented from doing by fear, or by the sympathetic sensibility which makes the infliction of pain on others painful to ourselves; or which, again, we might do only in a half-hearted and unimpressive fashion. Whether anger is in itself a pleasure or a pain we may leave psychologists to debate: it is at any rate a force, an explosive liberation of psychical force, which for the moment raises a man above his normal self. It gives physical courage, overcoming the paralysing effects of fear, so that with blood boiling and swollen muscles a man in anger will hurl himself furiously upon an antagonist whom in cold blood he scarcely durst encounter. It reinforces moral courage too. It gives outspokenness and telling force to rebukes which otherwise would remain unspoken, or would fall timidly and haltingly from the lips. It wings the orator to lofty heights in the denunciation of wrong, and emboldens the satirist to tear the mask from hypocrisy, to lash the popular vices of society or the venerable follies of superstition. Every movement of righteous reform, every crusade against evil, has throbbing in its heart not only compassion for the victims of social injustice, but a holy anger against the state of things, and against those who stubbornly uphold the state of things, which inflicts the wrong.

But, like all natural emotions, anger is in itself neither good nor bad. It is merely a force, a gunpowder of the soul which, according as it is directed, may blast away the obstructions of evil, or defend us from temptation as with a wall of fire, or which again may work devastating injury in our own and in other lives. For our imperfect and ill-balanced moral natures the capacity for anger is a peculiarly dangerous possession. And since our self-love, rather than love to God or our neighbour, is apt to be our most sensitive part, anger so generally has the character of mere personal resentment that this in fact is what we commonly understand by the word. Enabling men to inflict pain upon others with a minimum of pain, or with actual pleasure, to themselves, it readily allies itself with the worst dispositions and passions of human nature. It paralyses humane feeling. Under its influence malevolent men become ferocious fiends, and men who are not malevolent say and do what, when the tumult of the soul is past, fills them with regret and shame. It confuses the judgment. Seldom do we see largely or clearly in anger: seldom is it we have not reason to repent of decisions formed or courses of action entered upon under the influence of anger.

2. The Gospel Incidents.

And yet Jesus could be angry, and again and again displays anger. Anger flashed out of Him against temptation. Never, I think, was Jesus so hotly angry as at that moment when He heard the voice of carnal unbelief and worldly wisdom speaking to Him through the lips of the chief of His disciples to turn Him aside from the way of the Cross, and when He met the ignoble suggestion with the scathing rebuke, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" In many of the parables there is an undertone of wrath; but its full thunder breaks out in His denunciation of the sanctimonious formalism into which Jewish religion had so largely degenerated. If one would know with what passion of invective human language may be charged, how words may be made to play like forked lightnings around the heads of self-satisfied dissemblers and evil-doers, let him read, in the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew, the "woes" of Jesus against "scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites." And we not only hear anger in His words, but see it in His actions. In the Fourth Gospel there is a sequence of events which, whether it is chronologically accurate or not, is singularly suggestive. In one paragraph we see Jesus at the wedding feast; the next shows Him in the Temple courts. There He is the genial, sympathetic guest, adding brightness to the social gathering by His presence, showing forth His glory in a miracle of simple kindness. Here, with uplifted scourge, with indignation flaming in His eyes and vibrating in His voice, He drives the profane rabble of men and beasts from the precincts of God’s house. He who was all friendliness, all benignity, is now all fire, fierce, rigorous, unsparing, consumed and carried away by passionate intolerance of whatever violated the honour of God and the sanctity of His worship.

But most instructive of all is the reminiscence which has been preserved in the Gospel of St. Mark. Already our Lord had come into collision with the Pharisees at several points, but especially with regard to the principle of Sabbath observance. In the controversy He had clearly marked out their respective positions: His, that the Sabbath was made for man, instituted solely for man’s good, and that the interests of the institution, as such, must not be exalted above the end it is designed to serve; theirs, that man is made for the Sabbath, and that human suffering and loss are a lesser evil than any infringement of the rules which guard the sanctity of the institution. It was possibly on the next Sabbath that our Lord and His disciples again went into the synagogue at Capernaum; and there, faithful to their self-appointed task of espionage, were His watchful critics, their expectation whetted by the presence in the congregation of one suffering from a grievous disablement, a man whose right arm was withered and powerless. "And they watched Him, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath day"; nor does He, to disappoint their malice, depart a jot from His intended course. But He takes the first word. He appeals to whatever honesty of mind and humanity of feeling might be in them. He calls the afflicted man forth into the midst and challenges them to say what ought to be done. "Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath day," He asks, "or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?" Will God’s day of freedom for burden-bearing humanity be more truly honoured by making it a day of deliverance to this suffering mortal, or by making it a pretext for prolonging his bondage? To the question so put there could be but one answer. But the Pharisees gave none. They held their peace. They could not answer our Lord’s arguments, but they could do what every one can do; they could harden their hearts; they could lock their lips in stubborn silence when candour demanded of them to speak. They could not answer our Lord, did I say? They could, and they did. "They went out straightway and took counsel with the Herodians, how they might destroy Him." That was their answer to all His appeals. All His reasoning with them only made their hearts harder, their hatred more virulent.

And what was the effect produced upon our Lord by their obduracy? It angered Him. "He looked round about on them with anger." Not one of those sullen countenances escaped the search-light of that gaze, and it was a gaze of indignant wrath.

3. A Flame of Holiness.

Such anger, we instinctively feel, is a holy thing, one of the purest, loftiest emotions of which the human spirit is capable, the fiery spark which is struck by wrong-doing out of a soul that loves the right. When a man is destitute of such emotion, when there is nothing in him that flames up at the sight of injustice, cruelty, and oppression, nothing that flashes out indignation against the liar, the hypocrite, the "grafter," the betrayer of sacred trusts, there is much awanting to the strength and completeness of moral manhood. But the anger of Jesus is worthy of closer inspection. It is our duty to try to understand it thoroughly, to trace it, if we can, to its roots, to see what it is in the character of Jesus from which His anger springs, in order that in the first place we may never draw it down upon ourselves, and then that we may sympathize with it and possess it, that we may clearly know what are its true objects and occasions, and how it is to be used and governed.

And, first of all, let us observe how different the anger of Jesus is from that with which we are most familiar in ourselves and others. We call that anger, which is merely bad temper, an ebullition of irritated wilfulness, an irrational kicking against the obstacles which lie in our way. Jesus never resented circumstances, but trustfully accepted them as the Father’s will. We are angry when persons with whom we have to do are incompetent or careless, when they do not show that zeal in our service and regard for our interests which we conceive to be their duty. So was not Jesus. He was never thus angry with His stupid, blundering, disappointing disciples. He took them severely to task; His displeasure was sometimes hot against them; but in it there was no tinge of personal annoyance, no desire to retaliate upon them the pain they inflicted on Him. We are angry when others put a slight upon us. When, perhaps without wishing or intending it, they treat us as persons of little consequence, whose rights and feelings need not be too punctiliously considered, this hurts sorely, and in our own judgment we do well to be angry. But in Jesus this resentment of wounded dignity had no place. His meekness and lowliness of heart was armour of proof against all careless discourtesy and all studied insult. We are yet more angry if any one has sought to blacken our character, or has shown toward us a wanton and causeless malice. All this Jesus suffered; but when men called Him a glutton and a wine-bibber, a Sabbath-breaker, and, deadliest of insults, an ally and legate of Beelzebub, He still met them with unruffled calm and dispassionate appeal to reason. And when, because they could not answer Him otherwise, they drove Him to the Cross with bitter execration and unpitying mockery, His only reply is to interpose between them and the hand of an avenging God the one possible extenuation of their guilt, that word of eternal significance, still heard in heaven and on earth, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." In all the manifestations of His anger, there is no trace of personal resentment. Men might say or do what they would against the Son of Man, and it would be forgiven them. It was when they sinned against the Holy Ghost, the very Spirit of truth and right, that they were in danger of sinning unforgivably. It was only evil, evil as evil, and chiefly hypocritical, self-satisfied and deliberate evil, hardening itself against light and love, that awoke the anger of Jesus.

4. The Reflex of Love.

Still we may ask, why should anger be displayed? What is it in the character of Jesus, and in every character like His, from which anger springs? The answer to that question is evident. God is love; Jesus is love; the anger of Jesus and all holy anger is the anger of love. For love is not wholly sympathy and sweetness; love is full of indignation and wrath. When you see some one maltreating a child, what happens? Your sympathy with the child instantly becomes wrath against his persecutor and rises up in arms against him. You love your own child, you fervently desire his highest good, and what would your love be worth if it did not inspire you with wrath against any one seeking to undermine his purity and teach him the pleasures of sin? Nay, if you truly love your child, is it not just your love that causes you not only to grieve over his faults of character, but compels you to set yourself against them, and to meet them, if persisted in, with the full force of your displeasure? Anger is the emotion produced by antagonism; and love by its very nature is antagonism to everything that works injury to life.

Look at the anger of Jesus. In every case it is the anger of love. His love to God and zeal for God’s worship makes Him indignant at whatever dishonours God, and impels him to cleanse the Temple courts of a profane and polluting traffic. He loves men, and, aflame with wrath against all inhumanity, He speaks the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. And these men in the synagogue, self-hardened against the truth — they were doing Jesus no injury by their stubbornness, they were harming only themselves. Nay, not so. By harming themselves, they were hurting Jesus, wounding His love. Because He so yearned over them and so longed for the victory of truth and sincerity in their souls, therefore as He gazed upon them in their suicidal obduracy, His eye flashed with the instinctive wrath of love. He was angry as one might be angry at a sick man who in sheer perversity refuses the remedy in which lies his only hope.

So we can understand the strange thing which is further said: "He looked round about upon them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts." Did ever such anger and such sorrow perfectly meet except in the wonderful Christ? Their conduct excites His indignation; and because their conduct excites His indignation, their condition excites His deepest compassion. He blamed them; His heart was on fire with displeasure against them. Therefore He also pitied them; yes, just because their hearts were so hard, because they were so much to be blamed, were so stubbornly wrong and were so surely sealing their own doom, His soul was wrung with compassion for them. So should pity ever go hand in hand with anger.

And now, what are the practical conclusions for you and me from this study of the anger of Jesus? First, the need to set a watch upon our anger. A man’s anger is a manifestation of himself. Pay heed to the character of your anger, to its occasions and incitements, and you will learn much about your real self. Think of the two kinds of anger: the anger of Jesus, which is the anger of love; the anger of the world, which is the anger of selfishness. They are the same, yet as far apart as heaven and hell. They are the same, because anger is always aroused by what hurts and antagonizes us; they are opposite, because what hurts a selfish spirit and what hurts a loving spirit are different as night and day. How great is our need to be watchful of that slumbering fire in our bosoms, which may flame up in a feeling that is Christlike and Godlike or into a feeling that is worthy only of the devil! We must be on our guard. There is nothing our Master so vehemently forbids and denounces as selfish anger — vindictive anger that makes it a pleasure to retaliate upon those who cause us injury or annoyance. Such resentment Jesus absolutely repudiates. So far as our own feeling is concerned we must be ready always to turn the other cheek. I do not say, that it is not possible to feel a pure and righteous anger against a wrong done to ourselves, just as if it were done to another. But there we have a duty and a prerogative superior even to just resentment, the power and the duty of forgiveness. There we can set ourselves beside Christ on the Cross, and say, "Father, forgive."

But when wrong is done against others, especially against the weak and helpless, then as Christians we are called upon to show the anger of love, the anger that makes men bold and outspoken in defence of the right. Let it be said again with distinctness that love like that of Jesus Christ is full of anger. "It looks on the rich man, and then it looks on Lazarus rotting at his gate; on the poor, struggling for bread, then on the monopolists who keep food prices artificially high; on the abandoned girl of the streets, then on the man who betrayed her and on the men who seek their pleasure at the cost of her shame. A feeble and negative benignity can observe these wrongs and be unstirred; but a man might better call on the mountains and hills to cover him than stand naked and defenceless against the indignation they excite in the Lamb of God." We need such anger. There is a high sphere for anger in the Christian life. Whatever injures men in body or soul, in the individual or in the community, we are to be its enemy. Christ is the gentle Shepherd of the sheep; but because He is the Good Shepherd He is the relentless foe of the wolves and robbers. And if we forget His hatred of wrong and anger against it, we become ineffective Christians, incapable of a great indignation, tongue-tied in the presence of corruption, the sugar possibly, but not the salt of the earth.

Yet once more let us fix it in our minds that the anger of Jesus is the anger of love. Because His love is so vast, His anger is so terrible. May He who has left us His example and promised us His Spirit that we may walk in His steps, make us partakers of His whole nature, and fit us for all the work He seeks at our hands!