“Do you do well to be angry?” –Jonah 4:4
I’ve found that those who struggle with the sin of anger tend to almost always answer this question in the affirmative. They feel angry, they have been wronged, their sense of justice is awakened, and they conclude that they ought to be angry.
Jonah was an angry man. And he came to the conclusion that his anger was justified—in fact, he was justified in anger to the point of death.
I share this about Jonah because it’s important to acknowledge this as we enter into Mark 3:1-6. That passage is filled with anger. The Pharisees are angry and Jesus is angry. But they are angry about different things and as we will see their anger leads to different results.
If I’m like Jonah, I will enter into this story and assume that my anger is like that of Jesus—righteous. But in reality it’s more akin to that of the Pharisees. How can I tell which kind of anger I have?
The Anger of the Pharisees
Why are the Pharisees so angry? What do they have against Jesus? Shouldn’t they be rejoicing that a man was healed in one of their services?
They are angry because they believe that Jesus has run roughshod over the Law of God. Somewhere along the way they had come to the conclusion that healing is a “work”. And work shouldn’t be done on the Sabbath. You could heal something that was life threatening, but if it wasn’t life-threatening then your issue could wait until it wasn’t the Sabbath.
The Pharisees, like Jonah, believe that their anger is justified. In their mind they are the ones who are honoring God. He is dangerous.
This blaspheming Sabbath breaker is gaining popularity and if they are about protecting the people, protecting the nation, and protecting themselves, then they need to stop this guy. If Jesus is allowed to keep teaching this stuff and leading people astray then God is going to be displeased with them. They’ll end up in exile. They’ll end up even further harmed by the Romans. This isn’t good. So for the sake of God’s kingdom and the sake of Israel this man must be stopped.
Their anger leads them to self-protection. It leads them to use a suffering and vulnerable man as a pawn to trap what they perceive as a threat. And it ultimately leads them to plot murder on the Sabbath, all in the name of the Lord.
Contrast this with Jesus…
The Anger of Jesus
The anger of Jesus is different than that of the Pharisees. His anger is a heartbroken type of anger. Their hardness of heart, that leads to the ill-treatment of this man, has him angry.
I think Spurgeon says it well:
He was heartbroken because their hearts were so hard. As Manton puts it, “He was softened because of their hardness.” His was not the pitiless flame of wrath which burns in a dry eye; he had tears as well as anger. His thunder-storm brought a shower of pity with it…He was grieved at their hardness because it would injure themselves; their blind enmity vexed him because it was securing their own destruction. He was angry because they were wilfully rejecting the light which would have illuminated them with heavenly brightness, the life which could have quickened them into fulness of joy. They were thus determinedly and resolutely destroying their own souls out of hatred to him, and he was angry more for their sakes than his own. (Spurgeon, Metropolitan Pulpit Sermons volume 32, 183)
His anger isn’t about self-protection. His anger is a compassionate anger.
Notice also what his anger leads to. It leads to action on behalf of another. It’s not mere words. It’s not a raging speech, a torrent of angry tweets, it’s not biting, it’s not shaming, it moves him to act for the sake of the vulnerable.
This, to me, is a good barometer of whether or not my rage is the Jonah and Pharisee type of anger, or the type of anger that was present in Jesus.
- Is this anger propelling me towards self-protection or to protecting the vulnerable?
- Is this anger moving me to loving action or simply words?
- Is this anger motivating me to seek harm upon those I am angry with or am I moved with compassion and grief for them?
Conclusion
Much of what we call righteous anger isn’t really righteous. It’s about righteous things, maybe. But it’s not actually righteous. It’s often mere words and not acting upon behalf of another.
What is my anger leading me to do?
That’s how we can tell if it’s coming from Jesus or our own messed up hearts.
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