Even Jesus got angry | Clergy Corner (2024)

FAQs

What was the temple where Jesus got angry? ›

Herod's Temple, referred to in John 2:13, as imagined in the Holyland Model of Jerusalem.

But even Jesus got angry. There are five instances recorded in the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) where Jesus got angry. He was angry at those who refused to help someone with a shriveled hand. He got angry at his disciples for believing that children were second-class citizens.

Jesus was furious that people coming to worship God were taken advantage of. He reacted violently as he overturned the tables of the money changers and those selling doves. He said that his Father's house was to be a place of prayer, but that it had been made into a den of robbers.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied. 35 Jesus wept. 36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Some have interpreted the cause of his anger as a case of a 'Messianic Secret'-that Jesus did not want the public to know he is the Messiah. Others say it was against death and the horrors it brings; and still others that his anger was as a result of the death he himself was to suffer soon afterwards.

The Jews thought Jesus was talking about the physical temple in Jerusalem, which had taken forty-six years to build (v. 20). In fact, the temple was not even really finished in Jesus' day because work on it would continue off and on until AD 63, some thirty years after Jesus' death and resurrection.

Don't let anger control you; address it in love

Settle matters quickly with your adversary” (Matthew 5:22-25). Jesus is not saying that the emotion of anger is sinful. He is saying that anger is dangerous and to be careful! Stand before the Lord as your gracious Judge and ask yourself: “What am I angry about?

According to these doctrines, an example of righteous anger would be when Jesus drove the money lenders out of the temple (Matthew 21:12–13).

Anger is not necessarily equated with sin in the Bible. Anger and sin are presented as two different things in Ephesians 4:26-27, where it says, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” Those verses caution that anger can become a sin if acted upon.

And yes, he felt anger — on more than one occasion. He was angered by those who wouldn't stop mistreating others after being called out. He grew angry when people lacked compassion while witnessing suffering. He didn't like seeing the rich take advantage of the poor or the power-hungry feed on the weak.

Did Jesus ever shout? ›

Jesus not only uttered the words, “It is finished” before he died on the cross, he shouted them. The Apostle John gives us Jesus' last words (John 19:30), but Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us Jesus cried with a loud voice (Matt. 27:50; Mark 15:37 and Luke 23:46).

Mark uses the cursing of the barren fig tree to bracket and comment on the story of the Jewish temple: Jesus and his disciples are on their way to Jerusalem when Jesus curses a fig tree because it bears no fruit; in Jerusalem he drives the money-changers from the temple; and the next morning the disciples find that the ...

In fact, Jesus' cry of despair and abandonment as he died before a mocking crowd means he saw himself as a Jew who knew the Scriptures and the history of his people. This becomes clear when reading an Old Testament account of Jesus' agony on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

From memory, I can think of three. Jesus cried when he attended Lazarus' grave just before he called the dead man back to life. He cried when he looked down at Jerusalem, the forgetful city, from the road above. In Hebrews it says Jesus cried while praying.

The Bible tells us that he “groaned in spirit” after his friend Lazarus died and the mourners had gathered. This, however, is not the usual word translated as “groan,” but another that carries a hint of anger. Jesus was angry at death, at the devastation it causes, and the grief.

John 2:15, 16: “Making a whip out of cord, he drove them all out of the Temple, sheep and cattle as well, scattered the money changers' coins, knocked their tables over and said to the dove sellers, 'Take all this out of here and stop using my Father's house as a market.” Mostly, Jesus was angry at the Pharisees.

During the Roman period, in AD 70, the Second Temple was destroyed, along with Jerusalem, by Titus' army. It was also during this period that Jesus was in Jerusalem. He was crucified about 40 years before the destruction of the city.

The Herodian temple was, as we well know, the chief figure of the city of Jerusalem as Jesus knew it. It was the finest of the three temples which the Jewish nation had possessed.

In Micah 4:4, the age of the Messiah is pictured as one in which each man would sit under his fig tree without fear. The cursing of the fig tree in Mark and Matthew and the parallel story in Luke are thus symbolically directed against the Jews, who did not accept Jesus as king.