Jesus is the Word become flesh, the sinless Lamb of God…and there were some things that really ticked Him off. Like in Mark 3: Jesus was teaching in a local synagogue where one of the members had a withered hand. Because it was the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest, some watched to see if Jesus would heal him. Not because that would be amazing. Not because their hearts ached for their hurting brother. No, they wanted to accuse Jesus. If He healed the man, they could label it “work” and attack Him for breaking the fourth commandment.
Now, their whole premise was theologically flawed from the start. “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” Jesus asked them (3:4). They had no response – mostly because they didn’t actually care about any of that, at least not at the moment. They just wanted to prove their points, and it made Jesus angry. “He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart” (3:5). If you have ever felt frustrated with a stubborn child, irritated by an uncooperative co-worker, or generally infuriated by the difficult, unreasonable people all around – you are not alone. Jesus got angry, too.
Do you know what Jesus did with His anger, though? In the very same verse, He turned to the man with the withered hand and healed him (3:5). Jesus was angry at the hardheaded, hard-hearted people around Him – but He didn’t put anybody on blast. No riot acts were read, nor pieces of His mind given. Instead, Jesus turned to the hurting person nearby and healed him. He took that energy and then helped someone else. Isn’t Jesus amazing? Even when angry, He still did good.
I suspect how we handle our anger falls short of that. “Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger,” Jesus’ brother James warns us – and with good reason: “for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (Jam. 1:19-20). When we are angry, we set our sights on the offender. We want them to be proven wrong, to be torn down, and even to hurt like they hurt us. Yet, that isn’t God’s way. Allowing that focus and following those feelings only serves to move us away from Him. We won’t do the right thing while we’re angry.
So, learn from Angry Jesus and refocus. Don’t fixate on the haters: turn to the hurting and do good for them. Prove your adversaries wrong, but not by arguing: go serve others in love. When we follow Jesus by making that our approach, we will move closer to God and have no reason to be ashamed.
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