What made Jesus angry?

Study passages: Matthew 21:12-13; 23:1-36

When you read the Gospels, what words best describe for you Jesus’ relationships with people? Most of us would probably say words like ‘loving’, ‘compassionate’, ‘kind’, ‘gentle’, because all the Gospel writers give us so many examples of these. We read of Jesus’ kindness to those struggling with burdens too heavy for them, His compassion towards those who have lost their way in life and His gentleness to people rejected by others. Jesus’ empathy and love shine through in the Beatitudes, in His teaching and healing, His conversations with people at the margins, and His own self-giving. He shows us how to be truly human in our relationships with people. But Jesus is not only human. He is God the Son. As He explained to His disciples, anyone who has seen Him has “seen the Father” (John 14:9). So these qualities of compassion are a manifestation also of His divine nature. They take us into the very heart of God. 

Where Jesus’ anger was directed

A word we don’t often use about Jesus is ‘angry’. Yet that is also part of love. Jesus shows His care for the defenceless through disapproval of wrongdoing that harms them. In several memorable incidents, Jesus displayed anger towards those who oppressed the vulnerable and exercised power without love. But Jesus’ anger is different from ours. It is not the kind that flares up when we’re out of control or let our emotions get the better of us. It’s not linked with resentment or irritability, or not getting what we want. It’s not even the product of a bad mood. Jesus’ anger came when He confronted things that are fundamentally wrong. In the Gospels, it was an expression of ‘righteous zeal’ which exposed evil and injustice.  

It is interesting that in the Gospels we never see Jesus expressing this anger towards women. We do see others getting angry at a meal with Jesus when an uninvited woman from the streets burst in and started crying over Jesus’ feet and kissing them (John 7:36-50). Yet Jesus showed no discomfort at all. Instead, He honoured her, using her as a role model for love and forgiveness. Religious leaders were angry too when they took a woman found in adultery to Jesus and asked Him to confirm she should be stoned (John 8:1-11). Again, Jesus showed no sense of outrage and didn’t condemn her. Instead, He quietly suggested that the first stone should be thrown by someone who was without sin. The anger dissipated and the crowd melted away.  

Why was Jesus not angry with these women? Because of His love and empathy. In the first incident He knew the woman’s heart. Whatever she had been in the past, she had experienced God’s freedom and release and her gratitude to Jesus was overwhelming. He honoured her as a role model for love and generosity. In the second incident He knew that the Pharisees were being partial in their demand for justice. They were focusing on the woman’s sin but ignoring the law that prescribed the same punishment for the man in adultery with her. No one brought him to be stoned. Jesus implicitly called out the sins of all the men there, then simply told the woman to go, but sin no more.  

In the Gospels we never see Jesus expressing this anger towards women 

So when did Jesus show anger? We see it in the Gospels as He confronted corruption, hypocrisy, lies, hardness of heart and lack of care towards children. His anger was almost always directed towards men with power who subjugated and exploited the defenceless. Those oppressors were sternly rebuked. The widows and orphans, the foreigners and deprived, the marginalised and broken, the violated and hurting all received His love. Jesus’ anger goes hand in hand with His compassion.

One well-known incident of Jesus’ anger is recorded in all four Gospels. It’s directed at corruption. Jesus entered Jerusalem to find a shocking commercialisation of worship. The temple was being used as a centre for commerce and exploitation, rather than the place where people praised God and asked Him to search their hearts. Jesus’ anger was directed at the temple leaders who colluded with money-grubbing merchants. They all benefitted by overcharging poor worshippers for the birds or animals they needed to buy for sacrifices. As He drove out the traders and overturned the money tables, Jesus accused the swindlers of turning His Father’s house into a den of thieves (Matthew 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-19; Luke 19:45-48; John 2:13-16). 

Jesus showed anger regularly towards the hypocrisy of religious leaders. He addressed their finicky attitudes about unimportant issues: tithing tiny items like mint and cumin while ignoring the weighty responsibilities required by law. They were the ones who should have been upholding the law and leading others into generosity. Yet they neglected the poor and needy and even twisted the law to cheat elderly relatives from the help they should have received. We can hear the anger in his voice when he called the Pharisees “blind guides” who “strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24). He went even further, comparing them to “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:27) and “unmarked graves” (Luke 11:44) – very fine to look at, but filled with death and rot inside.  

Whenever Jesus encounters hardness of heart, His sorrow is mixed with anger. People with hearts closed to God usually also close their hearts to suffering. The religious leaders set a bad example here too. They were so obsessed with their own legalistic forms of holiness that, when Jesus healed people, they missed the miracle. The man with the shrivelled hand (Matthew 12:9-14) and the woman bent double (Luke 13:10-17) were both healed in the synagogue on Sabbath days. The crowds were amazed and praised God in their joy, but all the synagogue leaders could think about was that Jesus had violated Sabbath rules. 

A further example of Jesus and anger comes out when people disregard the needs of children. He rebuked even His own disciples when they prevented mothers from bringing children for Him to bless (Matthew 19:13-15). Children matter to Him. He used little people as a role model for adult humility and trust before God. He also issued the gravest warnings to any who would harm or violate youngsters. God will hold them accountable: “It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble” (Luke 17:2). Those words are as chilling and relevant today as they were when Jesus spoke them. 

In so many of His actions and attitudes, Jesus echoed the Magnificat, the song of His mother Mary when she was pregnant (Luke 1:46-55). That song gives us a powerful picture of God’s heart in scattering the proud, pulling down the mighty from their thrones, and exalting the humble and meek. The God who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty is God incarnate in Jesus. And the hypocrisy and evil which distort the truth about God and compassion is met with anger and rebuke from Jesus.

What can all this teach us today?

Very little has changed in human nature since Jesus expressed anger against wrongdoing. Oppression by the powerful, neglect and abuse of children, creating laws that favour those who make them, and hypocrisy from those who claim the name of Christ are all features of our world today. As the Body of Christ we need to stand up against these things.  

Jesus needs followers with integrity and hearts of compassion to serve Him in our world today

First, we must search our own hearts. Do we have double standards, where we excuse our own faults but condemn those in others? Do we put our own interests and wants first and leave Christians who care more to show consideration to those who are needy? Do we ever hide beneath a veneer of faith, while our lives fail to live it out? Then we need to pray that the Holy Spirit will search our hearts and show us where we need to change. Jesus needs followers with integrity and hearts of compassion to serve Him in our world today. 

Yet we cannot wait until we are perfect before we speak against those things that made Jesus angry. Each of us is a work in progress and the work God does in us goes alongside the work that God does through us. When we see injustice and wrongdoing, whether in the society we live in or in the Church, we need to address it. Where leaders claim to be Christ followers but disregard laws that protect the vulnerable, we must oppose them. When the powerful use their power not for the common good but to accumulate more for themselves, we must work to restrain them. Wherever there are lies or hypocrisy or harm done to the marginalised and defenceless, we must work for change. Tyrants use fear to keep people subservient. Jesus opposed tyranny and reached out in love. His body on earth may now need His gift of anger to do the same.