The Anger of Jesus

Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus out of love for His friend and out of a holy hatred of the destruction wrought by sin. Today, Sinclair Ferguson explains how Christ’s perfect anger displays His devotion to His redeemed.

Well, it’s Friday again, and this is the last edition of Things Unseen for the week. I hope you’ve been helped through the work week, and I also hope that perhaps you’ve enjoyed our theme this week, when we’ve been focusing attention on the character of the Lord Jesus and asking the question, What’s Jesus really like?

Yesterday in passing, I mentioned an article entitled “The Emotional Life of Our Lord.” It was written by the great American theologian, Benjamin B. Warfield, and I think was first published in a book of essays that celebrated the centenary of Princeton Seminary. Warfield’s works were published a century ago by Oxford University Press in ten wonderful volumes, but this essay wasn’t included, so I think by and large it fell out of view. Now, we’re not in product placement here on Things Unseen, but some of you will want to note that it was republished some time ago by Crossway, and I warmly recommend it to you.

Well, in his essay, Warfield points out the emotion that’s most frequently attributed to Jesus. I wonder if you can guess what it was. Yes, it’s compassion, grounded in love, and I imagine many of us might be able to guess that. But then Warfield singles out an element in Jesus’ emotional makeup that I suspect we don’t think about nearly as often: anger and indignation.

It occurs early in Mark’s gospel. Jesus is angry with the Pharisees because of their lack of compassion for a man with a withered hand. Later on, He’s indignant about the way His own disciples are hindering little children and infants from being brought to Him for His blessing. But the most impressive place where we see this aspect of our Lord Jesus is at the grave of Lazarus, when He saw Mary and some of the Jews weeping, in fact, wailing for grief. We’re told, “He was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled,” language that’s repeated just a few verses later (John 11:33, 38). The older version said that Jesus “groaned in spirit,” and Warfield points out that the Revised Version of the Bible suggested “moved with indignation” as an alternative translation, which he likes.

At the grave of Lazarus, Jesus was in a state not of uncontrollable grief but of irrepressible anger. Yes, Jesus wept, but, writes Warfield, “the emotion which tore His breast and clamored for attention and utterance was just rage.” Jesus was burning with rage against Satan, against death, against the deception of Adam and Eve because, you see, Jesus not only came to save us from the penalty of sin, but from its horrible effects in bondage and in death. He came to destroy the works of the devil, as John says in his first letter. And of those works, He saw death as the most terrible. That’s exactly why He became incarnate. It was out of the most wonderful love. But in a sense, you see, it was also out of hate. We might even say that the only pure hate that has ever been has been Jesus’ hatred of Satan and all the destruction and sorrow and separation he has produced.

I asked earlier on this week if the Jesus that we claim to know was capable of growing in favor with God as well as with man. The real Jesus could. Anyone else isn’t fully the real Jesus. But I wonder if this is yet a step further for us to grasp. The loving Jesus was also an angry Jesus, an indignant Jesus, a Jesus who hated as well as loved.

Does that make you tremble a little? I think it’s natural that it would because perfect holiness does make us tremble, doesn’t it? And when we see this in Jesus, we begin to recognize how He is absolutely committed to destroying everything that would prevent our salvation. He hates death, and He hates it because of the way it seizes and separates His own blood-bought people from one another, and He hates the sin that lies behind it. His emotions of indignation and hatred are actually emotions of love. They are as healthy as they are necessary. It’s altogether appropriate that the Lord Jesus should hate every false way simply because He loves us so much. His love and his hatred are really two sides of the same coin.

I think we need to remember that the love the Lord Jesus has for us is a profoundly jealous love, and that’s why it can give rise to such indignation and hatred. It can’t be otherwise. As I say, these are two sides of the same coin of the Lord’s covenant devotion towards us. Perhaps this is why the love of Jesus that we sometimes sing, “None but his loved ones know,” sometimes can make us tremble because it’s a fierce love, a determined love, an uncompromising love, a holy love that is committed to having the whole of my life without reservation because He knows that otherwise, I can never really be happy.

Alas, at times, it seems we rest content with a love that reassures us occasionally rather than a love that possesses us entirely. But the real Jesus wants to have us all, I wonder if that’s the Jesus you know and trust. I hope so.