I must handle anger better than the most religious people!

I must live more righteously than the most religious people, the people who make a show of keeping all of the rules in their own strength. Jesus’ first example of this is that I must handle my anger better than the most religious people do, and better than the traditional interpretations of the Law of Moses prescribed. I am responsible not only for letting the Spirit control my anger, but for doing what I can, led by the Spirit, to avoid giving a brother or sister an occasion to develop a grudge against me. If I love my brother or sister, I will try to reconcile with them promptly when I know I have aroused their anger.

This post read as a YouTube video: I must handle anger better than the most religious people!

After telling me that, to be great in his Kingdom, I must “do” the whole Law–something I can only do through the Holy Spirit fulfilling the purpose of the law in my life–Jesus gives me what looks like an impossible standard to meet:

Matthew 5:20 (WEB)

That’s right: I must live more righteously than the most religious people, the people who make a show of keeping all of the rules in their own strength. Clearly, this can only be done by Jesus living out his righteousness through me. I can’t possibly do this myself.

Jesus then starts to explain a list of areas of my life in which I must do better than the most religious people around me. His very first example is anger. I must handle my anger better than the most religious people do, and better than the traditional interpretations of the Law of Moses prescribed:

Matthew 5:21-22 (NASB)

As explained in an earlier article, Jesus condemns not only murder but the harboring of anger which leads to a grudge. When I let my anger toward one of my neighbors drive out that love, replacing it with open denigration and contempt, I am only a step away from murder. So Jesus here connects the grudge forbidden in Leviticus to committing murder in my heart. They are the same.

And in this passage, Jesus describes the three steps by which anger, if allowed to grow, leads to the contempt which is the same as murder in my heart. First comes allowing anger to hold onto me. I cannot avoid feeling anger sometimes.  It is a normal part of life which I cannot control, though I can control what I do with the emotion once it is present. But the line has been crossed when I allow anger to passively move and control me.  Rather than simply being temporarily angry, now I am in a more permanent state of anger that controls me.  At this point my anger has become a sin. This then leads to the second step: openly, with my words, insulting or denigrating the person with whom I angry. I’m still telling the people who hear my insult that the object of my anger is human, but they are less human than I and my respectable hearers. They not only have no value to me; they have no value at all. They are “worthless”–human, but barely so. They are no longer my “neighbor” whom God commanded me to love. The last step in this chain is to show my contempt directly to the person who has aroused my anger.  The difference here is that, instead of just telling myself and other people that the object of my anger is unworthy of their humanity, now I am saying this to their face, quite likely as justification for simultaneously doing something else that hurts them. Contempt that tears down another person’s humanity directly, by speech and action pointedly directed at them, is what Jesus identifies as murder in the heart, the last step before the physical act of murder. And it is very common.

If I let transitory anger settle into bitterness–anger that controls me–I have taken the first step in this chain. From there, the natural course leads through the second step and eventually to the third–open contempt, murder in the heart. The farther I let myself go down the chain, the more difficult it becomes to avoid reaching the end of it.

This is why the very next sentence of Matthew 5 commands a believer who knows he has offended a fellow believer to go and be reconciled promptly, before the offended one has had a chance to let angry feelings take control of them and become bitterness:

Matthew 5:23-24 (WEB)

If I love my brother or sister, I will try to reconcile with them promptly when I know I have aroused their anger.

I am responsible not only for letting the Spirit control my anger, but for doing what I can, led by the Spirit, to avoid giving a brother or sister an occasion to develop a grudge against me.

This concept cuts directly contrary to modern ideas of individualism, of being responsible only for myself. but it is what should be expected that those in Jesus’ Kingdom are all part of a single Body.

If I will not do my part, in the Holy Spirit, to prevent another member of the Body from developing a murderous grudge against me, I don’t measure up to Jesus’ standard:

Matthew 5:20 (WEB)

In that event, I am only another religious person, trying to be good enough on my own, not a person whose righteousness exceeds that of the merely most religious people.

Obviously, far from diluting or weakening the command of verses 23 and 24 of Matthew 5, the context from verse 17 on reinforces the command. Verses 23 and 24 do not state a command I am not able to keep merely to show I am not able to keep it, as some argue. Nor do they state a mere aspirational ethical principle which I am free to disregard if it is too inconvenient or someone tells me I shouldn’t keep it. The fact that I cannot keep it properly and consistently without the power and guidance of the Spirit is not a valid excuse to not even try. Instead, it is a reason to stay close to the Spirit.

Next: Salt is Something we Are, Not Something we Do. Matthew 5:13.

Email me: Ian Johnson.