Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Did Jesus have a temper? Did He ever get angry, even a little bit, righteously so, without sin? (We know the Bible is clear, He never sinned; He was always in control.) The answer may be surprising.
Early in His ministry (He was only 30), one day He seemed to the people around Him as so unlike Himself. It was so strange, someone could have asked Him, "What's eating You?" While they watched Him in this uncharacteristic behavior, His disciples remembered that it was written (in Psalm 69:9), "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."
What "ate Him up"? His holy concern for the Jews' Temple, which was then the house of His Father "for all people." They were desecrating it with profane, hard hearts. It was His first Passover since beginning His ministry. As He watched the worldly, selfish, commercial bargaining in the holy House itself, the selling of cattle and doves, He was overcome by the horror of this massive hypocrisy at the very headquarters--the heart of the true church of God at that time. All the righteous indignation that will flare forth in the final Day of Judgment blazed in His human eyes (He was "Emmanuel, ... God with us"!).
He "made a whip of cords," with which He never touched a soul physically, but brandishing it "He drove them all out of the temple," and in the process grabbed their tables and turned them upside down, and scattered their money. "Take these things away! Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!" Strangely, no one could argue or linger; all ran for their lives (John 2:13-21).
A display of temper? Divine temper, yes. You and I don't want to face it--ever, either now or in the last Day. Such holy fear is not sinfully selfish. It's common sense. How can we say we believe in Jesus unless the "zeal of [His] house has eaten [us] up" too? His agape "constrains us" to live not for self but for Him (see 2 Cor. 5:14, 15). Total oneness with Him. Anything short of that is sin to be deeply ashamed of at last. Let's walk softly.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: January 16, 2004.
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