Did Jesus sin when he became angry in the Temple?

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maryalene

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I searched the forums, but couldn’t find that this subject had been discussed before.

The other night, my husband, who has been away from the Church for many years, said he didn’t think Jesus could be considered sinless. He said that Jesus obviously sinned when he became angry with the merchants in the Temple. He also said that anger is one of the 7 Deadly Sins. I said that anger is an emotion, and emotions are not sinful in and of themselves. I also said that wrath, meaning unbridled anger, was the Deadly Sin. When I mentioned that anger was not a sin, but what you did with your anger that could be sinful, my husband said he didn’t see how upturning tables and whipping the money-changers could be seen as anything but a sinful way to act in anger. We looked up anger in the Catechism, and there was a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas (DH’s patron, ironically) saying that anger used to right wrongs was praiseworthy (or something to that effect). DH dismissed it, and said it just sounded like the Church trying to justify Jesus’s actions.

I realize it is probably a lost cause with my DH, but I was wondering if anyone had any comments or suggestions should this issue come up again. Thank you!
 
Hi maryalene,
The deadly sin is “Wrath” not anger.

Ephesians 4:26 Be angry, and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger.

The incident you refer to is in John 2 and should be seen in it’s context.

You might also suggest that he ask Jesus about it in prayer.
I’ll include him in my prayers.

Pax tecum,
 
The seven deadly sins encompass those things which are the more basal qualities of humans and are the easiest for people to misuse and fall into sin. Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Pride, Envy, Wrath, and Greed.

Rest is good… God commands that we rest on the Sabbath.
Sloth is bad… it is rest to the extreme.

See what I mean?

Jesus exhibited righteous anger in the Temple. Note the right in righteous.

Jesus WAS sinless.
 
Yum. I see this leading toward one of my all-time favorite (and much neglected) subjects – the holy wrath of God.
 
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mercygate:
Yum. I see this leading toward one of my all-time favorite (and much neglected) subjects – the holy wrath of God.
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ohhh goodie! 😃

Please expound!

Not that I don’t enjoy the general papal authority-contraceptive-Original Sin-who’s the godparent-am I married discussions, but this sounds interesting!
 
No, Jesus did not sin. You did well to show your husband the truth. You can’t make him accept the truth. Pray for him that he will have an open mind to accept the truth.
 
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Shiann:
ohhh goodie! 😃

Please expound!

Not that I don’t enjoy the general papal authority-contraceptive-Original Sin-who’s the godparent-am I married discussions, but this sounds interesting!
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Let’s see where this goes, and then maybe we’ll take it to another thread. I haven’t seen it discussed on these forums. But in Scripture, it’s pretty hard to miss.
 
This is God we are talking about here Guys. Overturning a few market stalls pails into insignificance when compared with the Flood, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. No, not sin. Just a very little righteous hissy fit.

Remember, Jesus the Christ of the Gospels challenges and provokes us.He seeks controversy, read his parables. If we feel comfortable with the Jesus we find in the Gospels then we aren’t reading him right. He didn’t come to make us feel comfortable, but to comfort us which is not the same thing. That was why the Elders and the Pharisees were scared of him.

His is a hard message to take for most of us in the west, comfortable in our lifestyles and in our religious practices. We would be closer to following his way if we got righteously angry from time to time. We could get angrier than we do about the poverty issue in Africa - 30,000 needless deaths of children every day should make us all angry.
 
As a priest I know said, “Jesus was a kind person, but Jesus was not a nice person. Nice people don’t get crucified.” Kindness isn’t the same as niceness. Niceness can be a vice. Kindness means wanting the best for another person, even if it means we have to be ‘not nice’ in order to do that. Jesus was administering justice by cleansing the temple, and he was also looking out for the best interests of the sellers, because the sellers were doing something damaging to their souls. Sometimes we are called to speak the truth even when it’s hard to hear, and Jesus was clearly speaking (and enforcing) the truth even though it was difficult for other people to accept that truth.
 
Thank you all for your comments and prayers. I’ll print out this thread for future reference and may try broaching the subject again. It is very frustrating because sometimes my DH expresses a desire to begin going to church again and other times he brings up stuff like this or begins talking about how God really can’t exist for whatever reason. I hope his questioning is just a part of his journey home, but in the meantime, I guess I need to just keep praying for him.
 
:gopray2:

:bible1: I will pray that his heart is opened.

Bless you for your patience. Don’t loose Faith!
 
Well, you know what C.S. Lewis says about Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia: He isn’t a tame lion!!
But amidst all these rejoicings Aslan himself quietly slipped away. And when the Kings and Queens noticed that he wasn’t there they said nothing about it. For Mr Beaver had warned them, “He’ll be coming and going,” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild,’ you know. Not like a tame lion.”
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Jesus was God. The temple was the house of God. These people had moved in unjustly in and were desecrating it. Jesus, like anyone else, has the right to kick someone out of his house, especially if they’re disrespectful. If they refuse to live, you have the right to be a bit more forceful.

If you came home one day and found Jack Chick has somehow started running his comic book ministry out of your kitchen, wouldn’t you pick up all his supplies and throw them out your door into the trash? Would you be sinning?

Josh
 
There is Healthy Anger and Unhealthy Anger

If someone (a theif) came to my house or my father’s house and started selling animals and setting up a money exchange service (Jewish money changed to foreign Roman coins), I would probably think.

“Hang on what gives these people the right to be here in my house and making it a house of theives?”

Secondly I would tell them to get out in an austere voice and next I would have to use a much more angry tone and i may have to use minimal force to get them out.

So what did Jesus do that was different from this? How can this be a sin? This is a display of HEALTHY ANGER, used to correct.

In Greek anger and wrath = the same word - orge. So neither anger nor wrath according to Holy Scripture and the Fathers is a sin, as Psalm 4:4 states “Be angry/wrathful, but sin not…” also repeated in Ephesians 4:26. Although anger can in some circumstances be good in others it is not.
The fathers associate someone quick to anger and wrathfulness with the passions. Somene who easily gets angry is suffereing from passions. This is **UNHEALTHY ANGER ** which has no possitive outcome.

It is not a sin to get angry, it is a natural part of communication. Anger is a sin only when it becomes a passion.

Being a teacher you have to at least pretend to be angry and show negative emotions otherwise the children will just walk all over you.

Getting angry all the time on the other hand, requires anger management and obviously confession since it has become a Sin and a Passion.

So when St Thomas Aquinas is talking about the 7 deadly sins, he is talking about the diseased kind of anger and wrath, the UNHEALTHY ANGER.
 
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maryalene:
I searched the forums, but couldn’t find that this subject had been discussed before.

The other night, my husband, who has been away from the Church for many years, said he didn’t think Jesus could be considered sinless. He said that Jesus obviously sinned when he became angry with the merchants in the Temple. He also said that anger is one of the 7 Deadly Sins. I said that anger is an emotion, and emotions are not sinful in and of themselves. I also said that wrath, meaning unbridled anger, was the Deadly Sin. When I mentioned that anger was not a sin, but what you did with your anger that could be sinful, my husband said he didn’t see how upturning tables and whipping the money-changers could be seen as anything but a sinful way to act in anger. We looked up anger in the Catechism, and there was a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas (DH’s patron, ironically) saying that anger used to right wrongs was praiseworthy (or something to that effect). DH dismissed it, and said it just sounded like the Church trying to justify Jesus’s actions.

I realize it is probably a lost cause with my DH, but I was wondering if anyone had any comments or suggestions should this issue come up again. Thank you!
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Hi Maryalene,
I would call Jesus’s reaction in the temple righteous indignation. They were using his fathers house in a perverse way, to make money, which is not the purpose of his house. Any action that is lawful for the purpose of righteous indignation would be considered just. Anger or righteous indignation can motivate us to do things that appear to be a consequence of anger but in actuallity are for the good of all. Take for example the British settlers in America just before the Declaration of Independance, they were being taxed to death to support England. In fact they were taxed so heavily that they could no longer afford to live. Those who were deciding what rate to tax them at and what those monies were to be used for were elected officials. None of these elected officials represented the interests of the people living in America. As you know from your elementary history classes, the British Americans reacted to this by doing what was considered to be illegal but was for the good of all her citizens. We hail these brave men as heros in this country because they did what was right. This is basically what Jesus was doing…preserving his father’s house as a place of worship not for commerce. He did not sin. If you recall, Jesus was sent to show us how to live without sinning. Therefore if this was considered sinning, Jesus would not be the Christ. As it is, Jesus is the Christ, he did secure our salvation and he also set an example of how we are supposed to live for God.
 
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maryalene:
I searched the forums, but couldn’t find that this subject had been discussed before.

The other night, my husband, who has been away from the Church for many years, said he didn’t think Jesus could be considered sinless. He said that Jesus obviously sinned when he became angry with the merchants in the Temple. He also said that anger is one of the 7 Deadly Sins. I said that anger is an emotion, and emotions are not sinful in and of themselves. I also said that wrath, meaning unbridled anger, was the Deadly Sin. When I mentioned that anger was not a sin, but what you did with your anger that could be sinful, my husband said he didn’t see how upturning tables and whipping the money-changers could be seen as anything but a sinful way to act in anger. We looked up anger in the Catechism, and there was a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas (DH’s patron, ironically) saying that anger used to right wrongs was praiseworthy (or something to that effect). DH dismissed it, and said it just sounded like the Church trying to justify Jesus’s actions.

I realize it is probably a lost cause with my DH, but I was wondering if anyone had any comments or suggestions should this issue come up again. Thank you!
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**Jesus did not sin, he is God in the flesh. What did God do to Jews in the old testament when they did wrong? He punished them. What Jesus did in the temple was justified. Those people were obviously violating the temple. He acted to stop it. What’s he going to do smile at the merchants and say “you know, this is wrong, please stop”? No one would listen since it was approved by the priests. **

So, in other words, your Husband also thinks that God in the Old Testament was sinning when he killed many people? :whacky: If someone came at you with a knife and you shot him in the head, would that be a sin? No! Sometimes violence is justified and needed.

:blessyou:
 
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