1st Week in Lent, Friday – 26th February 2021 – Mt 5,20-26
Unrighteous Anger
Jesus uses hyperbole to drive home the truth that external righteousness without internal reality will not gain entrance into the kingdom. Taking the case of murder, Jesus institutes a modification to the old teaching. The Jews of Jesus’ time knew that murder was forbidden by God and that the murderer was liable to punishment. This was true before the giving of the law (Gen 9,6) and it was incorporated into the law (Ex 20,13; Deut 5,17). But Jesus says that anger is murder in the heart. He did not say that anger leads to murder; He said that anger is murder. Anger is such a foolish thing. It makes us destroyers instead of builders. It robs us of freedom and makes us prisoners. There is a holy anger against sin (Eph 4,26), but Jesus talks about an unholy anger against people. He describes a sinful experience that involved three stages. First of all, anger contains the seeds of murder; secondly, the abusive language contains the spirit of murder, and thirdly, cursing language implies the very desire of murder. The progressive heightening of the crimes demand three degrees of punishment: the judgment, the council, the hell fire. There is no mistake of severity in Jesus’ words. In the kingdom, Jesus will deal with sins according to severity.
