The Perfect Anger of Christ
What appears next in Mark 3:5 is unrivaled anywhere else in the gospels in terms of a vivid description of how Christ views sin–v.5–He looks around at them with anger, which is the same word for wrath. This response from Christ is the same as what is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness; this is what is going to come upon the sons of disobedience in the end; this is what causes those who refuse to worship the Lamb in Rev. 6 to beg the rocks to fall on them because it’s way more desirable to be crushed to death than it is incur the wrath of Christ; this is what is in his wine press that he treads upon in Rev. 19 and finally, this is what Christ had towards these Pharisees in this Galilean synagogue on this day in history. This is perfectly pure and just as much of a holy expression as his love and compassion.
But take note that this wrathful anger is accompanied by something–grief. This is a unique word for grieve, which only appears here in our NTs. The normal word, which Mark uses elsewhere, appears 8 times in the gospels. What’s unique about this word in Mark 3:5 is that it means to grieve for or with others. Certainly the Pharisees and Jesus were distressed or grieved for entirely different reasons–the Pharisees because their laws, which they thought honored God, were being broken, but why was Jesus grieving?–because of their hardness of heart. This same phrase is used in Eph. 4 to describe someone with a complete lack of understanding and thus excluded from the life of God. Jesus was grieving for them because they were entirely deceived about the will of God and unable to gain understanding. It is reasonable in our natural minds to have mercy on the man with a deformed hand, but to possess mercy for those who hate him and want him dead–this extraordinary love of one’s enemies–is simply supernatural and it’s something that we are called to as well.
Now it’s improbable that we could ever know for sure when we have what is called righteous anger, but we can be certain about one thing–if we do find ourselves possessing it, it will always be accompanied by grief over the sin that is angering us. This will demonstrate that there is mercy in our hearts towards others.