Matthew 5:21-22

THE SIN OF ANGER

‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.’

Matthew 5:21

What is the difference between the judgment and the council? Why is it worse to say, Thou fool, than to say, Raca? What is the meaning of the words ‘in danger of’?

When it is said that a man is ‘in danger of’ the judgment, or of the council, or of the fire of Gehenna, it means that for something he has said or done they have a legal claim upon him; he is in their power; and unless something intervene to release him, the law must take its course. So here, in danger of hell means not such a state that hell may some day be your portion, but that the very fact of your giving way to anger and angry words puts you, so to speak, in the power of the kingdom of Satan.

The Pharisees thought much of acts; God looks at the thought of the heart. It is not enough to avoid committing murder. The cherished hate, the angry word, are in God’s sight twin brothers of the crime of murder. In this we shall find the explanation of the three forms in which anger shows itself, and the threefold punishment that attends it.

I. ‘Angry with his brother.’—‘Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of,’ i.e. shall be at the mercy of the judgment. The judgment here means the district court where criminal cases were tried. The local courts are decribed in Deuteronomy 16:18, and had the power to inflict capital punishment. To judge another falsely, as anger always does, is to subject oneself in God’s sight to a doom, as if the local court had already passed sentence of death.

II. ‘Raca.’—‘And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council.’ The council, of course, is the great Sanhedrim before which our Lord Himself was brought and sentenced to death. It was what we should call an Ecclesiastical Court, and its office was to try cases in which the charge was a charge, not of immorality or injustice, but of irreligion or heresy. Now the word Raca means ‘detestable one, accursed one,’ and seems to have had a special application to those found guilty by the Sanhedrim of heresy, blasphemy, or profanity. The Jews would have said Raca to our Lord when the high priest passed sentence, ‘He is guilty of death.’ Here exactly in accordance with the former case, and in accordance with the principle of Divine retribution, He who says Raca in anger to his brother is himself Raca in the sight of God; judged, as it were, and found guilty by the court whose functions he had usurped; branded before God as the ‘detestable’ and the ‘abominable,’ who is cut off from God’s people.

III. ‘Thou fool.’—Lastly, ‘Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire,’ and in the power of the wicked one. ‘Thou fool’ hardly represents the original, which, according to the commentators, means rather ‘reprobate,’ ‘forsaken of God.’ If this is so, the same principle which we have seen at work hitherto is apparent here. He who consigns another to reprobation or damnation is himself in God’s sight what he calls another. What an awful commentary on that text, ‘By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.’ Awful, indeed, when we remember that the commonest form of oath which defiles the lips of men is just that which, if our Lord’s words are true, reflects back on him who uses it the doom he invokes on another. Whosoever shall say, ‘Thou damned one!’ is under sentence of damnation at God’s hands.

Canon Aubrey L. Moore.

Illustrations

(1) ‘We have some remarkable instances of a triumph over a passionate nature recorded of great people. Columbus, a man of natural heat and impetuosity, had schooled himself, we are told by his biographers, to “a courteous and gentle gravity.” Queen Elizabeth, though on more than one occasion her passionate nature broke its bounds, yet made it her object to curb herself in this respect; and the great compiler of the Heidelberg Catechism, being a modest though very passionate man, made it a rule never to answer an objection immediately. These and many other instances go to prove that the natural temptation to this form of anger may be resisted till calmness and gentleness seem almost natural. We all know that the Society of Friends are remarkable for their quietness and meekness, and the story is told of one who, being asked how he learned to control his passion, answered, that when he was young he noticed that angry men always spoke loud and fast, and he determined, if he could help it, never to let his voice rise above a certain pitch. The voice is generally the first sign to show a loss of self-command. When a man is becoming more and more overcome with drink, he chatters and loses all caution; when a man is in a passion, he knows not what he says; but still, out of the abundance of the angry heart, the mouth speaks its angry words, and by those words the speaker is condemned.’

(2) ‘We have some wonderful instances on record of those who have successfully struggled against this sin. It is a harder struggle than the struggle with passionateness. But the harder the struggle, the nobler the victory in the eyes of men, and the more precious in the sight of God. Archbishop Secker, who had as his special cross a very irritable temper, guarded himself by making it a rule always to speak in a slow and measured tone. Dr. Channing, again, among his papers has left us notes of the battle that resulted in his beautiful serenity. “When I feel irritable, let me be silent,” he writes in his private memoranda. “I wish to be cool and collected amidst insult and provocation.” George Washington, Sir Robert Peel, and even Mahomet, are quoted as signal instances of a triumph over a natural irritability.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE OLD LAW REVISED

In this particular portion of the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord is undertaking a revision of the old law. One of the commandments that He takes in this way is the sixth, referring as it does, of course, to the law of murder. Under the old Jewish law only sins of act were taken into consideration at all. These words of our Lord mean something like this: In the new law He implies you are to think of malicious anger in your heart as under the old law men were accustomed to think of ordinary homicide—a case, that is, that could be dealt with by the local court. When this malice of heart expresses itself in words of dislike and contempt, that is to be regarded by Christians as of the same moral guilt as more flagrant kinds of sin, and would be dealt with by the central court. But a stronger expression, combining insult with contempt and anger, is a sin which may bring a man into eternal punishment.

I. The awful loftiness of the Christian standard.—Our Lord takes no notice of sins of act at all, for in the citizens of the New Country, the New Kingdom—such is His meaning—sins of act are to be, as it were, altogether out of the question. He deliberately raises the sins of thought and feeling to the level previously occupied by sins of act. He counts words yet graver sins, and deliberate expressions of hatred and contempt He counts as a sin that may destroy the: soul.

II. ‘Hell fire.’—We ought not to let this text pass without reminding ourselves that there is such a place as hell. That doctrine is out of fashion just now. The lost ones there are not there because God has rejected them, but because they have rejected Him.

III. Sins of contempt.—The sins of this commandment are sins of contempt as much as, and even more, perhaps, than sins of anger, and this is brought out by the two instances of the breaking of this commandment our Blessed Lord gives us.

IV. ‘Thou fool.’—There are two classes of individuals of whom we are not to say? Thou fool’—(a) of ourselves. Self-contempt is the parent of more vice and more mischief than one likes to think of, just as it is possible that self-respect is one of the most powerful of weapons for good. Let us be proud of our Christian calling, let us value our Christian status. (b) We are not to say ‘Thou fool’ to our neighbour—to our neighbour that is younger than ourselves. ‘Take heed,’ says our Blessed Lord, ‘that ye despise not one of these little ones.’ Christ speaks here to fathers and mothers and teachers and guardians, to elder brothers and elder sisters. We are not to say ‘Thou fool’ to our neighbour that is older than we, nor to our neighbour on a different social status from ourselves. Grades of society based on anything but character will be unknown in heaven.

V. Despising God.—Note the great reason why. Because to say ‘Thou fool,’ to despise ourselves or our neighbour, is to despise God. We are all of us made in the image of God. We are, each one of us, temples of the living God. To despise that temple, or to degrade it by sin, is to despise and dishonour Him who dwells therein.

—The Rev. J. G. Bartlet.