What was Jesus revealing when he turned water into wine? John Piper opens John 2:1–11 to show the Son’s glory in pointing from ritual cleansing to his coming hour.

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ABSTRACT: Divine accommodation describes how the infinite, transcendent, and holy God condescends to make himself known. It answers the fundamental religious question, “How can I know God?” by saying, “God reveals himself.” The doctrine, with roots deep in the Christian tradition, has been opposed by various theologians in both the distant and recent past. Yet considered in its far-reaching consequences, divine accommodation remains a crucial doctrine for preserving a biblical understanding of revelation and how people come to know God.

The majority of people in the world believe in “God.”¹ Of these people, the majority believe that this “God” created everything that exists.² Of these “believers,” the majority hope that this “God” is knowable in some way.³ Our question becomes, then, “How can people know this ‘God?’”

Many people throughout the world focus on themselves as the answer to this question. They seek to know their “God” through engaging in religious ceremonies (for example, praying five times a day and going on a pilgrimage), following some law of freedom (for example, karma), focusing on self-denial through practices of abstinence or repudiation, seeking union with the cosmos or divine force, meditating to achieve self-emptying or an altered consciousness, and the like. That is, people initiate the way to know their “God.”

Christianity denies this is the way to know the one true living God, because there is no human starting point — nor can there be. On the contrary, God makes himself known to people. Christians answer the question, “How can people know God?” with one word: accommodation.

In this essay, I will define accommodation, give some analogies to help us better understand it, explore John Calvin’s contribution to this doctrine, call attention to attacks (one in particular) against it, highlight seven areas of the doctrine’s significance and implications, and offer a few questions for consideration and application.

Accommodation Defined

By way of definition, accommodation is “God’s act of condescending to human capacity in his revelation of himself.”⁴ In terms of the basic principle of accommodation, “for an infinite, perfect, and holy God to interact with finite, fallible, and fallen humanity, he must accommodate himself to our ability to understand him, coming down to our level so that we can grasp what he says and does.”⁵

The doctrine is closely associated with John Calvin, though it was certainly affirmed earlier in history. Calvin

underscored the appropriateness of God, who is infinitely exalted, accommodating himself to human weakness so that his adjusted revelation would be intelligible to its recipients. Indeed, God stoops like a mother when she communicates with her child. This accommodation is especially seen in Scripture: it is the Word of God written in limited human languages for sinful human beings with limited capacity to understand it, yet it does not participate in human error.⁶

Accommodation, then, acknowledges the need for God to “stoop” in order to reveal himself to us.

The above expression “God stoops like a mother when she communicates with her child” is just one of several metaphors/analogies theologians have used to portray divine accommodation. Others include a mother feeding her baby,⁷ a doctor prescribing medicine in accordance with his patient’s condition,⁸ an adult speaking with a child,⁹ a nurse “lisping” to an infant,¹⁰ or a schoolmaster teaching a young student.¹¹

These helpful analogies underscore the condescension with which God acts as he seeks to make himself known through his communication in Scripture to human beings. Certainly, a mother, doctor, adult, nurse, and schoolmaster are of the same (human) nature as a baby, patient, child, infant, and young student. Such commonality shrinks the distance between the former and the latter. Such is not so with God, a divine being, in relation to human beings. God is infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient; human beings are finite, located, weak, uninformed. Such discontinuity exaggerates the chasm between the former and the latter.

Unsurprisingly, then, it is impossible for human beings to take the initiative to know God through even the best of human efforts. With this way to God shuttered, the only way for people to know him is by God making himself known to them.

This is divine accommodation.¹²

John Calvin on Accommodation

The leading Reformed voice on this doctrine was that of John Calvin (1509–1564).¹³ Two highlights of his significant contributions to the doctrine of divine accommodation are presented here.¹⁴

First, he used one of the powerful metaphors already noted. In his treatment of the Trinity, Calvin critiqued people who imagine that God is physical based on “the fact that Scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet.” Calvin chided,

For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.¹⁵

Accordingly, written Scripture (for example, its descriptions of God as having human body parts) does not reveal God as he is in himself: an immaterial being without physical components. Rather, it comes to embodied human beings (who do have body parts) in an accommodated manner so they can understand by analogy what God is truly like toward them: He “speaks,” “hears,” “sees,” “acts,” and “moves” for their benefit. Breathtakingly, the God who is high and lifted up descends low, speaking to human beings with baby talk.

Similarly, Calvin discussed Scripture’s use of the word “repentance” in relation to God. He referenced several passages: God “repented of having created man [Genesis 6:6]; of having put Saul over the kingdom [1 Samuel 15:11]; and of his going to repent of the evil that he had determined to inflict upon his people, as soon as he sensed any change of heart in them [Jeremiah 18:8].” Calvin added the examples of God’s repentance when he relented of destroying the Ninevites (Jonah 3:4, 10) and when he deferred Hezekiah’s death sentence (Isaiah 38:1, 5).

Calvin was concerned to ward off charges by many “that God has not determined the affairs of men by an eternal decree.”¹⁶ Thus, he explained that this mode of speech describes

God for us in human terms. For because our weakness does not attain his exalted state, the description of him that is given to us must be accommodated to our capacity so that we may understand it. Now the mode of accommodation is for him to represent himself to us not as he is in himself, but as he seems to us.¹⁷

God in himself has eternally decreed all things and will certainly execute his decree. At the same time, because such a reality is infinitely above human comprehension — people struggle to make one simple plan and carry it out effectively — God accommodated the revelation of himself and his ways in human terms, as he appears to them, and in accordance with human limitations, so they could comprehend it.¹⁸

Second, Calvin explained another significant purpose for divine accommodation. Describing Scripture’s use of jarring expressions — for example, “God was men’s enemy. . . . They were under a curse. . . . They were estranged from God” until they were reconciled to him — Calvin argued,

Expressions of this sort have been accommodated to our capacity that we may better understand how miserable and ruinous our condition is apart from Christ. For if it had not been clearly stated that the wrath and vengeance of God and eternal death rested upon us, we would scarcely have recognized how miserable we would have been without God’s mercy, and we would have underestimated the benefit of liberation.¹⁹

Though some people might be repulsed by such disturbing language — “enemy,” “curse,” “estranged” — the truth is that the wrath of God hangs over the head of sinful people. To unsettle them out of their indifference to or rebellion against him, God brilliantly (though unusually) “stoops” and grabs their attention, thereby prompting them to wake up to their dreadful plight. So, not only does God temper his revelation through written Scripture so that human beings can grasp by analogy something of God and his ways for their understanding, but even more, God accommodates that revelation so that fallen human beings experientially sense the dire straits in which they find themselves before him and his wrath and thus, completely undone and moved by his mercy, flee to him for salvation.

Accommodation Under Attack

The doctrine of divine accommodation has been a mainstay throughout church history. Some would even call it a hermeneutical and theological axiom for the proper interpretation of Scripture and for soundness of doctrinal formulation about God and his ways. But it has also come under fierce attack.

As recounted by Glenn Sunshine, a substantial critique and reformulation of accommodation came from the rationalist, anti-Trinitarian heretic Faustus Socinus (Fausto Sozzini, 1539–1604).²⁰ Disapproving of Jesus’s affirmation of (what would later become the doctrine of) eternal conscious punishment of the wicked in hell, based on his teaching about Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19–31), Socinus dismissed it as a parable in which Christ accommodated himself “to the level of the [Jewish] people.”²¹ Thus, accommodation became a critical tool in the hands of skeptics to reject biblical affirmations that were, to those critics, unpalatable.

Similar attacks persist today in even more virulent forms. An important one comes from Kenton Sparks in his 2008 work God’s Word in Human Words.²² He wrestles with historical criticism and explains it in part with reference to (a novel idea of) divine accommodation. For example, he addresses historical criticism’s dismissal of Moses’s authorship of the Pentateuch, Isaiah’s sole authorship of his prophetic book, and Daniel’s authorship of his prophecy. Sparks invokes accommodation for Jesus’s (wrongful) affirmation of these men as authors of the books attributed to them:

If Jesus was fully human, as orthodoxy demands, then it is likely that he learned — along with other ancient Jews — that Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel wrote their books, irrespective of factual and historical realities. Moreover, even if Jesus knew the critical fact that Moses did not pen the Pentateuch, it is hardly reasonable to assume that he would have revealed this information to his ancient audience.²³

Here we are on the horns of a dilemma: Either Jesus accommodated himself to incorrect ideas of Old Testament authorship, having learned wrongly that Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel authored their biblical writings, or Jesus knew these men did not author those writings but accommodated himself by not revealing the truth to his naive and misinformed audiences.

Moreover, Sparks notes clear indications “that the biblical authors were subject to their own finitude and fallenness when they wrote Scripture.” For example, Daniel expected the kingdom of God to come in his lifetime (as did Paul and John with respect to the Lord’s return). Thus, Sparks insists that we must hold out “the possibility that a limited perspective [on the part of the biblical authors] might inevitably lead to a mistaken perspective.”²⁴ He continues,

The only question that remains, then, is whether God somehow protected or insulated their biblical words from their human fallenness. If he did so, it should be easy to recognize. Scripture would reflect a single, coherent, and consistent God-given view of morals and ethics from Genesis to Revelation.²⁵

As to be expected, Sparks then rehearses inconsistencies in Scripture such as the biblical commands to slaughter women and children versus praying for one’s enemies, instructions about the beating of slaves versus treating them kindly, listing women as property versus regarding them as one in Christ, prohibiting the eating of pigs versus permitting it, the imprecatory psalms, and more.²⁶

Such inconsistencies, for Sparks, are not limited to ethical matters in Scripture; they extend to theological diversity as well. In response, Sparks again invokes accommodation, defining it as “God’s adoption in inscripturation of the human audience’s finite and fallen perspective. Its underlying conceptual assumption is that in many cases God does not correct our mistaken human viewpoints but merely assumes them in order to communicate with us.”²⁷ In a move seemingly undertaken to rescue this condescending God from error, Sparks claims that the doctrine of accommodation does not introduce human error into Scripture; it is rather the explanation for the errors that are already in the text. Furthermore, “any errant views in Scripture stem, not from the character of our perfect God, but from his adoption in revelation of the finite and fallen perspectives of his human audience.” This distinction permits Sparks to argue that “God does not err in the Bible when he accommodates the errant views of Scripture’s human audience.”²⁸

Sparks’s notion of accommodation, like that of many contemporary critics of inerrant Scripture, diverges greatly from the church’s historical view. In fact, it ends up doing the opposite of what that traditional perspective sought to do when answering our opening question, “How can people know God?” If Sparks is right and (1) Jesus’s ideas about Scripture were incorrect or deceptive; (2) the biblical authors were mistaken as they wrote (so their scriptural writings are errant); and (3) Scripture contains inconsistencies (and thus contradicts itself) — even if Sparks blames such disasters on the biblical authors — then our “accommodated” Bible cannot be relied upon to answer the question of how people can know God.

The Significance and Implications of Accommodation

The importance of this doctrine, and the reasons Christians should reject attacks against it, can be seen in seven areas of significance and implication.

Doctrinal Significance of Accommodation

As for the significance of divine accommodation, first, there is no diminishing of divine authority. As John Frame explains of Scripture, “In the divine voice, God ‘accommodates’ himself to his hearers. . . . Nevertheless, this accommodation does not diminish in any way the authority with which God speaks (or, indeed, the power and presence of his word).”²⁹

Second, this doctrine underscores that Scripture is adequate as divine revelation in human language. As article 4 of The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy states,

We affirm that God who made mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation. We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God’s work of inspiration.

Third, as he always does in everything that comes to pass, God effectively accomplishes his eternal plan through the instrumentality of his word. Noel Weeks highlights the general biblical principle that nothing can thwart God’s plan: “Scripture does not see man as an impediment to the achievement of the divine purpose. Even man’s sin and blindness cannot prevent God from achieving his purpose.”³⁰ The prophet Isaiah applies this principle to the (accommodated) word of God:

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven
     and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
     giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
     it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
     and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10–11)

Accommodation, therefore, is not a hindrance to God’s work but the framework for it.

Implications of Accommodation

Following Calvin, here are four implications of divine accommodation.

First, “Prayer influences divine sovereignty through a process of accommodation: ‘[God] so tempers the outcome of events according to his incomprehensible plan that the prayers of the saints, which are a mixture of faith and error, are not nullified.’”³¹ Listening to and answering the prayers of his people is an example of the sovereign God condescending to consecrate human beings, whom he does not and cannot need, to serve him in the accomplishment of his predestined plan.

Second, the divine discipline of believers is meted out in an accommodated manner. God disciplines his people “in accordance with what is healthful for each man. For not all of us suffer in equal degree from the same diseases or, on that account, need the same harsh cure.”³² Rather than employ a one-size-fits-all strategy to correct and sanctify his people, God condescendingly tailors his action for each believer because “he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14).

Third, accommodated preaching is suited to believers’ needs. Through sermons, God “provides for our weaknesses in that he prefers to address us in human fashion through interpreters [preachers] in order to draw us to himself rather than to thunder at us and drive us away.”³³ Like effective human communicators, God accommodates his speech acts — assertions, commands, promises, and warnings that are voiced by pastors — to the hearing and responding capacities of his people.

Fourth, in the sacraments God provides accommodated means of grace for the church:

As our faith is slight and feeble unless it is propped up on all sides and sustained by every means, it trembles, wavers, totters, and at last gives way. Here our merciful Lord, according to his infinite kindness, so tempers himself to our capacity that, since we are creatures who always creep on the ground, cleave to the flesh, and do not think about or even conceive of anything spiritual, he condescends to lead us to himself even by these earthly elements [the bread and wine of communion] and to set before us a mirror of spiritual blessings.³⁴

Lamenting the “dull capacity” of fleshly (i.e., embodied) believers, Calvin explains that God shows them himself and his promises through the physical elements of baptism (water) and the Lord’s Supper (bread and wine). Indeed, God “attests his good will and love toward us more expressly [through these ordinances] than by word.”³⁵ In Paul’s words regarding communion, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26), not by a preached word but by an enacted word.

Summary and Questions for Application

In this essay, I defined accommodation as “God’s act of condescending to human capacity in his revelation of himself.”³⁶ To better understand it, I gave some analogies — an adult speaking with a child,³⁷ a nurse “lisping” to an infant³⁸ — that have been used for accommodation. I explored John Calvin’s development of this doctrine and highlighted Kenton Sparks’s attacks against it. Finally, I underscored seven areas of the doctrine’s significance (e.g., Scripture is adequate as divine revelation in human language) and implications (e.g., accommodated preaching is suited to believers’ needs). To conclude, I offer a few questions for consideration and application.

How might a right understanding of this doctrine help us read our Bibles and know our God better?

Specifically, how does it aid you as you read about God’s redemption “with an outstretched arm” (Exodus 6:6), his shining face (Numbers 6:25–26), and his “eyes . . . toward the righteous” (Psalm 34:15)? How does it help you to understand the idea of divine emotions such as jealousy (Exodus 20:5), anger (Psalm 7:6), and grief (1 Samuel 15:35), and divine actions such as repentance (Jonah 3:4, 10), the pouring out of wrath (Revelation 16:1), and slowness (2 Peter 3:9)?

What dangers lurk when there is a misunderstanding of this doctrine? Do you ever find yourself questioning the truthfulness, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture because of difficulties in it? How can you settle this matter?

In light of this essay, how would you answer its opening question, “How can people know God?” Specifically, how would you answer the question, “How can you know God?”

From the beginning of time, the God of heaven and earth has declared war on all wisdom that ignores his own. He will tolerate no rivals when it comes to our trust. That’s what makes artificial intelligence such a danger to the Christian, and especially to the minister.

We need to be reminded that God’s wisdom is not the wisdom of a supercomputer. We need fresh conviction that God’s presence must do God’s work. We need to be warned that relying on artificial intelligence instead of the Holy Spirit must eventually end in defeat. To illustrate, I would like us to travel back thousands of years and bring AI to the Canaanite city of Ai.

Victory at Jericho

Let us begin on the eve of Joshua’s initial invasion into the land of promise.

Imagine you gaze at the fortified city of Jericho from a distance. You consult your military council, your maps, your men, and you double-check the steps of your invasion. You open your MacBook and take another bite of the apple, asking ChatGPT to review your strategy and recommend any alterations for your plan of attack. Well, Yes, it quickly replies. Alterations are needed for all of your plans, at every level.

Cross the Jordan during flood season? Impossible. Circumcise your army in enemy territory? Foolish. Expose your entire force to hostile eyes for a week? Unwise. March around the walls for seven days, and then expect a shout and trumpet blast to bring down the foe’s stronghold? Comical.

God’s strategy for victory defied computation. His thoughts were not the thoughts of men or angels. His ways were not the ways of a supercomputer. So Joshua must take the army, walk around the city for seven days, give a big shout and trumpet blast, and expect the miracle. Day one passes — nothing. Day two passes — no sign of progress. Day three passes — naught but amusement from the walls above. Where is the battering ram; where are the scaling ladders? the enemy wondered. What are they doing?

A ram’s horn could not unglue brick and mortar. What did Jericho need to fear from a box, seven priests, seven trumpets, or seven days of the enemy getting their steps in? The commanders of Jericho didn’t need superintelligence to compute whether these walks posed any real threat. If they could have asked, ChatGPT would have compiled the findings of the greatest architects and war generals of all time; it would have scoured all the books of science and warfare and found no evidence whatsoever that their wall was in any danger from quiet walks or loud shouts. But then they soon felt the tremor beneath their feet. The Hebrew God — in the foolishness of his wisdom — was against them. The wall crumbled; they were soon dead, their city ablaze.

What can we say of this victory? It was illogical, unfathomable, unreasonable, a perplexity to men, angels, and mainframes. The utter oddity of the triumph was a signature — this battle belonged to the Lord. Like so many other battles, it was promised of God, acted by man, realized by faith. “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days” (Hebrews 11:30).

They did not need the best of natural or artificial intelligence; they needed the foolishness of faith and God’s presence (1 Corinthians 1:25). On the eve of battle and the start of this seven-year campaign, God did not send technology to assist Joshua; he sent the Commander of his army to prostrate Joshua. What God gave to Joshua he gives to us today — not cheat codes and shortcuts but a promise: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).

Defeat at Ai

Now contrast this with the second battle, the only one Joshua loses. He sends out spies to Ai. The report returns, insisting this small population required only a fraction of their force. Joshua sends three thousand men, a reasonable tactic given the size of the opponent. Had they consulted their computers, three thousand would have been a logical strategy. But to everyone’s astonishment, Israel flees against the little brother of mighty Jericho. Thirty-six men die in the embarrassment.

Joshua tears his clothes, and he and the leaders throw dust upon their heads. What went wrong? How had they failed so miserably? The hearts of the people melt. Is God giving them the land or not?

They trusted their eyes, trusted their sense of things. They assumed they had enough knowledge and acted on what they had. The Lord need not be troubled with this small affair. This victory is manageable. Divine guidance would be overkill. They didn’t need the theatrics of faith as before; they had this in hand. Alone, they could see, come, and conquer. No need of a Revealer for revelation. They mistook knowledge of the mission for God’s presence with them on that mission.

Had they asked the Lord beforehand, they would have discovered that all was not right in their camp. Their eyes scanned only the enemy, not themselves. The Lord could have revealed their disobedience prior to their defeat. Thirty-six men could have lived.

Brothers, God’s eyes are not just on the sinful Canaanites in the land of promise. His eyes are upon us and our people. How we obey him, depend upon him, seek his face has more to do with victory than competent plans or comprehensive sermon outlines. We cannot lean on our own understanding (or that of a computer) even when we possess superior numbers. What will that avail us if God sees an Achan in the camp?

And how many preachers mimic Achan with his stolen plunder? Contraband discourses, borrowed knowledge, unlawful paragraphs copied and pasted because a quick AI prompt was easier than doing the work themselves. To me, these have the glimmer of cursed objects, gold and silver under the ban.

The victory at Jericho taught all Israel that God must lead them into battle. Trust him even when the plan doesn’t make sense. Have you not learned the same? The Bible is a long account of such unorthodox conquests — men having their faith tested, hazarding life itself on what God said rather than what they thought.

What is a studied and well-expressed sermon built largely on the foundations of artificial intelligence? Is it not stolen plunder? What value is that orthodox teaching, conjured with a few keystrokes, when bereft of orthodox affection? Is this the blessing that Jacob wrestled all night for, the blessing that marked him the rest of his days? Men’s sacred trains of thought ought never run on AI search engines. There may be gold in their orthodoxy or oratory, but too often these are nuggets taken by the hand of laziness, inexperience, and lack of prayer. A lifetime of AI-produced sermons, Bible studies, and Sunday school lessons will not honor God and will end in defeat.

Victory at Ai

Israel repented; Achan was destroyed. They reengaged the foe.

God now gives them instructions for ambushing the adversary. His plans for them — shrewd and tactical — differ little from what any general could provide. Troops sneak behind the city in the night, and a small decoy force pretends to flee again, luring the enemy army out of the city. This time, the hidden troops destroy the city and encompass the foe. A far cry from silent walks and blowing trumpets, this plan agrees with the reason of both man and computer.

But even here, God adds his signature. Israel would gain victory, based not on their superior plan or numbers, but because Joshua obeyed the Lord, holding up his spear for the entire battle: “Joshua did not draw back his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had devoted all the inhabitants of Ai to destruction” (Joshua 8:26). Like Israel’s first battle out of Egypt, when Moses held his staff over the battlefield for the victory against Amalek (Exodus 17:8–13), so now, Joshua holds up his spear to ensure success. Such are the ways of God.

What is the point? Ministers must never replace their reliance upon God and his Spirit with any tools. The warrior of God does not trust in his spear or his chariots or his ChatGPT. If you are abusing your tools, put them away. You don’t need them. If you can use such permissibly, resolve to never use such lazily. God is your sole trust.

The work of ministry is supernatural. Take your computer to the graveyard and see what success it has in calling forth the dead. But one word from Christ Jesus, one visitation from the commander of the Lord’s armies, and Lazaruses come forth still. The weakness of man — his limited knowledge, his lack of eloquence, his human imperfections — are more than a match for the foe when God is with him. By faith, his shouts can bring down the impenetrable walls of the rebel heart, for God has promised to be glorified in man’s weakness, engraving his greatest signature upon the foolishness of the cross.

But grab irreverently for knowledge that is not yours, rely upon the shortcut, go to battle in armor that you have not tried, put your trust in AI, and you shall know the defeat of Ai. It makes sense on paper, the plans are genius, you have more than enough strength to accomplish it, and yet you shall fall because the Lord is not with you. This position is not anti-technology; it’s anti-abuse of technology and anti-trust in technology. It’s anti-reliance upon the flesh — your flesh or digital flesh. It’s anti-leaning on any wisdom but the Lord’s.

Pastor, with all your weaknesses and limitations, preach the word. Preach as God made you to preach. Study hard, pray harder, plead for help, and do not succumb to artificial sermonizing. If God desired, he could have sent his army of seraphic beings with flaming tongues to preach to the world of men. He could have sent Gabriel to do all the heralding. But he didn’t. He doesn’t need you dressed in all the knowledge of the pastors of ages past; he needs you dependent on him: on your knees, waiting for his power to show up.

Joshua didn’t need to consult all military science; he needed to meet God and receive his instructions, however implausible. That is our need today. Where are God’s generals who don’t seek counsel from a computer but trust in God’s signature means of word and prayer? Such will see Jericho’s walls fall, enemy strongholds burn, and God’s people enter the land of promise.

Although Paul refuses to command Philemon, he strengthens his appeal with seven personal reasons why his dear friend should receive Onesimus like a brother.

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What makes one sin forever unforgivable? John Piper opens Mark 3:20–35 to show that spurning the Spirit can place a person beyond repentance.

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We don’t need to wait for painful seasons to end before we feel joy again. By God’s grace, we can hold sorrow and joy in the very same heart.

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Have you been caught off guard by the anger of Jesus?

There you are, peacefully meditating on the Gospels, or flourishing under a favorite preacher. With great comfort, you’re finding Christ to be master of every situation. He wields concrete images, asks perceptive questions, and seems unfazed by conniving opponents.

Then flashes some surprising flare of his holy anger. He makes a whip and clears the temple court. He sighs aloud in frustration. He is reported to be annoyed, even indignant. He “strictly charges” men and women he has just healed. And you recall how often he rebukes, not just demons and fevers, winds and waves, but also his own disciples.

Sweet (and Sovereign) Emotion

We might shy away from the English word rage, but just a century ago the eminent B.B. Warfield (1851–1921) thought it a fitting term in his study on The Emotional Life of Our Lord. Perhaps the word’s connotations have shifted enough today that we reach for other language, but it could do us some good to see what many faithful eyes have dared to see in the life of Christ. And if anyone could rage with a holy, God-honoring anger, would it not be Jesus?

Sinless as he was, Jesus had his manifestly emotional moments as he dwelt among us. Doubtless, he was a man of composure and self-control, but it would be strange to presume he was unemotional when he whipped the temple clean. Or when he wept at Lazarus’s tomb. Or when he prayed, in anguish, with loud cries and tears. Typically, the Christ we encounter in the Gospels is a man of stunning composure — a model of the kind of poise and equanimity, in the face of the world’s chaos, that his people want to grow in by the power of his Spirit. And we may learn, as well, from his holy anger. Even his rage.

Slow to Anger

The children of Israel had celebrated their covenant-keeping God as “slow to anger” (beginning in Exodus 34:6). Slow to anger, let the record show, does not mean without anger. God clearly stood ready to punish the guilty in time. Yet, given the rebellion of his people, which was often outrageous, he was remarkably patient and markedly “slow to anger,” as prophets and psalmists alike would cherish (Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13; Psalms 86:15; 103:8; 145:8).

So too Jesus, in the days of his flesh, was slow to anger. He knew how to keep his wits under pressure, when the moment required it, and he knew how to give vent to his emotions, with self-control, in the proper time and place. Typically, the Christ of the Gospels is conspicuously calm, unprovoked in the face of worked-up foes. Yet the divine Son entered a world of sin and sinners, under the curse — a world in which injustices abound. And it would not be virtue, but vice, as Warfield observes, “for a moral being to stand in the presence of perceived wrong indifferent and unmoved” (50).

Lest we feed a wrong impression, let’s draw on two quintessential Reformed voices for help. If you thought Reformed theology’s appreciation of the mind necessitated the diminishing of emotion, let Warfield, along with John Calvin himself (1509–1564), set the record straight. Sure, some may have skewed anti-emotional in the name of Reformed theology. But they are mistaken. We can hardly find voices more reasonably Reformed than Calvin’s and Warfield’s.

To do so, let’s address several key anger-revealing texts in the Gospels and consider what lessons we might draw as Christ’s disciples today.

1. Jesus experienced our anger.

Jesus, truly man and truly God, was capable of human anger, and this was (and is) a feature, not a bug. This human emotion is an analogue of divine wrath in the image-bearer. As such, it is good, a God-made gift, to help us in a world where we encounter sin, death, and injustice. Yes, indwelling sin corrupts our anger, and anger is especially dangerous because it is such a powerful emotion, by God’s design. But anger itself is not the problem. Our sin is the problem.

In the Gospel of John, the first flare comes as early as chapter 2. Jesus is manifestly angry at those who have made his Father’s house into a house of trade, for material profit rather than Godward prayer. Yet the attribute celebrated here is not called anger but zeal. His disciples remember that it was written (in Psalm 69), “Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:17).

Anger rises naturally, even if slowly, in healthy souls. We need not cultivate anger. It comes as a function of some greater love. What we want to cultivate is zeal, for God and his honor, and for others and their joy in God. Christians want to boil with holy affection for Jesus Christ (Romans 12:11). And as God’s word and his people and prayer feed and form our zeal, our anger will flare less at the wrong times, and more at the right times.

We do not typically use the word anger for this more constructive emotion we call zeal. Zeal is the white-hot flame of Jesus’s love for his Father, and so for his Father’s house. Anger is our term for the zealous response toward those who are treating his Father and his house with contempt.

2. Jesus’s anger was without sin.

The life of Christ shows us the possibility of holy, righteous, good anger, even on this side of the fall. Jesus felt anger that was an appropriate response to the sin and evil and injustice he encountered. He also felt anger at appropriate levels of intensity — not too little, not too much, not too frequently or too quickly, and not too slowly or infrequently.

Even as we observe our remarkable solidarity with the Son of God in his sharing in our humanity, we keep in mind that great qualifier “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). What might it be like to experience the God-given emotion of anger, but without the corruption of sin?

Calvin guards us against any naive attempt to imitate Jesus’s anger without owning up to our own weakness: “If you compare his passions with ours, they will differ not less than pure and clear water, flowing in a gentle course, differs from dirty and muddy foam.” Our anger is not pure and clear like his. If I’ve never done a righteous deed that wasn’t sullied in some small way, surely the same is true with my anger. Yet that should not keep me from doing righteous deeds or from listening to the God-designed emotion of anger, no matter how prone such a power is to the influence of indwelling sin. Every thought, every feeling, every act of sinful humans in this age is sin-infected in some sense, but this does not keep us from doing real good works, pursuing good thoughts, and feeling good, helpful emotions.

Jesus’s pure, clear anger is a summons to us to cultivate Christlike zeal. His emotions encourage ours, and even enjoin them. As Calvin adds, Jesus’s life “ought to be sufficient of itself for setting aside the unbending sternness which the Stoics demand.”

3. Jesus made use of his anger; then he put it away.

Jesus didn’t stuff his anger, and on several occasions in the Gospels, he allowed his anger to become observable. He was noticeably angry. And he made use of that anger: He took its prompting, and energy, to move into justice-remedying action.

But, note well, Jesus did not stew in it. The key moment is Mark 3:1–5. On a Sabbath, he encounters a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees look on, ready to accuse him of Sabbath-breaking. Jesus asks them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” He’s right, and they won’t admit it. They remain silent, with an evil, cowardly silence. Then verse 5:

And [Jesus] looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

Mark tells us Jesus is angry and looks at them with anger. And as we’ll see again in John 11, this holy anger coexists with sorrow. Their hardness of heart both grieves and angers him. But his anger, having come slowly, does its work quickly. It flashes, and he perceives it, is inspired to righteous action, and then puts it away in holiness. It was brief, and then, not suppressed or forgotten, it prompted his next (anger-less) action: to heal. (We find similar examples of brief anger or frustration leading to a fitting response in Mark 7:34; 8:12; 10:14.)

As Paul would charge the Ephesians, so had he heard from the life of Jesus: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). Perceive the powerful burst, but let it not move you into sin but inspire righteousness. Which leads to a fourth and final lesson.

4. Jesus wept and raged.

John 11 is famous for “Jesus wept,” for good reason. But the more surprising revelation there is his anger. And it’s not subtle. Uncomfortable translators have tried to take the edge off it, but John is even clearer about Jesus’s anger than he is about his sorrows. Tears we might expect; anger we do not.

In John 11:33, we find a holy soul in holy anger. Jesus doesn’t lash out. He doesn’t bash anyone or say something he will later regret. Tears flow alongside his anger and so offer a revelation about both grief and anger (as we glimpsed in Mark 3:5): Godly anger goes with tears, and tears can flow with anger.

Don Carson emphasizes Jesus’s anger, alongside his grief, in John 11. The word translated “deeply moved” in verses 33 and 38 (Greek embrimaomai) “invariably suggests anger, outrage or emotional indignation” (John, 415). And he insists,

The same sin and death, the same unbelief, that prompted [Jesus’s] outrage, also generated his grief. Those who follow Jesus as his disciples today do well to learn the same tension — that grief and compassion without outrage reduce to mere sentiment, while outrage without grief hardens into self-righteous arrogance and irascibility. (416)

This is a double lesson for us wonderfully emotional and tragically sinful humans. We are not whole if we experience no anger — or only anger. Some need to cultivate the love for fellow man (and God) that leads to holy grief; others need to cultivate the zeal for God (and man) that leads to holy anger. As Warfield captures it,

He who loves men must needs hate with a burning hatred all that does wrong to human beings. . . . Jesus never wavered in his consistent resentment of the special wrongdoing that he was called to witness. (75)

So, with Christ as our one mediator and perfect model, we seek to see our spirit increasingly come under the control of his Spirit.

See the Flash of His Love

Jesus indeed knows the experience of human anger. And we do not yet know the experience of sinlessness. As we watch his righteous anger, and learn the features of our own humanity in looking to him, we do proceed with caution, recognizing the distinctive power of anger, and knowing ourselves to be sinners across all our faculties.

And whether you call it rage or not, see that the root is love. The righteous anger of Christ is a function of his holy zeal — for his Father, his word, his holiness, and his people. For those who are safe in Christ, these flares of his holy anger are full of gospel wonder. He is righteous, and righteously angry with his enemies, because of his great love for his Father and his friends.

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