Jesus and Male Aggression: Meekness Confronts Manhood

Jesus and Male Aggression: Meekness Confronts Manhood

Whatever our Sunday school pictures of Jesus, we need to clean the canvas and see him as he was. John 2 reveals, “In the temple courts Jesus found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” Jesus was not a wimp. He was not soft. He was not Mr. Nice Guy. He was not Mr. Rogers with a beard.

Why is it that pictures of Jesus show him holding a lamb instead of holding a whip?

Jesus was The Christ who modeled strength:  commanding in his manner, challenging in his message, conquering in his manhood, compelling in his mission.  Jesus was the furthest thing from being a milk-toast personality imaginable.  Yet, Jesus was the epitome of the meekness he requires of us in the third beatitude, ascribing meekness to himself when he said, “I am meek and lowly of heart” (Matt. 11:29).

If the one who epitomizes meekness is throwing people bodily out of the temple, fearlessly confronting the most powerful men in his culture with their hypocrisy, maybe meekness is not what we thought. Here are 3 things meekness is NOT.

1.  It is not weakness, spinelessness, subservience, ineffectiveness, or passivity. Weak men do not infuriate the most powerful men in the society. Weak men don’t insult men who have the power to have them executed.

2. Meekness is not timidity. Jesus did not pull his punches. He smacked the crooked Scribes and Pharisees in the mouth with his words in the temple, much as he did in Matt 23:15, “You travel over land and sea to win a single convert and when he becomes one, you make him twice the son of hell as you are.”  Jesus was bold, when he needed to be, not timid.

3. The godly virtue of meekness must be distinguished from what psychologists call co-dependency.  The wife of the drunk who takes his physical abuse, refusing to confront her husband with his problem, or the boss who refuses to stand up to his boss, lack the courage to confront others and the dignity to set boundaries around themselves.  Jesus did allow himself to be abused, but not because he was too weak to stop it.  Jesus said, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18).

The NT word for meekness, (prautes) describes a horse that is no longer wild, but has been domesticated. It describes a magnificent, powerful, spirited animal that has learned to answer to the reins. That spirited stallion, immediately responsive to the slightest reining of the rider, is a picture ofstrength under control.  That is the godly virtue of meekness. It is not being a wet dishrag or being so passionless that we never get angry.  One commentator translates the third beatitude:  O the bliss of the man who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time, who has every instinct, and impulse, and passion under control because he himself is God-controlled. Here are 3 roots to meekness.

1.  It is rooted in our view of ourselves.  Jesus models meekness because he viewed himself as a servant. “I have not come to be served but to serve” (Mk 10:45) In fact, Paul tells us in Phil. 2 that he took the form of a slave (doulos). This was a unique kind of servant—one who was owned by his master.Meekness arises from seeing myself, and all that is mine, as belonging to God.  Paul tells the Corinthians, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”  Meekness remembers that I have taken Jesus as my Master. I am no longer my own. Rather I am his doulos and he has the right to do with me as he pleases.

2. Meekness requires changing our view of our personal rights. Meekness transfers my rights to God just as Jesus laid aside his rights (Phil. 2) to become a doulos.  If I belong to God, so do my rights. Jonathan Edwards wrote in his diary, “I claim no right to myself—no right to this understanding, this will, these affections that are in me. Neither do I have any rights to these hands, these feet, these ears, these eyes. I have given myself clear away and not retained anything of my own.” 

3. It is rooted in our view of God. Psalm 37, the “Meekness Psalm” begins by urging us to believe that God is worthy of our trust.  “Trust in the Lord (vs. 3), Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart (vs. 4), Commit your way to the Lord; trust him (vs. 5), Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him (vs. 6).  Meekness is rooted in the everyday, practical, trusting of God’s character.  Another scholar writes:  “Meekness is an inwrought grace of the soul; and the exercises of it are first and chiefly towards God. It is that temper of spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting.”

The result of meekness is given in the third beatitude:  “For they shall inherit the earth.”  One thing you can count on. Even though we can’t always see it at the time, God takes good care of what he owns. He is not a shepherd whose sheep are sickly and starved. He is not an impotent property owner who is at the mercy of devastating storms that could destroy his property. He is not a father whose children are paupers. He is not a potter who throws his vessels in the garbage because they are imperfect.

Could it be that you need to pause and re--surrender your life and rights to your master—because he is worthy of your trust?  

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