Passionate

It is possible to have a view of Jesus that almost complete empties him of any passion or emotion, as if being upset or angry about anything would somehow detract from his perfect sinlessness!

But Jesus definitely was a man of passion and emotion - just look at Luke 19:41-48 - and such passion was in no way sinful, actually a lack of such emotion would have been sinful.

He weeps with sadness, then he bristles with anger. And the things he gets so passionate and emotional about in these verses are things we could do with being a bit more moved by.

Firstly he weeps over people that are rejecting his offer of peace through faith in himself. Jesus takes no pleasure in seeing people reject peace with God. He sheds tears as he contemplates the awful reality of what it means to go in to eternity without being reconciled to God.

Am I moved by the same passionate sadness that Jesus had as I see people heading in to a lost eternity?

Secondly he's furious over prayer being pushed aside in God's house. How dare dodgy businessmen fill a place of corporate prayer with so much junk that people can't come before God and pray! We can meet anywhere for corporate prayer, it's one of the beauties of the new covenant that a bricks and mortar temple is no longer needed for that purpose. But there's often so much junk in our lives that there isn't room for meeting together with other believers to pray.

Maybe it's time to get passionately angry about that and make room for prayer, as Jesus did.

Thirdly he's mad about Gentile access to God being blocked and hindered - the full quote from Isaiah 56:7 is "my house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples". The temple traders might have left the inner court of the temple (which was for Jews) free, but they were clogging up the outer Gentile courts. Do we, perhaps without realising it, hinder people's access to God? Especially people very different to us? We can be very insistent on maintaining our traditions, our favourite ways of doing church that we're comfortable with, but not stop to think about whether they're a help or hindrance to someone who doesn't share our cultural Christian background. We need to be all things to all people that by all means we might save some.

Jesus is so passionate about people of all cultural backgrounds having access to God that he gets mad when that's prevented. What about me?

Peace, Prayer, and People. Three things to get truly passionate about.