Many Christians today think of Jesus as this soft-spoken, meek guy who is just so loving that He spreads His arms wide open for all. Well, He does spread His arms wide open, but He's no pushover.
In John 2:13-22, we read how Jesus could be very different from how many of us see Him: a Jesus so consumed with God's house that He drove away the people who were there, doing their business.
Was Jesus harsh when He did that? Didn't He hurt those people and thus commit some kind of sin?
A few things we can learn from this passage
We have to keep in mind that if we want to be like Jesus, we ought to study what He did and why we He did it. John 2:13-17 tells us the story:
"Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables. And He said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away! Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!" Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."" (John 2:13-17)
Based on what the Lord did, here are a few things we should learn.
1) Jesus wants the church to be a house of prayer, just as His Father wants
The Lord Jesus drove away every person in there because they were turning the temple, God's place of worship, into a center of moneymaking. While it started as a place where He could meet with people and be with them, many treated it with contempt and turned it into a place where they could meet with people and plan to earn some profit.
God wants the church, the Body of Christ, to meet together to have fellowship, encourage one another, and pray for each other (see Acts 2:42). How can we do that if we turn the church into a money-making venture?
2) Jesus is so committed to purging unholiness out of churches
We also read in that passage just how serious and passionate Jesus is in making His people holy and pure. We read how gentle and warm He is towards people, but in this instance He was full of passionate anger against the people do wrong in the temple.
Jesus' no-nonsense attitude towards sin and unrighteousness is unparalleled. His commitment to making His people holy and righteous cannot be surpassed, and He is totally committed to making all of us holy and righteous (see Ephesians 5:25-27).
Thus, we can ask God to purge all unrighteousness away from us. 1 John 1:9 tells us, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Let's do that.
3) People can be so ungodly, Christians included
The temple was the place where people could come and worship. Some people, however, decided to make the setup profitable and thus set business up. This isn't right, but people just kept doing it.
Jesus saw our pitiful and sorry state, and chose to die in obedience to the Father, saving us in the process. Romans 5:8 tells us,
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
We Christians can be so un-Christlike at times, but Christ Jesus our Lord is still very committed to making us like Him.
