Written by Scott R. Swain |
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
In John’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us regarding the nature of heavenly things–in this case, the heavenly nature of his sonship–by speaking in terms of earthly things. He takes up language designed for speaking about things that are low and applies that language, with transformative significance, to things that are high. 

The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me (John 10:25).
John 1-12, the so-called “Book of Signs,” provides the Fourth Evangelist’s testimony regarding Jesus’ public ministry. According to John, the marvelous words and deeds that Jesus speaks and performs during his public ministry reveal the truth about his person. John 10:25 summarizes the revelatory logic at work in these chapters: “The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me.” The works that Jesus performs bear witness about who he is.
The logic of revelation summarized in John 10:25 presupposes a specific concept of action, and an epistemological corollary, which I have summarized elsewhere. That concept of action is that certain kinds of agents produce certain kinds of effects. Fig trees produce figs. Grapevines produce grapes. And so forth (James 3:12). The epistemological corollary that follows from this concept of action is that “each tree is known by its fruit” (Luke 6:44). Certain kinds of effects reveal the presence of certain kinds of causes. Thus Jesus’ works, the wonderful life-giving signs that he performs, bear witness to who he is.
John’s claim that Jesus’ wonderful works are revelatory of Jesus’ identity is not a claim that their meaning is transparent. Indeed, even the most sympathetic observers of Jesus’ public ministry have a hard time grasping the significance of his transcendent identity merely by observing his transcendent actions. The riddle of Jesus’ identity is reflected in the questions his observers ask, “When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?” (Jn 7:31), and in the (from a Johannine perspective) less than fully informed declarations they make, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him” (Jn 3:2).
In John 10, Jesus’ opponents press him at this very point, demanding that Jesus resolve the riddle of his identity by telling them “plainly” whether he is “the Christ” (Jn 10:24; cf. 16:25: where revelation via “figures of speech” is contrasted with revelation that is “plain”). And though Jesus’ reply doesn’t evoke the response from Jesus’ opponents that John envisions for his ideal readers (but cf. Jn 10:42), Jesus’ answer is plain. The works that Jesus performs in his Father’s name manifest the truth about his filial identity: “I am the Son of God” (Jn 10:25, 36).
By this point in the Gospel, John has made it clear to his readers that Jesus is no mere earthly offspring of the heavenly Father (cf. Jn 1:12; 3:3, 5, 12). He is the heavenly Son of his heavenly Father (Jn 10:23, 27): the only-begotten Son of God who is above all because he was before all, who in the beginning was with God, who in the beginning was God (Jn 1:1, 14-15, 18, 30; 3:16, 31). John 10 confirms the transcendent nature of Jesus’ filial identity in the strongest way imaginable for a Jewish audience. Jesus is no mere teacher sent from God. Jesus is “one” with his Father, who is “greater than all” (Jn 10:29-30). The Father is “in” him and he is “in” the Father (John 10:38).
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Any emotion can lead to sin. Our happiness over a new job could lead to unkind gloating when we’re with our friends. Our passion for theology can lead to pride when studying the Bible with those who don’t understand the long words we use. Anger likewise can become sinful, but it can also be untangled from our sinful nature and become righteous as well.

If you’ve been around kids long enough, you know how short their temper can be.
I sat on the floor with one of my fourteen-month-olds, helping him learn to build a tower with rubber blocks. He had watched his older brother and his twin brother do it, and now he wanted to try himself. I lay down on the mat and gathered eight blocks in front of him. I placed the red one to start and handed him the orange one. He smiled, and his big brown eyes lit up as he took the block in his little, pudgy hand. He delicately placed it on top of the red and grinned at me as he clapped his hands together. I cheered for him and passed him the yellow one. 
He lifted the block above the orange, but not quite high enough. The yellow block in his hand bumped the orange one and knocked it to the floor. As he watched the orange one fall, he quickly tried to put the yellow one on top of the red, but with his haste, it tumbled to the floor as well. He furrowed his dark brows together and grunted, then tossed the red block. 
My first instinct when I see anger in my children (or in myself) is to squash it. No, you’re not allowed to be angry; anger is a bad emotion. Stop being angry and start being happy, grateful, or some kind of positive emotion. Anger is sin. 
When I started therapy, however, I was taught that anger isn’t an enemy to squash. As I, in turn, searched Scripture, the Holy Spirit guided me to see that he’s not anti-anger either. All anger isn’t sin. Rather, anger is a good emotion when rightly used. As a professional emotion-stuffer, this has been a hard lesson to learn and one that God, in his good patience, is teaching me over and over again as I parent my children and re-teach myself. 
Is Anger Always A Sin?
I saw a pastor post online, “Only one person [Jesus] can have a ‘righteous frustration’ just as there is one who can have a ‘righteous anger.’” When someone challenged this comment by reminding the pastor that the Bible instructs us to be like Christ, he said this was a divine attribute we are unable to foster. I know this pastor’s beliefs are not alone; I remember hearing a similar sentiment from a professor lecturing at a Christian university a few years prior.
Many Christians are taught that anger is sinful and—like me—stuff their anger and shame themselves for having such an emotion. Yet is this true? Can only the holy Godhead have righteous anger?
In Psalm 4:4, David instructs Israel by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “Be angry, and do not sin.” Paul, quoting this Psalm, tells the church in Ephesus, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph. 4:26). Both passages instruct believers to be angry, and their only qualification is to avoid sin. If righteous anger is impossible, why would the Bible call us to it?
We like to set boundaries for ourselves as believers to avoid sin, but often we go beyond Scripture to the point of declaring what God calls good evil. Yet just because an act or emotion raises the possibility of being abused by our sinful hearts doesn’t make it evil. 
The Pharisees did this during Jesus’s day. In efforts to protect Israel from breaking God’s law again, they created man-made laws that stretched beyond God’s perfect law, to the point that they followed their man-made laws to the neglect of God’s law. They wouldn’t help the poor on the Sabbath because it was classified as work by their man-made laws. 
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Significant as the combat is between Hamas and Israel, more crucial is the battle for the mind and heart of billions. This is why I have devoted such close and extensive attention to understanding and explaining the true war that is being waged between two antithetical worldviews, the biblical-Christian view and the anti-Christ view which is nonetheless religious in nature. The anti-Christ view is religious because “virtue signaling,” conspicuously exhibiting attentiveness to “politically correct” issues, especially so-called “social and racial justice,” without effecting any real change for the alleged oppressed is at its core. This anti-Christ view steals daily news headlines with reports concerning crowds of devoted protestors who subject all of human life to their ideologically reductionistic oppressor versus oppressed paradigm, identifying but never lifting the alleged victims, who advance their cause, and excoriating and demonizing the alleged victimizers whom they passionately despise.

Making Sense of Widespread Western Favoring of Hamas Against Israel
What accounts for the coalition of diverse Leftist groups rallying together for Hamas and against Israel? What binds BLM, Jewish Voices for Peace, Gays 4 Gaza, Queers 4 Palestine, Lesbians 4 Liberation, Antifa, The Squad, Abortion Activists, Green Climate Police, Democratic Socialists of America, university professors and students, and Jewish intellectuals in solidarity with Hamas to oppose Israel? Matt Walsh rightly explains, “So, this desire to promote a murderous ideology—one that, if unleashed worldwide, would kill a lot of Leftists—is not unique to the current war in the Middle East. It tells us something fundamental about how Leftists think. Specifically, it exposes how heavily they rely on abstraction, rather than practical thinking informed by real-life consequences.” For example, Megan Rapinoe, who is an outspoken advocate against Israel and a fund-raiser for children in Gaza who also claims to be married to Sue Bird, a Jewish woman with Israeli citizenship, effectively illustrates his point. How long would Rapinoe and her female sexual partner survive in the Gaza Strip?
Walsh summarizes well the reasoning that coalesces the disparate Leftist groups. They view Israelis and their allies as the current great oppressor who must be toppled.
They see Hamas fighters, like BLM rioters, as a physical manifestation of the many anti-American concepts they’ve been taught in school. These barbarians are the “de-colonizers” and the “anti-oppressors.” They are the answer to “whiteness” in all its forms. The Left will humanize its allies, like George Floyd. But they will abstract their enemies as “oppressors” and “agents of white supremacy,” and then celebrate their destruction and murder.
Has the coalition of Leftists with disparate, even conflicting, interests overreached, transgressing their own religious dogma of tolerance versus intolerance by defending the cause of Hamas terrorists as the oppressed and identifying Israelis as colonizing oppressors? One might be tempted to think they have, given (1) the inescapable appearance of anti-Semitism on the face of their cause, and (2) how many Democratic Party politicians, their surrogates, and media talking heads have not joined them even if they stand mute lest they alienate their voting base. Does endorsement of undisputed anti-Semitic Hamas as oppressed by Israeli oppressors finally expose their Marxist agenda for all the world to see? If not, why not? Their applauding Hamas, hoping to rally world opinion against Israel’s sovereign right as a nation to defend its citizens from Hamas’s terroristic attacks, exposes the moral bankruptcy of their Marxist view of and for the world.
Will the world finally wake up to the destructive ideology of “Wokeness”? One would hope, but do not count on it. Why? Because the ideology entails a religious belief system antithetical to Christianity and the Western culture it shaped. Marxism’s “long march through the institutions,” conceived by Antonio Gramsci, and later Rudi Dutschke, is deep and thorough, as Gramsci schemed: “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. . . . In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”[1]
Socialism’s ideology has been saturating Western culture for more than fifty years, deluding multiple generations of Westerners who have become its “useful idiots.”[2] From Kindergarten to University, Cultural Marxism has overwhelmed our education system with its morality and culture-destroying ideology. Known by its various innocuous sounding Orwellian iterations: “Multiculturalism,” “Diversity,” “Critical Race Theory,” “Diversity-Equity-Inclusion,” “Anti-Racism,” or simply “Wokeness,” Big Ed(ucation) has become a hotbed for Marxist ideology. Thus, since October 7, the world has been observing “Anti-Racism” in action, the divisive core principle Ibram X. Kendi candidly asserts with moral sanctimony:
If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. . . . The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.[3]
Given Kendi’s forthright acknowledgment that “anti-racism” is reverse-racism, it is evident that since October 7 Western Cultural Marxists believe they have taken up the righteous cause of Hamas, racist anti-Semites, whose aggressive actions seek “liberation” from their alleged racist Jewish oppressors.
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