A Look at Matthew 5:22: Did Jesus Sin When He Got Angry?
- Emanuel Rodriguez
- Feb 19
- 7 min read
Updated: Feb 20
By Pastor Emanuel Rodriguez
Mark 3:5 “And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.”
Undeniably there were times during the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ that He got angry. I can only imagine the Lord was angry when He saw the holy Temple of Jerusalem being used as a “house of merchandise”. Can you picture the angry look that the Lord must have had on His face as He drove the merchants out of the Temple, flipped over tables, while waving “a scourge of small cords”? I’m pretty sure the Lord had a similar look of anger on His divine face when He preached what is perhaps His most scathing message of rebuke against the religious leaders in Matthew chapter 23 as He called them “hypocrites” and “a generation of vipers” who would suffer the ”damnation of hell”.
The fact that Jesus got angry at times demonstrates that not all anger is sinful. Some call it “righteous indignation”. Though the Bible has many warnings against sinful anger, there are times when anger is justified and even righteous. Paul made this clear when he said:
Ephesians 4:26 “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath”
In fact, even God is angry with the wicked every day according to Psalm 7:11. I won’t take the time in this brief article to mention all the times the Bible speaks of God’s anger and wrath.
God is perfectly holy. He never does anything wrong. The same can be said about Jesus, the only man to ever walk upon this earth who was sinlessly perfect and always did everything right.
In Matthew 5:22, the Lord explains to us how to know the difference between anger that is justified and anger that is sin.
Matthew 5:22 “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment”
Notice the words “without a cause”. These words are extremely important. They clarify when anger is justified and when it is not. Anger is justified when there is a legitimate cause for the anger. For example, Jesus had every right to be angry with the religious leaders of His day who were conspiring to eventually murder Him. I would imagine we would also be upset to know that people that should love us were planning to kill us.
Speaking of things that we ought to be upset about…
Many Critical Text Bibles today, such as the NIV, ASV, RSV, the New World’s Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, omit the words “without a cause”. The 1960 version of the Reina Valera Bible also omit these important words that were inspired by God.
Why do they omit these important words? They omit them because they are based upon the Critical Text editions of the Greek New Testament. The Critical Texts are based upon corrupted manuscripts like Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Misguided scholars today prefer these corrupted manuscripts because of their age. It is claimed that they date back to the 4th century. These misguided scholars today fail to consider, however, that ancient manuscripts were being corrupted all the way back in the 2nd century. To learn more about the history behind the early corruption of ancient manuscripts, click on the following: https://www.sociedadrvg.com/en/post/the-history-of-the-alexandrian-manuscripts-critical-text.
Through manuscript evidence Bible-believing Christians have always recognized the traditional Received Texts (name in Latin is “Textus Receptus”, or TR) superior to the Critical Texts.
In the TR the underlying words in Greek are “eike” (εικη, pronounced i-kay'). The word “eike” is where it belongs in the Textus Receptus.
1894 Scrivener TR – Matthew 5:22 “εγω δε λεγω υμιν οτι πας ο οργιζομενος τω αδελφω αυτου εικη ενοχος εσται τη κρισει ος δ αν ειπη τω αδελφω αυτου ρακα ενοχος εσται τω συνεδριω ος δ αν ειπη μωρε ενοχος εσται εις την γεενναν του πυρος”
Notice how this vital Greek word is removed in the corrupt Critical Texts.
Nestle-Aland 28th edition – Matthew 5:22 “ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι πᾶς ὁ ὀργιζόμενος τῷ ἀδελφῷ αὐτοῦ __________ ἔνοχος ἔσται τῇ κρίσει· ὃς δ’ ἂν εἴπῃ τῷ ἀδελφῷ αὐτοῦ· ῥακά, ἔνοχος ἔσται τῷ συνεδρίῳ· ὃς δ’ ἂν εἴπῃ· μωρέ, ἔνοχος ἔσται εἰς τὴν γέενναν τοῦ πυρός
The manuscript evidence that supports the presence of the word “eike” is overwhelmingly strong. (see the following picture)
What is even more upsetting is to realize that the original 1569 Spanish Bible of Casiodoro de Reina and the 1602 revision of Cipriano de Valera had the Greek word represented, albeit with a different word choice. They translated “eike” as “locamente”, which means “excessively, without prudence or moderation” according to the Royal Academy of Spain (the official standard for all Spanish words). Though Reina and Valera’s word choice was different than that of the KJV (“without a cause”), they say the same thing and the fact is that they had the word represented and translated.
In fact, even the 1909 Antigua edition of the Reina-Valera, which the 1960 revision eventually replaced in most Fundamentalist circles, retained the translation “locamente”.
When the apostate Eugene Nida’s revision committee of the 1960 Reina Valera followed the Critical Text and removed the word “eike”, they removed the very words that the Lord said to clarify the difference between righteous anger and sinful anger. This affects the doctrinal meaning of the passage. It forces the Lord’s explanation to say that all anger is sin. This forces the Lord to condemn Himself as a sinner in the RV1960 because He got angry at times, as we showed earlier. Consequently, the RV1960 and all other Critical Text based Bibles make Jesus a sinner. This error is inexcusable.
Despite all this, Calvin George attempts to defend the Critical Texts and justify this omission anyways. He wrote on his website:
"The common complaint against Mat. 5:22 is the lack of the phrase "without a cause" which in Greek is one single 4-letter word. I have noticed that there is precedent in at least one TR-based New Testament (Tyndale 1534) for the reading of the 1960. That the lack of one word in this verse would make Jesus a sinner as some allege because he got angry at the moneychangers seems highly absurd. The Bible states that it's possible to be angry and not sin (Eph. 4:26)."
First of all, Calvin George for some strange reason thinks it is ok to justify obvious error by pointing to the obvious errors in other flawed Bibles, such as the one he points out in Tyndale’s 1534. With all due respect to the great William Tyndale, his work was not a finished product. There’s a reason why no one, including Calvin George, is using Tyndale’s Bible today. The KJV is the finished product of what Tyndale started. To reproduce the flaws of older Bibles and justify them in corrupted Bibles today is intellectually dishonest and goes in the opposite direction that good scholarship is supposed to go to ensure Bible accuracy. (I wrote more about Calvin George’s twisted way of trying to justify error in the following article: https://www.sociedadrvg.com/en/post/calvin-george-s-unscholarly-attempt-to-justify-critical-text-corruption-in-the-1960-reina-valera-bib)
Notice how Calvin George is ok with “the lack of one word”. He is ok with omissions so long as there is another verse that exist somewhere else in the Bible version that says what the corrupted verse was supposed to say. This is the common defense of all corrupt Bible defenders today. They argue that just because an omission affects the doctrine in a particular verse it is ok because the doctrine exists elsewhere. The problem with this sad attempt to justify the unjustifiable is that it totally disrespects what Jesus said about the importance of every word.
Matthew 4:4 “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
We don’t want a Bible that has things missing in one place but found in another. That’s corrupt. Proverbs 30:5 says "Every word of God is pure". We prefer a Bible that is 100% pure because Jesus said EVERY word is important.
Calvin George argues that the Greek basis for "without a cause" is just one 4-letter word. He argues that we are going overboard for complaining about the omission of a word that is so small. I guess in George’s mind the omission of big words would be bad but the omission of small words is ok. Considering however what Jesus said about the importance of EVERY WORD in Matthew 4:4, I don’t care if it is just a 4-letter word, a 3-letter word, or a 2-letter word, IF IT IS THE INSPIRED WORD OF GOD IT BELONGS IN THE BIBLE!
That the elimination of important God-inspired words doesn’t bother Calvin George, and that he would defend such blatant corruption, should tell you everything you need to know about him. He is not a true proponent of the KJV nor the TR no matter how hard he works to convince his pro-KJV supporters that he is. He wants to play on both sides of the fence. However, true proponents of the KJV and TR don’t defend Critical Text corruption. True KJV and TR proponents should stop listening to him. His misinformation and misleading arguments are dividing good brethren who ought to be unified in the cause to get God’s pure words to the world.
Thank God for a pure Spanish Bible like the RVG, which agrees with the pure Bible in English, the KJV, in Matthew 5:22. The RVG has the word “eike” represented with the words “sin razón”, which means “without a reason”, and says the same thing as the KJV rendering “without a cause”.
KJV – Matthew 5:22 “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment”
RVG – Mateo 5:22 “Mas yo os digo que cualquiera que sin razón se enojare contra su hermano, estará en peligro del juicio”
I wonder if Jesus gets angry about His words being deleted from Bibles. I wonder how much it bothers Him when preachers trying to justify the deletion of His words from Bibles.
