Righteous Anger
Ephesians 4:26 In your anger do not sin Ὀργίζεσθε καὶ μὴ ἁμαρτάνετε (BE ANGRY, and yet, not sin.)
Ephesians 4:17-25 17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. 20 That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21 when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. 25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
BE ANGRY, and yet, not sin.
When God looks at the Ephesian's culture (and ours), He's angry with the ways that they’ve:
- Perverted truth
- Celebrated impurity
- Made everything about themselves
Those things are a complete and utter assault on God Himself, and they're like spitting in the face of Jesus. We should be angry in the face of those things. Charlie Kirk (a man who shamelessly shared the Good News of Jesus with millions and millions of people and was willing to give his life for it) was martyred while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. We should be angry about that. That is a righteous anger, and we are joining God in His anger.
Romans 12:9 Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.
Unrighteous or Self-righteous Anger
Ephesians 4:25-27 25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold.
Justice is very real, and there are real ramifications for our actions, but it’s very easy to let a Godly anger get away from us and play into the hands of the enemy.
MOTIVATION
- There’s a big difference between someone disagreeing with you, and someone disagreeing with God. Your thoughts and feelings are just opinion. They’re subjective…
- God’s opinion isn’t actually opinion at all, it’s objective truth. It’s so easy to miss the mark on this, and think so passionately that we’re right, that we think our opinion is justice.
- "Just" means: based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair. God is the only one who decides what is morally right and fair.
Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.
When our anger comes from our flesh, it’s destructive.
TIME
James 1:19-20 19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
When we take time to seek God and we check our reason for anger with the Bible, we can reject our flesh and have an option to choose holiness.
Ephesians 4:26-27 26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold.
Not only are we supposed to not hold onto it for years, God makes it pretty clear we aren’t even supposed to hold onto it for days.
OUR RESPONSE
When we hold anger inside and we stuff it down deep and refuse to work through it, we don’t just store it for later, it grows and rots inside of us.
Proverbs 19:11 A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.
The ONLY way to get rid of Anger in your heart that will absolutely destroy you, is to repent, give it to God, and let him take on the burden. We need to embrace forgiveness and love our enemies like Christ did. Where we live in that tension between anger and love, God lives in a perfect HARMONY of righteous anger and love.
