Last week we talked about the importance of being honest, transparent, and speaking even painful truths to those around us. Yet do so out of love and humility, for our own benefit and for the benefit of those with whom we speak. Paul’s next command is not necessarily directly related, though really all these commands are connected. They are all expressions of love for one another and for Jesus Christ. Today we’re going to learn about anger, both as an aid to honesty and as a danger to ourselves and others. From Ephesians 4:26-27.

Anger ≠ Sin

^26a "In your anger do not sin":

Paul starts off with a quote, from Psalm 4:4 (NIV): “In your anger do not sin.” Notice: Paul does not call anger sin. He says that when anger comes upon us, we must not sin. Anger is not an excuse to do wrong or to do evil.

But anger itself is not necessarily sin. If it was, then God Himself would have sinned, and He is perfect so He cannot sin. Time and again from the time they came out of Egypt onward, the people of Israel provoked the Lord to anger. Not once, not twice, but many times! Will you then accuse God of sin?

It is not being angry that is sin, but it is what we do in our anger that may or may not be sin or lead us to sin.

God, of course, disciplined the people, sometimes even killing many among them. That too is not sin; that is justice. God is an avenger of evil and injustice. Sometimes right in front of our eyes! Sometimes the wicked man lives out his days to the fullest, but then in his death, God brings him into judgment. Remember that all those who refuse to obey and honor Him as God deserve death! In fact, as soon as any one of us breaks a single command of God’s Law, or does anything that God Himself would not do, or refuses to do the things He does, at that moment we deserve death!

There should be no one on earth who lives out their days. There should be no one in all of history who makes it to their teens! “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” writes Paul in Romans 3:23 (NIV). It is mercy to you and to me that we have lived to hear the Gospel and believe it. Many others live and reject the Gospel; their judgment is still hanging over their heads. No matter how long they live, if they do not repent and believe in Jesus, they will suffer eternal torment in payment for their rejection of God and His commands.

Remember Ephesians 2? The beginning of that chapter tells us that we were all objects of wrath while we lived in sin, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature! Who was filled with wrath? God!

And yet in a few more verses, Paul will tell us we need to get rid of all anger and wrath! That does not mean they are, in and of themselves, sin. But they so easily lead us into sin, because even as new creations, we are more accustomed to following the patterns of our old, sinful self, which leads us to do wrong in our anger.

Paul’s larger teaching here follows that of Psalm 37:8-9:

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.

Evil men do evil things in their anger, and they will not inherit eternity with Christ, but eternity in hell. You don’t want to be among them, so you must not let your anger lead you into evil.

God can be angry and not sin, because He is righteous through and through. Even when He avenges evil, He is doing what is good and right; He is not committing sin. Likewise, it is possible for you and I, in our new, righteous nature, to be angry and not sin. Hence, Paul’s instruction here.

But until we have become more accustomed to living in our new self and truly putting off the old, we would do well to catch ourselves every time anger rises and examining the cause of our anger, and choosing a righteous path forward.

Sources of Anger

Anger is an emotional response to circumstances around us. It can certainly become something much more, but as purely an emotional response it is not sin. It is rather a signal that something is not right. That’s where processing must immediately follow, before we react in our anger. It is the reaction in our anger—without godly processing—that will almost always be sin.

So what provokes our anger? I don’t have time to provide an exhaustive list, but I’ll try to give some big ones.

Consider Cain. He and Abel offered sacrifices to God, but only Abel’s was accepted, because it was a blood sacrifice. God rejected Cain’s offering, and Cain became angry. What angered him? That God didn’t accept what he offered. Cain wanted God to be pleased with what he thought was right, instead of doing what God had already made clear was right.

God even took him aside and sought to correct him: “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:6b-7, NIV).

Cain’s problem was with God, but he refused to repent and do what pleased God. He insisted on going his own way, expecting that God would have to bend to his will. The fruit of Cain’s anger was the murder of his brother! Not the justified killing of someone who did evil, but the evil of removing a competitor. Perhaps out of jealousy that Abel pleased God. Perhaps in an attempt to eliminate those who did what pleased God so God would have no choice but to accept what Cain was willing to offer!

Of course, God doesn’t bend to our will. Abel is safe with God and we will see him one day, worshiping the Lord together with us.

What is something that makes us angry? When we can’t control those in authority over us. When we offer something to God or to someone in authority and they’re not happy with it. We went to all that work, all that effort and were rejected. We want to set the terms by which we’re accepted. Whether by God, on the basis of whatever good works we’re willing to do. Or by any other authority in our lives: We want them to accept our work, whether we meet their standards or not.

Friends, that’s pride! That’s sin! That’s lifting ourselves up over those in authority over us. That’s not humbling ourselves and accepting the instructions and requirements placed on us. But we get angry when those in authority over us exercise that authority—especially as Americans! We value individual liberty! “Gondor has no king! Gondor needs no king!” We are Boromir in the Lord of the Rings; we want to be our own king!

Not getting the approval we crave—without meeting the requirements set by the one in authority over us—that angers us.

Related to that is what James records in the fourth chapter of his letter:

You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. (James 4:2-4, NIV)

When we really want some thing. We want a new car. We want a vacation. We want this or that. It could be anything! How about fighting for authority God did not give you? Or love or praise that we think we deserve? We want it and can’t get it. Something or someone stands in our way. So we get angry, sometimes angry enough like Cain to kill. But certainly to covet or quarrel or fight. Thing about the fights you’ve had as husband and wife or with a sibling or with a coworker or with a customer service rep. Whatever.

Did you get angry? Did your anger produce a righteous response or a sinful one? What were you fighting about? Was it something you wanted but weren’t getting? Was it something they got but you didn’t want them to have?

Was it something with eternal value? Something that would change the eternal destination of someone near and dear—or someone far away?

If we’re willing to fight and quarrel over something with no eternal value, are we not loving the things of this world? And by James’ definition, do we not then hate God? Are we not then an enemy of God?

We get angry when we don’t get something we really want. But the flip-side is that we also get angry when we do get things we don’t want.

How about the loss of a loved one, especially when they’re so young? How about acquiring an incurable disease or becoming crippled—or being born with a debilitating syndrome or missing limbs or sight or hearing? Or having a child suffering from something like that?

How about losing a job that you were doing great at and really loved? Losing your home. Losing your car. Losing your marriage.

You didn’t ask for it! You didn’t do anything wrong to deserve it!

You can look for someone to blame, and maybe there is another party that shares responsibility. But ultimately, if you believe in Jesus Christ, who is responsible for anything and everything that happens in your life? Good and bad.

What did Job say when he lost all his kids and all his wealth? “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 1:21b, NIV). And when he was struck with painful boils from the top of his head to the soles of his feet? “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10b, NIV).

Job understood that God was in complete control of everything that came his way. There are many of us who know of God and are able to honor Him through painful trials. We have living testimonies of faith and trust in God in this room!

But there are many people across this world and down through the ages who have received things they didn’t want and correctly identified God as the source, and cursed Him all their days! In their anger, they hated God! They didn’t turn to God and find comfort and grace to go forward. They rejected Him and set themselves as His enemy, even to rage against Him to their dying breath.

We don’t like it when we get things we don’t want. And it does produce anger.

But anger can oftentimes be a signal that something is truly not right.

We are created in the image of God and part of that likeness is a built in sensor for injustice. We are designed by God to recognize and hate injustice. But we don’t realize that our sensor is off. It overlooks our own rebellion and unconcern for the ways of God, otherwise we wouldn’t get so upset when things don’t go our way or when we get things we think we don’t deserve. Remember, we deserve death!

But there are legitimate cases of injustice, and they should anger us! Like when Moses saw an Egyptian beating a fellow Israelite. Or when David heard about the rich man who took his poor neighbor’s only sheep to feed to a guest. Or when God saw the false prophets who, by lying to the Israelites, “killed those who should not have died and have spared those who should not live” (Ezekiel 13:19, NIV).

Or today, when Christians are killed in Syria or Nigeria or North Korea for doing nothing more than believing in Jesus! Or when a brother or sister—or even a stranger—is falsely accused and condemned.

There are things we have truly done that deserve judgment, but there are things we have not done, for which we do not deserve condemnation. There is no lack of injustice in this world!

But what do we do when we see it? On a national or international scale, what can we do? We can raise awareness and try to get the powers that be to fix it, but we personally have no power to change nations. What about locally? What about when it comes home to our own family?

“In your anger do not sin.” We need to be careful that we respond with righteous behavior, using proper legal means. We’re not authorized to become vigilantes, physically or verbally attacking those who harm our loved ones. We’re not authorized to take justice into our own hands, burning and pillaging the perpetrators—or people we connect with the unjust. We can protest in legal and God-pleasing ways, but we cannot riot and do violence to people. The sword is in the hands of God, and He has shared it with the governing authorities. But even when it is those governing authorities who are perpetrators of injustice, we are not authorized by God to take up arms against them. It happens. Again and again, even in Scripture, but it is not the behavior of God-honoring people. There is only one example in Scripture that might challenge my statement, but even that one is questionable, and certainly insufficient to build a doctrine of rebellion.

There is one more thing that often provokes us to anger: Disobedience. This is what provokes God to anger again and again. This is what fills God with wrath toward unbelievers, whom Paul actually calls “sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2, 5:6; Colossians 3:6) in the original Greek.

Disobedience in anyone, no matter who they are, should shock and anger us. But be careful. Disobedience to any authority should shock and anger us. But disobedience to us, when we have no real authority over the person, should not shock or anger us—because it’s not actually disobedience! Disobedience requires authority. If I have no authority over a person and I ask them to do something and they choose not to do it—that is not disobedience! If I get angry, I’m angry because I didn’t get something I wanted, not because my authority was violated! That takes us back to the first cause of anger we talked about, and that is an illegitimate justification for anger! We’re in the wrong in that case!

A parent has a right to be angry when a child disobeys instruction. A supervisor has a right to get angry when one of his team members disobeys his directives. A police office has a right to get angry when a citizen fails to comply with his instructions.

But that doesn’t give them the right to blow up at the child or the team member or the citizen. Each one must follow God’s prescribed methods for proper rebuke and discipline of the disobedience. “In your anger do not sin.” Even those in authority have limits on how they express that authority. They can sin in what they call punishment—but not all punishment is sin!

But for a child to get angry at a parent who doesn’t do what they want, there’s no cause or justification for that! For a wife to get angry at a husband who doesn’t do what she wants—there’s no justification for that! For an employee to get angry at a boss when the boss doesn’t do what he wants—they have no right to get angry! For a citizen to get angry at the government because the government won’t do what they want—I’m sorry, but you have no authority there, you are rather under their authority.

You might feel angry, absolutely, but in your anger you must not sin. You have no right to retaliate in any way, shape or form. God won’t support you. Even if the authority is unjust (1 Peter 2:16-25). Remember Matthew 23? We spent several weeks talking about this.

Anger at disobedience is right, just as surely as anger at injustice is right. But be careful that you’re angry at the right person in the case of disobedience or injustice. Make sure you’re not the one in the wrong! Make sure you’re angry at the one who is truly disobedient!

But even when anger is right, that’s no excuse to sin. That’s Paul’s point in quoting Psalm 4:4.

Ah, but then what do we do with this anger, especially if it’s not correct? Or even if it is!

Do Not Stew

^26b Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,

Paul gives us a clue in the rest of this verse and in the passage he’s quoting from.

Number one: Do not stew in your anger! Do not let it smolder. Do not sit in it. We need to let it go. “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,” Paul says.

Be careful here. I do not believe Paul is saying that you only have until sundown to get rid of your anger. This is not a hard and fast deadline to get clear of your emotions. What happens when you get angry after dark? Do you get an extra 24 hours to stew in it?

Paul quotes part of Psalm 4:4, but the rest of Psalm 4:4 (NIV) gives insight into what Paul is intending here:

In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. Selah

“When you’re on your beds.” When is that? At night you say? After the sun has gone down? Is Paul actually referring to that? Oh, but he says not to let the sun go down on our anger! Does the psalmist give us freedom to be angry until we go to bed? Or do the two of them have the same point: Don’t put off dealing with your anger. Don’t delay processing it. Get on it as soon as possible, and if not before, then certainly while you’re lying quietly in bed. That’s when there are no distractions or excuses to delay dealing with your anger.

Interesting that the verse ends with a “selah.” “Selah” is basically a call to stop and meditate on what was just written or said. Combine that with what the verse actually says, “search your hearts and be silent,” it’s like a double-call to stop and process what you’re feeling and why. Why are you angry? Is the cause just and right?

If not, then you simply need to drop it. How? By recognizing and correcting your own wrong thinking about the situation, about what you’re after, about why you’re incorrectly angry. What wrong desire are you lusting after? What wrong thing are you demanding of those around you? What injustice are you perpetrating against the target of your anger? Recognize you’re the one in the wrong. Repent of your unjustified and unrighteous desire. And seek God’s forgiveness—and the forgiveness of the one you’ve wronged, if you did act out sin in your anger.

Don’t apologize to someone who has no idea what you were feeling! That’s more likely a sideways demand for the thing you haven’t yet given up! Sure, confess your sins to one another. Absolutely. But confess not just that you got angry because…. Confess that you have an unrighteous desire and you are committed to giving it up. Confession is always about the sin of the one confessing. It’s not a backhanded accusation against the one you confess to!

We need to process our anger correctly. Determine its cause and find a solution. We would do well to check in with others who are more spiritually mature to help us process things correctly. Maybe resolution requires forgiveness. Maybe it requires confession. Maybe letting go of some thing or some desire. Maybe it’s accepting unpleasant, unwanted, even unjust circumstances as ordained by God and therefore required for my good or the good of others. Maybe, as the one in authority, it means bringing discipline into the life of someone under your authority.

Consider God. How long has God been filled with wrath and anger? He waited almost 1500 years before destroying the pre-flood world. He punished the Israelites sometimes quickly, but never as much as their sins deserved. He endured them 40 years in the wilderness, then more than 900 years in the promised land, first under judges then under kings, until He finally cast them out of the land.

Generation after generation, He puts up with wicked men for about 70 or 80 years, then they pass and enter into judgment.

He is long-suffering, but He will eliminate the cause of all His wrath and anger. Through the Gospel, by bringing men into repentance, obedience and peace with Himself. Or at the end of Jesus’ millennial kingdom, when He judges all men and casts all those who refused to believe and obey Him into eternal torment in Hell, leaving only those who have been made new, committed to humble obedience and honor and love of Him.

Sometimes, that is the only solution to getting rid of our anger: By separating from the rebellious around us, who keep provoking us to anger. Anger that doesn’t come from our wrong ideas or wants or wishes. Anger that comes from true injustice and disobedience. Isn’t that what church discipline is about? “Expel the wicked man from among you” (1 Corinthians 5:13b, NIV)! In hope that there will be repentance and restoration of fellowship with the rebellious one.

We need to correct whatever provokes us to anger. We may not have power to remove such things. We may choose to endure them for a time, in hope of the repentance of those who provoke us. We may need to correct ourselves and our understanding of the world around us and our place in relation to God and those around us.

I lost a backpack once. I believe it was stolen. I was still a fairly young Christian at the time. There was nothing vital in it. Just a freebie Bible that was precious to me; I’d made lots of notes in it. And a notebook, where I wrote things I was learning from my Bible reading and messages I heard. And a library book—that turned out to be expensive to replace, but the police report got me off the hook.

When it happened, I kept telling myself all the right things. Maybe the guy who stole it would get some benefit from my Bible and notes! “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed by the name of the Lord.” On the surface, everything looked fine, but I couldn’t shake the deeper feeling of loss and anger that God would let me lose something so spiritually precious to me! Wasn’t it also precious to Him, the record of His teachings to me? Why did He let it happen?

Maybe a week went by, maybe longer. But one night I couldn’t take it any more. I walked out the door of my house and started giving God a piece of my mind! I wasn’t angry at the guy who stole it. It was God who allowed it, so it was God who was at fault! I spewed all my anger and frustration and hurt at Him.

And discovered God could take it. More than that: I discovered that God already knew everything boiling in the depths of my heart, and still accepted me. By pretending I wasn’t angry, I was keeping myself from open and honest communication with God, and preventing God from helping me process through my feelings and gain His perspective—and obtain real healing and release! That night actually marked a huge turning point in my relationship with God. He became even more real and more precious to me, and the stuff of this world took ten steps back in importance, compared to Him.

I went out raging; I came back rejoicing. It was such a small thing. How many of you have faced far greater challenges? Have you been honest with God? Have you taken your pain and confusion and anger to Him and let Him hear it and touch you, hug you and gently reveal to you His own heart? He may explain where you’re wrong, where you’re confused. He did with Job. But He might not do it with storms and lightning. He might do it with a still, small voice. He may just show up, and you’ll realize everything is just fine.

I never got the backpack back. I never met the guy who ended up with it. And I never needed to.

Please hear this: Paul’s instruction not to let the sun go down on our anger and the psalmists instruction to search our hearts on our bed have nothing to do with the person who made us angry. It’s all about us, dealing with our hearts, getting clarity from God and with God about the matter that provoked us. Neither of them say we need to confront the person who made us angry before the sun goes down. So I say this especially to you ladies: Don’t torture your husband in bed because he made you angry. Don’t keep him up late into the night while you explain his wrong, especially if he refuses to engage in the conversation or acknowledge his wrong. He’s right to put you off. That is not the time or place for such a discussion. That’s not what this verse requires of you.

It says to each one of us that before we do anything in response to whatever we think happened, we need to get things straight with God. If there is just cause for anger, anger still needs to be given up, and we need to determine what is a reasonable, rational and pleasing-to-God response to the wrong. If we’re angry for our own wrong, then we have opportunity to get our hearts right before God and realize our anger was never right in the first place. We let it go—before we make a fool of ourselves by sinning in our anger! We don’t involve the other person unless there is cause for it, and until an appropriate time when we’re all in a place to deal justly and graciously with the issue.

There is never justification for reacting in the moment of our anger. When anger flares, we need to step back and think through what actually happened and what actually needs to happen.

But we need to make good on that processing. The worst thing we can do is just walk away and leave the anger and its cause unprocessed. And that brings us to verse 27.

No Foothold

²⁷ and do not give the devil a foothold.

When we consciously stew in our anger or when we bury it and move on, that only makes things worse. The anger doesn’t go away; we don’t discover our own error; we don’t learn what God would have us do in response to whatever provoked the anger. There is no growth in any way. There is only a boiling cauldron of anger that smolders into bitterness. Bitterness closes the door of compassion for the one who did or did not truly offend us. It poisons our view of that person, so that more and more we grow to see them only through the eyes of that bitterness. We can’t see anything good in them. They can never do anything right. They always do everything wrong. On and on, until the path to reconciliation is blocked—not by them but by us.

Bitterness seeps out through our words and actions, how we treat that person and how we speak of them, either behind their back or even in front of their faces. It leads to all kinds of evil: slander, back-biting, envy, strife, insolence, gossip, deceit, malice, heartlessness, and on and on. Bitterness fixes a particular person (or people) as the target of all our venom, and we are tempted to use more and more tools in our toolbox to discredit and attack the person—all because we can’t get what we want. All because we do not trust God to teach us or to deal with the person or situation over whom, over which we have no control.

And you know who sits back laughing in delight? Satan. His mission is to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10). We become his pawn. After having been set free from his dominion, unprocessed or incorrectly processed anger can bring us right back under his control. He is stealing us from Christ and from our brothers and sisters. He is killing us spiritually and may likely win our eternal destruction if we do not repent and find freedom. He is destroying us spiritually and using us to destroy others.

A little unprocessed anger gives the devil a foothold in our hearts, where once he was entirely evicted by the coming of the Holy Spirit. Keep refusing to process the things that provoke us to anger, and that foothold grows. We give more and more ground to him, and give ourselves back over to him to do his will.

Conclusion

• Hold back when anger rises; take time to identify the cause

• Talk to a more spiritually mature believer for guidance; wrestle through it with God

• Identify what needs to be corrected, whether in you or in others

• Confess and renounce your wrong or humbly seek to help the one who provoked you

By the Gospel, we were set free from Satan’s domain of darkness and brought into Christ’s kingdom of light. We are called to put off the old self that dwells happily under Satan’s control, we are called to be made new in the attitude of our minds and to put on the new self created to delight in Christ’s ways.

Part of making our minds new is learning to process our anger in the light of God and His Word. We will discover that we have many things wrong, because the old paths we once lived in are so familiar and well-worn. We need to break from those old ways. We need to learn what God says is true and right. And we need to respond to Him and His Word in obedience.

Anger is a helpful tool for our growth. It is a signal that points out either things we have wrong or things we have right. Every time we’re provoked to anger, we need to take time out with God and with godly people to sort through the whys and wherefores. If we’re angry for the wrong reasons, we see clearly what needs to be corrected. If we’re angry for the right reasons, we have time to cool off and seek from God what needs to be done in response to the situation. That allows us to respond in a self-controlled, rational, godly manner.