Bible Lesson 160

Anger And The Christian

“Be angry but do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Ephesians 4:26-27

A SOFT ANSWER TURNETH AWAY WRATH: BUT GRIEVOUS WORDS STIR UP ANGER. PROVERBS 15:1

In Second Timothy chapter 4 beginning at verse One and reading through verse 4, God speaks to us through the Apostle Paul and says’. “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His Kingdom: Preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season, Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.” We have no other charge’other than to preach the Word of God! We are not to revise, or reinterpret, or leave out or to add to, what the Lord has left for us; and that is contained and is explained in the context of the Bible.

The Rabbi’s, in the time of Jesus, had invented a new and novel religion. God had given them a whole religion, that affected the whole of the person. It was not simply looking good to others, but it was to be good and bear good fruit before others. The true Kingdom of God which exists today on the earth in the hearts and minds of all those who have been ‘called, rebirthed, justified, and set apart for God’s use, is not simply about the outer man, it always begins with and in the inner man, and what Christians do is, to live in such a way before men that God is glorified (Matthew 5:16).

The Jews in the time of Jesus, followed the teachings of the Rabbi’s who had devolved in their lives to the point that they thought that it was only sin when it was manifested in the fleshly actions of man. They were after all under the law, and had never realized that the law always kills or at least makes us know that we cannot keep it in the word and spirit of the law. God always works in salvation to save sinners from the inside, out. God does a work in the regeneration of sinners that works on their ‘want-to’ and so they never want to do anything other than please God. For too long we have graded, so to speak, sin which God never does. We like to think that there are ‘nominal Christians’ and ‘carnal Christians’; but I ask anyone to tell me when God ever did a nominal or carnal work.

We like nominal Christians and carnal Christians because it, in our minds, lowers the standard of conduct for the Christian. Certainly there are some Christians who appear closer to God and more obedient to the Way of God than others, but that does not make them one bit either nominal nor carnal. Whenever you see a person who says that they are a Christian but lives in a carnal manner, he is either deluding himself/herself or they are ready for judgment by God, as heretics. Was Christ either nominal or carnal’ Give me one example where He exhibited any action that would allow us to classify Him as such. There are none, and we who are saved, are people who are ‘in Christ and Christ is in us,’ and we are assured in Matthew 1:21 that His name is Jesus because He came to save His people from their sin.

Now, I have said all of that in order to set the stage for saying this. We in the visible church of our day have begun to look a lot like the Pharisees and the other groups in Israel in the time of Jesus. We do not intend to submit or commit ourselves to anyone or anything, so we are hypocrites. We know what is right, but we think that if we deny reality, God will accept less than submission from us. I want you to think, along with me, about critical scriptures that so many, so-called Christians today, have ignored or attempted to circumvent. For instance Matthew 7:1, where we read, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” The majority of Christians today, at least in America, have taken that to mean that we must never, under any circumstance, judge the actions of another church member, or anyone that calls themselves Christians.

Isn’t that what you believe, and what most people believe’ Why would anyone who has ever looked seriously at Chapter 7 of Matthew, has to know that in context what the first five verses of that chapter is saying is, that Christians must keep their lives in line with the Will of God so that they can judge righteous judgments. Christ knew the pressures of the flesh and living in this world and He knew that those who belong to Christ would have to be responsible for the lives of their brothers and sisters, and so He told us to stay close to Him and to tell other brothers and sisters whenever they got on the wrong path. We all need that observation, and encouragement from our brothers and sisters in Christ. Those who are rebellious like the idea that nobody could or would ever call any sin to their attention, like the idea of disobeying God and so they never read past verse one of Matthew 7. Now to get to the crux of our subject on anger in the Christian life, let me say that when we see a person do things that demean the Word and Will of our God, we are commanded to be angry; but in our anger we are not to sin (Ephesians 4:25-26).

Look at how verse 25 of Ephesians chapter 4, states that truth. It says, therefore, so we must look back there to see what for, and we find that the Christian is a new creature, with a renewed mind and so we must be truthful rather than to lie by being deceitful. In these verses in Ephesians chapter four God speaks to us through the Apostle Paul and says, and I paraphrase, “Remember now, you are part of the building of God and so as brothers and sisters together in a world of darkness, you must never lie to another Christian, we are to speak the truth as we observe the lives of others (Having examined ourselves beforehand, 2nd Corinthians 13:5). We are speaking here of Christians helping other Christians to stay in line with the Word and Will of God, we are not to judge the lost because they are already under the wrath of God. There is anger and there is anger (Orge and Thumos) are both Greek words that deal with anger. Orge normally speaks of individuals who become angry or in the language of our day, they get bent out of shape, mad, hurt, wounded in heart, upset about something.

That is what is meant there in Ephesians 4:26 where we read, “Be angry, but sin not”. we are commanded to be angry at sin in our own lives and in the lives of others. This not speaking about wrath or revenge but about an unsettled state in the heart and mind of the saved person whenever they find sin in the lives of other Christians or in his own life. That’s right’we are sometimes perfectly correct when we become angry with ourselves about some sin in our own lives. Anger purifies the individual and the church;because it calls it’s attention, in a loving way, to sin that must be given up. Now, I said that we correct in a loving way but normally, at least at the loving rebuke of a brother or sister will normally see it as unloving and even spiteful, because they knew in their heart of hearts that the sin they had embarked upon was ungodly, but they wanted to do it. Anger should never identify us as a person, our anger is held inside’.not poured out upon the head of those who are in sin.

Anger causes us to love the person enough to go to them and tell them the truth. How we react to our anger at sin points out the degree of our Christianity. We should never allow anger to cause us to even think about revenge or wrath, in fact, God speaks to us through the writer of Romans and says “Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Therefore if your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink: For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”

The part about heaping coals on his head refers to an old Egyptian custom that involved a person who wanted everyone to know they were showing contrition would carry a pan of burning coals on their head, so we are not to make the fire or place it on another’s head. Of course our mindsets as the Redeemed is not to cause pain to anyone because that is the way that represents the anger that seeks some sort of revenge. Remember God told us that vengeance is His (Romans 12:19).

We as born again, redeemed, and obedient to God, must be able to see the complete picture about our lives here on this earth. If we seek to do that, we will see ourselves in every sinner, and we will remember that God has said that there will be a day of judgment. So when we look at a wayward Christian, we must remember that there but for the grace of God go I. We want God’s plan to be followed in our own lives and in the lives of other Christians and so when we see sin in the life of a brother or sister, anger should rise up in us’.not at the person but at their sin, and then that anger should be the agent of God to cause us to lovingly deal with the person about their sin.

We must also remember that we are commanded by God to be strict about putting any sin away in our own lives. We should never correct another if we have any sin in our own lives, that means that we must be continually examining our lives with God’s Word the Bible (2nd Corinthians 13:5). To not correct ourselves (always having our doorstep clean, would be comparable to our being a policeman who was drunk on wine or alcohol, and then us stopping someone else and giving them a ticket for having alcohol on their breath. God gave us anger to cause us to think about what is going on around us, in light of God’s Holiness and Justice, and He gave us rebuke and forgiveness to help keep ourselves and other Christians on track with the Will of God (Luke 17:3-4; Matthew 18:15-17; Ephesians 4:22-27). We are all part of God’s building which is called ‘the ecclesia’, and any sin among any of the truly saved effects the whole body. That is why it is so important that it be kept clean and pure and free of sin. That can only happen when all of us are born again, indwelled by the Holy Spirit and obedient.

We must remember that our anger is more a prodding of the Holy Spirit, in us, to make us aware of sin in ourselves and others and our anger must never be allowed to produce unbridled wrath which may produce vengeance. Vengeance belongs to the Lord. James 1:19-21 tells us to be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. And that wrath that is spoken of there is anger that has been distilled in the heart and mind of an uninformed Christian. We must be real Christians and not simple church members if we are to be able to keep the commands of God, so first we must know the Word of God in order to know and understand what sin really is and then we will know that we are not to explode and seek vengeance on a brother who sins, that is God’s jurisdiction. We have too many people who are teaching things that they do not know and leading others to places that they have never been. If we know the Word of God as we should, then we will be able to know who it is that is preaching and teaching the truths of God.

It is clearly the job of every Christian to be awake and aware of what is going on in those who occupy their immediate space, and to care enough about other Christians that we would even risk a relationship because we will lovingly rebuke sin in the lives of others. Of course, we must always examine ourselves for sin, before we begin to judge the sins of others. You may wonder what sin would warrant your going to a brother or sister in Christ and telling them of a sin you see in their lives; and I am glad that you ask. We must never ‘make up’ any sin to challenge. God tells us in Matthew 7:1-5, that we are to be ready to “remove the speck from a brothers eye”, but it also reminds us that must examine and make sure that we are not guilty of sin before we do that. The things that we must judge are sins that we know are sins from God’s Word, the Bible. We may not like the way a brother combs his hair or the color of his eyes, or the way he speaks but to judge those kinds of things would be censorious and God commands us to judge with righteous judgments, (John 7:24), that means that we judge only what God has judged.

We need to stop here and remind ourselves that anger or the capacity for anger and wrath exists in every man, woman and child that lives in this world, but the people of God, those who have been born again, created in Christ, and obedient to The Father, through the Son, have a new gene so to speak, by the influence of the Holy Spirit in us, we are the meek of God. When God saves anybody and everybody, God makes a difference in them. Those who are the Children of God are powerful people, but they are people whom God has ‘meeked’ (Matthew 5:5). Meeked is a term used of bringing a horse, (a powerful animal) under control so that they can provide service to us. In their natural state a horse is not of much use to us and so we have to train him or break him so that we become his master. We must be broken by God so that we can be used in His service.

We cannot and do not kick and buck and resist God. We are capable of anger; however we become angry at the sin instead of imagined wrongs committed against us. One of the reasons that we find so much to criticize in congregations today is that we have not been taught the real truth about our relationship with God. We do not know much about God in most instances and we have pretty much come to the point that we use God in our conversations rather loosely. We seem to think that the word God, is to us, a medal that we pin on our shirt and it serves as a good luck charm. That or else we think that we can use Him as a celestial bell-hop, which we call on when we are in need, or in trouble, and them dismiss Him until we need Him again. With that kind of misunderstanding of God it is no wonder that most people would not recognize God, if they tripped over Him.

We should preach the God of the Bible as He exists and has existed for eternity. He is the Great ‘I AM’, The eternal and only God who created all that we know including you and I. He is the God who took nothing and created everything (Genesis chapters 1 and 2). It was He who simply spoke and all that we know came into being. It was God who breathed life into the body of Adam that He had formed out of the dust of the earth. God not only created all things, He organized all things and gave them purpose and continuity. He elected or chose a people from every nation, tribe and tongue, in eternity past, to be the people of Christ (Christians). He chose those people not by numbers or percentages but by name and personality.

Why He chose some and passed by others, only God knows and who are we to question Him. He is the creator and we are simply His creatures. He set the course of the planets and tilted some one way and some another as they travel in the same heavens and yet have maintained their speed and tract for these unknown ages. He has a master plan which was His from eternity but that includes you and I and our daily and hourly and moment by moment lives. God is Great and He is Gracious, and His children obey Him and follow Him as we live on this earth. If we can conceive of that great and even greater God, then it will make a monumental difference in how we follow and serve Him.

God created those that we consider good as well as those that we consider bad, and He is working out His eternal plan in everyone of us. He has left us many things that we should do and many that we should not do and He clearly marked each one. He told us to be careful with our anger and my advice to you is that you cannot know what God requires of you unless you seek that knowledge from the only source where it is contained and that is the Bible, the inerrant, infallible, and inspired Word of God. Think on these things.