On Anger

From a speech I gave a couple years back at a co-op I go to.

Anyone here get angry?

Does anyone here have justified anger?

No.

I’m gonna extrapolate on that. If you see something you don’t like, an angry emotional reaction is natural. But according to Scripture, if we then choose to continue in anger, we have sinned.

Now, some of you will be thinking, “Now, Dutch, aren’t you a fifteen year old kid? Who are you to dictate what sin is? You don’t know what I’m going through, so how can you tell me not to be angry?”

And the answer is: I may be a random fifteen year old, but Jesus was not. I mean, he kind of was, at one point, but still. He knows what we’re going through, and he compared anger to murder.

Let’s run down a list of verses about anger, shall we?

Turn, if you have a Bible on your person, to Matthew 5:21-22.

“You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’

“But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.”

Paraphrased, as how I might say it and am saying it at this minute today:

“You’ve been told that God told our ancestors to, you know, not murder people. That if they did they would be in danger of going to Hell.

But I’m telling you that even if you are angry with someone, that’s enough reason to go to the place with all the lawyers. Like if you call someone a moron and he might sue you, if you curse someone, congratulations, ‘cause you’ve just sentenced yourself to a very long stay in that place with no air conditioning.”

Jesus also said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

Also, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

Sounds like we’re supposed to take this thing about anger (orgizō is the Greek word here) seriously, unless he wanted us to start dividing his sayings into the sections of “for the Jews” and “for other people”—yeah, probably not.

Paul later wrote to the Ephesians:

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Ephesians 4:31

The word translated “wrath” usually means “spiritedness”. The word for “anger” is the usual one, orgē. Paul is putting anger alongside slander and malice. Anyone here have justified feelings of malice?

Ephesians 4:26:

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (ESV)

This one’s interesting.“Anger” is used twice in the ESV of this verse, but if you go and look with a certain online Bible study tool at the Greek, there’s two different words used. The first one is orgizō, and the second one is parorgismos. And what’s interesting is that both those words generally refer to indignance, or a quick and strong emotional reaction to something we dislike. So it makes sense to me that this verse is referring to the primary form of the emotion of anger, and not to the continued harboring of it, or the usual meaning of our word anger.

So, the meaning of this verse appears to be: if you start to feel angry, take it to God, like David did. Your deadline to get rid of that anger is the end of the day. Get rid of it quickly, before it becomes continued rage, which is sinful.

Now, some of you probably are going to disagree with me. At least 12% of you have likely already come up with their own alternative interpretations. But this isn’t a game of which interpretation fits one verse. What a good investigator does is try to come up with a model which gives reasonable interpretations for all the points of data. That’s what I'm trying to do. So just because you can read these words and imagine some other meaning doesn’t mean that idea is the best.

“But Jesus got angry”

In the story of the hypocritical servant (Matthew 18:23-35), the king is described as being angry. But what some people fail to realize is that we are not the king in that story. We’re the servants. The parable is intended to communicate that, as the Lord’s Prayer states, if we don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive us. Think about every sin you have ever committed. Now, what if someone did all that to you, times 100 billion or so? That’s what Jesus has forgiven. Oh, and he had to be crucified to do it.

In the Temple courts, Jesus once made a whip and chased out the money-changers and corrupt salesmen. But he appears to have used the whip on the animals, not the people, and at the Cross forgave the sins of those guys. We aren’t Jesus. We’re the money changers.

As far as I can tell, only one time in all of the New Testament is Jesus actually stated to have gotten angry. That’s in Mark 3, when he heals a man with a withered hand. And he looked around at them [the Pharisees] with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

Again, we are not Jesus. We’re the Pharisees. Yes, he’s forgiven us, but we keep on sinning. Which is why his grace is so amazing—as John Piper says, faith in future forgiveness is a centerpiece of the Gospel. Some of you would probably say that Jesus sanctified us once and for all, and I technically agree. But since God’s outside of time, the process is also ongoing in a way.

Conclusion

Anger may seem like a nice way to express yourself or fuel action. It may appear to be a righteous fury at evil. It may just plain feel good.

But I think it’s plain that the Bible tells us that the decision to hold onto your anger is bad. If you get angry, express your feelings to God, and then, with his help, you can calm down. That way you will not wake up the next morning still harboring a grudge. The sooner you get the idea that you somehow deserve your anger out of your head, the better off you’ll be.