(Preface: I published the following article in December 2020. I decided it was worth a repost this week since I’ll be preaching an entire sermon on anger, more specifically on Ephesians 4:26-27, one of the passage mentioned in this article below. -MG, 11-16-23)
Since March, I noticed an increase in angry people. Aren’t you glad you and I don’t have that same problem? Well, actually, that was sarcasm. This post is about how you and I need to be on the lookout for the same kind of attitude that we find so objectionable in others.
This may not seem like a Christmas post, but very little about 2020 has been normal, so why start now? (I have written a version of this post before, most recently in November 2016. But I thought it was worth an update.) Here goes:
Plenty of passages show why anger can lead us to sin, but there are also pesky passages that command us, “Be angry, and do not sin.” (Ps 4:4; Eph. 4:26) That’s because there is such a thing as righteous anger. Sin and injustice should make you angry. First and foremost, you should be angry, because sin is a violation of God’s holy Law. He’s the King, and His decree has been violated, and this wrong must be righted!
And the problem with so much of our anger is not that we are angry about the wrong sinful actions but that we’re angry on the wrong person’s behalf and angry at the wrong person’s sin.
On the wrong person’s behalf – In Ps 51:4 (a hard-to-translate verse), David acknowledges that his sin with Bathsheba (and against her husband/his soldier Uriah) is first and foremost a sin against Yahweh, the creator of life and the creator of marriage. Yes, he has wronged Uriah and Bathsheba. But the primary offense is against God. Uriah and Bathsheba are His creations; David cannot sin against them without first rebelling against God, the Only God, who demands absolute allegiance to Him before He demands one to love our neighbors, His fellow image-bearers.
At the wrong person’s sin – My primary calling as a Christian is not to repent of your sin. It’s to repent of and crucify my sin. For example, David’s army commander Joab is a pretty shady character. In 2 Sam 11 Joab complies with David’s heinous command to murder Uriah through dastardly military strategy. But David’s confessions in 2 Sam 12 and Ps 51 never mention, “Joab’s guilty, too!” It’s not that David is unaware of Joab’s complicity; it’s just that it doesn’t matter.
So often, I’m mad at sin, but I’m mad at sin committed against me, committed by others. In the process God’s holiness becomes an afterthought. So often, I’m mad at sin, but it’s the sins of others. I want mercy for my sin, but I want justice and judgment for the sins of others. The Bible turns the tables on all of that: Love God and His Law, and be offended when He doesn’t receive glory. Love God, and be grieved when you don’t.
Yet Nathan the Prophet (2 Samuel 11-12) shows us this: There is a time to be angry over sin, even the sin of someone else, even if we have to repent of our unrighteous elements of anger, too. The answer is not to wait until our anger is pure and wholly righteous, because on this side of heaven, we will never be wholly righteous or wholly holy. The answer is still to be angry and not sin. And if you do sin in your anger, be angry at that sin, too, and bring it before a Holy God who has poured out His wrath upon Another who alone could stand the Heat of His anger and live to tell about it. The answer is not less anger when sin is committed. It’s more anger and, most importantly, the right kind of anger. Anger that’s offended on behalf of God and His tarnished majesty. Anger that isn’t afraid to turn against self before it turns to the Savior.
[Afterword: I began to use the following phrase to describe life in 2020 and early 2021:
Almost everyone is overreacting to something right now.
Almost no one thinks it’s their fault.
Everyone (no exception) could do a better job reacting to the overreactions around them.
The craziness of 2020 is mostly past, but the encouragement to do a better job reacting to the overreactions around me is still a word that I need to hear occasionally. -MG, 11-16-23]