Anger is a common human affection in this world. The Scripture tells us that God can be angry and records many cases of God’s anger and man’s anger. A simple search of the term, anger, shows that it appears 267 times in the ESV Bible, not counting similar terms such as wrath, fury, etc. God’s anger/wrath is always holy and righteous, and at the same time powerful, merciful, and gracious. God’s anger is towards sin and sinful creatures, out of his hatred of sin and out of sin’s rebellion against him. This mutual antagonism is the immediate cause of God’s anger. Without sin, there was no anger from God, since all things created by God was good (Gen. 1:31). We shall be perfect, as God is perfect (Mt. 5:48), and we shall imitate Christ (1Cor. 11:1, Eph. 5:1-2). therefore, if we ever get angry, our anger shall imitate our Lord’s anger. That is the key to understand the biblical teaching on Christian anger.
The Scripture warns us the danger and sinfulness of being angry. “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.” (Ps. 37:8) “For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” (Jas. 1:20) “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.” (Prov. 29:11) “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.” (Eph. 4:31, Col. 3:8, 1Tim. 2:8, also Mt. 5:22) Hot-temperedness generates conflict amongst people (Prov. 15:18, 20:3, 29:22), and anger is related to foolishness (Prov. 14:16-17, 29, 17:27, 19:19, 22:24, 30:33, Eccles. 7:9), from which a wise man should distant himself (Prov. 22:24-25). “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;” (1Cor. 13:4-5, also Prov. 10:12), all these negatives referred here are often roots of anger, which also appear in the list of the works of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-21, also Mk. 7:20-23). Anger may also come from a heart of self-revenging, but “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God” (Rom. 12:19) The leaders of the church shall not be “arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain” (Titus. 1:7). It is significant that “quick-tempered” is mentioned together with being drunk, violent, and greedy.
But the Scripture does not define all anger as sin. If that were the case, God would have sinned and our Lord would have sinned. Again, God’s anger is holy. God is angry towards something that deserves God’s anger, although God often shows his grace even in his anger, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Ex. 34:6-7) Our Lord rebukes all kinds of people, including Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees, apostles, disciples, etc., for all kinds of particular reasons. The terms, anger or wrath, are not always used, but it is difficult to fathom that there is no anger in some of our Lord’s rebukes (though not always). When he criticizes the Jewish leaders’ abuse of God’s temple, God’s Word, and God’s people, is there no anger? (Mt. 15:1-9, 23:1-36, Jn. 2:13-17). Apostle Paul, who teaches multiple times on anger, is certainly angry at certain times, towards some Jews (Acts. 18:6), some wayward Christians (1Cor. 4:18-21, 5:1-2, Gal. 1:6-7, 4:9-11), and false teachers (Gal. 1:8-9, 5:12).
God’s anger is righteous anger, and so is the Lord’s anger. A man of God may also have righteous anger, as shown by Moses, Joshua, Phinehas, David, Elijah, Isaiah, Paul, Peter, etc. The question we need to think is not whether anger is sin, but how to distinguish righteous anger and sinful anger. How can we be angry but not sin? A couple of brief points here.
First, why are we angry? Sinful anger is to be angry for the wrong reasons. Righteous anger is always towards sinners who sin, but not all sins stir up anger in the Lord. He is disappointed by all sins, but he is not angry at all sins. This distinction is important. Not that man does not deserve God’s righteous wrath, but that God has mercy in his righteousness. The God who hates a sinning sinner is also the God who loves that sinner. Our Lord interacts with sinners in various manners, which includes anger but certainly not limited to anger. He is angry at times, but he is not always angry, even though sinners justly deserve his anger all the time. He is patient and merciful to sinners. His patience and mercy are sufficient but not unlimited in the sense that a sinner can abuse and tempt without consequence. His anger is reserved fort those abusers and tempters, who reject Christ and shamefully indulging in their sin while having God’s undeniable testimonies right in front of them.
There are those rejecting the legitimacy of anger in Christian life. They advocate a “pure” mercy, patience, and tolerance, leaving no challenges against sin. These theological and moral jellyfish are not our interests here. We are talking about those who care about God’s truth and Christian holiness. Often we tend to fall into another trap that, we easily become angry at the provocation of any sin. Our defense is that, since all sins are attacking God’s truth and Christian holiness, we must be serious and not overlook sin. Then we enter into a state of “quick to anger”, which is exactly what the Scripture warns against (Prov. 14:29, 16:32, 19:11, Jas. 1:19). Above all, God is slow to anger (Ex. 34:6-7, Ps. 103:8). It is easy to get angry at sin indiscriminately, and that is always accompanied by self-righteousness towards others and self-defeatism towards us, since without omniscience we always land on some selective points in others or in us.
Slow to anger is not never be angry. We shall not eliminate anger but we must consciously limit anger to those things deserve God’s anger and then ours. We shall not be angry in something or someone God is not angered by. Most of our demeanor should be of peace, patience, and mercy, as someone who understand the depth of our own sin, the difficulty of our own struggle in sin, and the height of God’s mercy to us. We shall not take our current state for granted, as if it is our own achievement. Grace prohibits our boasting, and then prohibits our anger out of boasting. Boasting is a great source of anger, and humility is the antidote to it. When we boast and be angry at others, what are we angry about? Other break the order of universe constructed by our boasting. How dare they do this? How dare they do this to me? Often we are more provoked by us being hurt than God being dishonored.
Second, how do we express our anger? If we have good reasons to be angry, how to express this anger? In any form? No. a righteous cause to anger is not a license to sin. We can be angry but shall not sin. Here self-righteousness sneaks in again. We sometimes manipulate as righteousness cause to have pleasure in rebuking others. We enjoy standing on high and look down upon those spiritually, morally, or intellectually inferior. They may deserve God’s anger and our anger, but they do not deserve our bully. We should communicate clearly and forcefully of the nature of their errors and the logic of biblical truth, by teaching, reproofing, correction, and training. Nothing less, and nothing more. To shower our distain on them is to sin. Their errors are so serious that it is not the occasion to smuggle our own agenda into this interaction. Our anger must be self-controlled.
Our anger shall be directed to glorifying God and edifying man. Does our manner of addressing this issue glorify God? Does it glorify God’s truth and grace? Is it befitting a servant of God, a follower of Christ? Our arguments may be solid as rock, but what about our approach of making those arguments? We can easily project the right content of our address into a right state of the heart. But that is not always the reality. The biblical reasoning may be used to conceal the unbiblical heart. Edification does not outlaw harsh words, but harsh words do not equal to edification either. There is certainly a lot of space for gentleness in pastoral ministry and Christian interaction. In rare occasions, if harsh words are used to warn the one going astray or the bystanders, they must be carefully chosen and wisely delivered. There is a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to tear, and a time to sew (Eccl. 3:1-8). Sometimes there is need for bulldozers, but sometimes not. We shall not be afraid of driving some people away with truth, since truth is offensive, but we shall not put stumbling blocks before people.
