*Editor’s Note: The following is a sermon manuscript in a three-part series preached by Pastor Brice Bigham. To listen to that sermon, click here.
Once all three sermon manuscripts have been posted on the CBTS, they will be linked together here.
I. Introduction
Our subject for this evening is something that poses great danger to the unity and well-being of your families and of this church. Very often, it is excused and tolerated, even while it is destroying relationships among us. There may be someone in here who has overlooked and tolerated this sin to such a degree that you are not even sure what is going wrong in your life.
I’m talking about sinful anger.
I’m talking about the man who loses his temper at someone at customer service. The mother who yells at her kids. The church member who’s offended by another member. The one who loses his temper in traffic. Or the one who yells at his computer screen. The sister who feels bitter at someone who left her out. The wife who feels resentful because she can’t get her husband to understand her. The husband who feels angry that his wife doesn’t consider his needs.
In his book Uprooting Anger, Robert Jones says,
“Anger is a universal problem, prevalent in every culture, experienced by every generation. No one is isolated from its presence or immune from its poison. It permeates each person and spoils our most intimate relationships. Anger is a given part of our fallen human fabric…Sadly this is true even in our Christian homes and churches.”[1]
And brethren, we are not immune to this deadly sin.
What is anger? Anger is a passion that is aroused by a sense of injustice carried out against us or against someone else. Jones defines it as “a whole-personed active response of negative moral judgment against perceived evil.”
But if you read this definition carefully, anger is not always sinful. The Apostle Paul makes this clear in our text, Ephesians 4:26, where he says, by the Holy Spirit:
“Be angry and do not sin.”
Over the next three weeks, I’ll be preaching on the subject of sinful anger. My hope in this series is to help you discern where sinful anger is at work in your life, and to equip you with Scripture truth that will help you to bring it into subjection to Christ.
Tonight, my goal is to help you distinguish righteous anger from sinful anger and to discern the causes of both. In this first sermon, I will address: I. Distinguishing Two Kinds of Anger, II. The Roots of Righteous Anger, and III. Some Roots of Sinful Anger.
But before we begin, let’s pray and ask God for help and understanding…
II. Two Kinds of Anger
Jonah was very angry. And the Lord appeared to him and asked, “Do you do well to be angry?” And this is the big question that the Lord wants us to ask ourselves when we are angry.
The Bible teaches that there are two kinds of anger, righteous anger and sinful anger. In our text, “be angry and do not sin,” we learn that not all anger is sinful. There is such a thing as righteous anger. God himself is sinlessly angry, and we may be sinlessly angry. However, we must never assume that anytime we are angry, it is righteous anger. In fact, most of the time that we’re angry, it is sinful anger.
The Lord condemns sinful anger, and it ought not characterize a Christian. The Lord told his disciples that “anyone who is angry with his brothers is liable to the judgment”, likening it to murder (Matthew 5:22). The Holy Spirit desires that “men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling” (1 Tim. 2:8). The Apostle says that we are to “put away anger and wrath” (Col. 3:8) and he condemns “fits of anger” (Gal. 5:20). All of these are in reference to sinful anger.
Now, on the surface, some might read our text, “Be angry, and do not sin,” as if it implies that the internal feeling of anger is neutral, and only its fruit or expression is sinful. But I believe this way of reading the text is unbiblical.
God does not ever permit us to harbor sinful beliefs and feelings. We know that sin is not only committed with our mouths or hands, but with our minds and our hearts. So, this text is not teaching that we may harbor sinful anger so long as it doesn’t leak out from the heart into the mouth. No, Jesus teaches that it is the heart that defiles us, and that out of the heart flow sinful actions. If our mouths speak angrily, it is because we have angry hearts. And that is the real problem.
Paul is commanding the Ephesians to be righteous in anger, and not to sin. There are things in this world that should make Christians righteously angry. But there are also sinful reasons to be angry. Moreover, there are righteous ways to express anger, and there are unrighteous ways to express anger. This text teaches that we are to be only righteously angry both internally, in our minds and hearts, and externally, in our words and actions.
There are at least two things to look for in knowing whether our anger is righteous or sinful. The first is the root, or motivation, of the anger. That’s what we’ll focus on this evening. The second is the expression of the anger, or the fruit of the anger, or what anger does – Lord willing, we’ll talk about that next week.
But now that we have noted the two kinds of anger, let’s move to our second heading, the root of righteous anger.
III. The Root of Righteous Anger
We know that there is such a thing as righteous anger, because our God is righteously angry.
Psalm 7:11 says, “God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.” Nahum 1:2-3 says, “The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.”
God never sins when he is angry. His anger is always righteous. When God is angry, he is angry with actual sin, or sinners, in the purest sense. God is angry for righteous purposes because his own holy and perfect will is being violated. He’s angry with sin that opposes his very character, rule, and rights. God is goodness itself, so to oppose God is to oppose all that is good and beautiful.
And then, God always expresses his anger in a righteous and holy manner, consistent with his revealed moral will. His anger is not arbitrary (random) or uncontrolled, but it is holy and absolutely virtuous in its expression.
Our Lord Jesus was righteously angry. In Mark 3:4, we are told that he was angry with the Pharisees and grieved at their hardness of heart. The Lord Jesus was zealous for the glory of God, and so he was angry with sin. Yet the Lord was never sinfully angry. He was never angry for sinful reasons, and His anger was never expressed in sinful ways.
And because our Lord is righteously angry, God’s image bearers may also be righteously angry. We may feel and express anger in a way that is consistent with God’s moral will. If we witness egregious sin against God or his image bearers, anger is an appropriate and even righteous response. If some things don’t make us angry, we need to check our pulse, because we may be spiritually dead. Sin should make us angry. How can we say that we love God if we don’t hate sin?
But then, because of our fallen nature, the opposite is often true. We’re not angry with what God is angry with, and we are angry at things that God is not angry about. What is it that makes anger righteous, and how do we know when it crosses the line into sin?
Robert Jones draws from Scripture three helpful criteria for righteous anger. These three standards mark God’s righteous anger, and they should mark ours as well.
First, righteous anger must be in reaction to actual sin. Second, it focuses on God and His Kingdom, rights, and concerns, and not on me and my kingdom, rights, and concerns. Third, it is accompanied by other godly qualities and expresses itself in godly ways.
I’d like to flesh these out just a bit and give some examples from Scripture.
First, righteous anger must be in reaction to actual sin. And this means, brethren, that we need to ensure that we have a thorough knowledge of the moral will of God. This is why 1/3 of our catechism is about the law of God. The question you must ask yourself when you are angry is, “What is the sin that I am angry with?” If there is no sin, then you are the first to sin by becoming angry at something that is not the moral will of God. Another good question to ask would be, “Is God angry about this?” If not, then that should give us immediate pause. Who are we to be angry at something that God is not angry at? To be angry at such things makes us like Cain.
Cain was angry with Abel, because Abel’s sacrifice was accepted, and his was not. Because of his anger at another’s righteousness, he became the sinner against God, one worthy of death. The subject of our anger must be actual sin.
Second, righteous anger is focused on God and His concerns, and not on me and my concerns. This means that righteous anger must flow out from that prayer of the Lord that we often pray, “Your Kingdom come, and your will be done.” He is the priority. If we are to be righteously angry, we must be angry for the cause of God and for what concerns him. If we become angry for ourselves alone, then sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you.
Early in his reign, Saul exemplified this kind of righteous anger. Saul became angry for God and His people when under threat from the Ammonites. He righteously focused his anger, mustered his troops, and with holy zeal for God defended the cause of God and His people. But then, at the end of his reign, he became angry at the popularity of David, because it was a threat to his own rule, and that anger conceived and gave birth to murder. He was seeking his own kingdom, rights, and concerns, and not the Lord’s. Brethren, if you’ve been angry this week, was it because of zeal for God’s kingdom and God’s will? Or was it for your own Kingdom, like Saul?
Third, righteous anger must be accompanied by godly qualities and express itself in a godly manner. We can be angry for something that is actual sin, and with a Godward concern, but then we can sin in reaction to it. Lord willing, we’ll talk in more detail about godly expressions of anger in the weeks that follow.
These are some of the roots of righteous anger, and anytime we feel anger arising, we must evaluate whether we do well to be angry. We are commanded, be angry and do not sin. We are to be angry at the things that made our God angry, that made the Lord Jesus angry.
And, ask yourself, what is it that should be the most common occasion of anger in our hearts? We don’t know anyone like we know ourselves. We see our sinful thoughts like no one else does. And so, should we not be angry most often with our own sin?
In 2 Corinthians 7:11, the Apostle praises the Corinthians because of their godly grief and their indignation toward their own sin. It is a most righteous anger and pleasing to God when it is first directed humbly and sincerely toward our own sins and failures. I hope that you have a righteous frustration with your own sin. One that drives you regularly to humble repentance and earnest hope for future glory.
But then, what are the roots of sinful anger?
IV. The Roots of Sinful Anger
There may be a few people in this room who have felt helplessly guilty about sinful anger. You know it’s wrong to yell at your kids. You know it’s wrong to blow up at your wife. You try to control it, and you have a good week or two, but then there you are doing it again. Why are our efforts unsuccessful?
Many times, when we’re angry, we blame it on a catalyst, or a person or event that caused it. But if we do that, the solution will be superficial. Something like, “I just need to avoid this person.” But this is not enough. We need to go deeper, or we will not mortify this sin.
Jerry Bridges, in his book Respectable Sins, says,
“In facing up to our anger, we need to realize that no one else causes us to be angry. Someone else’s words or actions may become the occasion of our anger, but the cause lies deep within us — usually our pride, or selfishness, or desire to control… or some idol of the heart we are protecting…we need to repent not only of our anger but also of our pride, selfishness, and idolatry.”[2]
What happens when we’re angry? There is a spark created by some catalyst, but the fuel for the fire lies spilled carelessly all over the floor within our hearts. No spark can burn without fuel; it will just flash and go out. Other sinful dispositions or attitudes are the lighter fluid and dried brush that are ready to be set ablaze by even the smallest spark. And it would certainly be a mistake to conclude that the spark is the only problem. We must deal with the flammable mess that is ready to be set ablaze in our hearts.
The real issue is the condition of our heart that reacts sinfully to something that has happened. And the Word of God is not only concerned with outward sins, but it discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
This is why, in chapter 4 of his epistle, James asks, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?”
James points out that conflicts and anger arise from underlying sins of the heart. Anger management that fails to address these underlying sins will be temporary and inadequate.
In our remaining time, I want to consider some of those underlying sins that act as fuel for any spark that comes along to ignite an inferno of anger. Time fails us to speak comprehensively of this, but I think this will give you a base for further reflection in the Word of God on some of the true causes of your anger. If we’re going to bring our sinful anger into subjection to Christ, we must address the underlying causes.
Why are we angry? According to James, one reason is that we “desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.” This is covetousness. When James uses the word murder here, I believe it’s consistent with the way Jesus uses it in Matthew 5, where the word describes not only murder but speaking in hatred toward someone else.
If you have kids, how many quarrels begin like this: “I had it first!” or “That’s mine!” This is a common problem with kids. But it’s a problem with adults, too.
Perhaps some of you men struggle with coveting the lives of others. You see the way that other people live, and you feel inadequate with what you provide. You work hard to make a better life for them, but you feel frustrated that you can’t provide those better things. Such a state leads to constant discontentment rather than joy, and you are resentfully nagged by that covetous desire for things the Lord has not yet given to you; perhaps you even think hateful thoughts towards God. And then, without realizing it, this discontent shows forth in a lack of patience with your wife and children, and you become easily angry in the home.
Why are we angry? James says, “Why are there quarrels and fights among you? Because your passions are at war within you…you do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” This is selfishness.
A common source of anger is considering ourselves to be more significant than others. This, of course, is the opposite of Paul’s instruction in Philippians 2, where he says: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” When we aim to be the center of the universe and to please ourselves, we are sure to be angry people when our self-centered goals or desires are constantly frustrated. So, we react angrily with others when they deny us what we believe that we deserve.
We can also selfishly use anger to manipulate others to do what we want them to do, controlling them through the threat of an angry response. Or we can become angry if we can’t control a situation in a way that we think is best for ourselves.
Why are we angry? James asks, “What is the cause of quarrels among you? You do not have because you do not ask. You adulterous people, friends of the world, idolaters. We become angry because of idolatry.
The gods that we worship are exposed by what we think and what we desire. And while professing that we love God, we can accumulate idols for ourselves. When we build our lives around such idols, we no longer see people in the way God tells us to see them, but we see them as threats to the way that we want to live, as interruptions, inconveniences, and even adversaries. This is certain to make us very angry people.
For example, imagine a mother who desires to be like the seemingly perfect and industrious family she follows on YouTube and Instagram. But she feels guilty and frustrated that she can’t live up to this standard, and in attempting to do so, she even leaves off things that God commands her to do. Prayer and Bible reading get in the way of her primary goals. She feels guilty, overwhelmed, unaccomplished, and unappreciated, and anyone who contributes to her failure to become the image that she wants to be is met with anger and rage. What has happened? Is she still worshiping God? Or is she living more consistently with the expectations of a god of human hands?
Why are we angry? It often arises because of pride within the heart. The Bible says that pride is thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. So, anger arises in our hearts toward any person who pokes a hole in our elevated self-image. Saved sinners should be the first to admit and consider that we can be in the wrong, but in our pride, we feel threatened, and so we lash out in anger.
Because pride is a kind of lying to ourselves, thinking the best of ourselves, it often results in thinking the worst about others. So, we exaggerate the faults of others, casting them in a very negative light. Anger arises toward the person for their imaginary or exaggerated fault.
Imagine a wife and husband disagreeing, and the husband says something about her that contains an exaggerated detail to make what she did look worse than it is. The wife is offended and responds with another exaggerated accusation. Now they’ve moved far beyond the subject of the disagreement into new sins of vengeance and exaggeration.
Brethren, there are many ways that pride pulls the strings of anger in our hearts. The anger is exposing that we are thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.
Why are we angry? It can arise because of a desire for vengeance. When someone hurts us, we are tempted to strike back in return. When someone insults us, we desire to hurl an insult back. When someone brings up one of our failings or sins, we feel the need to bring up one of theirs.
When we desire personal vengeance like this, we desire something that only God has the right to dispense. He delegates this to men in a limited sense, but we often want it in a way that God has not permitted. The Lord says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”
We see this attitude represented by David. When he was insulted by Nabal, he was ready to kill him and all the males of his house. I think all of us are familiar with this temptation. Someone offends us, and our heart is ready to strike back with greater force.
Well, these are just some of the ugly roots of sinful anger in the heart. Because of these underlying sins, we give in to anger and do great damage to our relationships in the home and the church. There are many more that we could identify. But I hope these examples help you to learn to evaluate the causes of your anger Biblically.
When we’re angry over things that God is not angry with, we are actually opposing him and acting like Cain, and even participating with the Devil. In our selfish rage, we kill, steal, and destroy what the Lord seeks to build up. We tarnish our witness. We embitter others. We hurt those who are closest to us, for whom we are responsible to love and to build up. We are guilty. We have done damage in our homes, in our workplaces, in our church.
V. Conclusion
What can we do, brethren? I know some of you feel in the tight grip of this sin.
Praise God that we our Father is the one called “slow to anger.” The Scriptures teach that God is slow to anger, and quick to forgive those who repent. Psalm 103:9 says, “He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.” Micah 7:18 says, “He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love.”
He should be righteously angry with us for our sinful anger, but he is quick to forgive. If you feel dominated by sinful anger, you must come to the Lord, confess your sin, and find him to be the gracious fountain for your sin and uncleanness. He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Though your anger is hot with sin, the Lord is compassionate and gracious toward his sinful children. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
But, Brothers and Sisters, true change is possible. Power is available to you to put this sin to death by the grace of God. The Holy Spirit will work in us, by the Word of God, a peaceful spirit in place of an angry one. If you have struggled with this sin, come as the persistent widow came, and seek the Lord that he might free you of this sin, and replace it with patience, love, and godly zeal.
But for those here who are outside of Christ, your life is full of sinful anger. But instead of being angry with others, you must realize that you are actually the greatest offender. And God is angry with you every day. You must humble yourself, repent of your sin, and call upon the Lord Jesus. Only through his wrath-bearing death may you be reconciled to God. Rage no more, come to Him today.
[1] Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2017), 117.
[2] Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2017), 121.
Brice Bigham serves as the Director of Development & Marketing at CBTS. He is an M.Div. Student at CBTS and serves as a Deacon at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Owensboro, KY. He lives with his wife Alina and their four children. Brice particularly enjoys church history, homesteading, and spending time with his family.
