I Had a Plan
Maybe you’ve heard me say it before, but in our family we talk about our present self making a plan for our future self. My past self made a plan for our times together, but then something came to my attention in my study that caused me to change the plan a little.
Have you ever heard the topic of anger discussed in our modern church culture? I’ve been in a few different churches since we’ve moved a bit, and I haven’t heard of anger discussed except in a negative way. Do any of these sound familiar?
“Don’t be angry.”
“Turn the other cheek.”
“God is love.”
“Forgive and forget.”
“Jesus was meek and mild.”
In every circumstance? Or is there ever permission to be angry and even to take action on it? Before we continue on our plan to study details about the old self and new self, we are going to look at anger and what the Word says about this reaction.
Observing Anger in Ephesians 4:26
Before I tackled the entirety of the Bible, I noticed what I could from our passage. Which, by the way, have you been able to read it each time? In my effort to have us use our time more wisely, I haven’t brought the text here but I’m letting you read it on your own. Is that working?
On this sticky, I noticed this passive and imperative combination that we talked about last time. “Permissive passive.” Which is curious to me. And then the “don’t sin” is active and also imperative.
My takeaway so far? There is good anger; there is bad anger.
Let’s look at the rest of scripture.
NT Cross References
In order to get a clear picture of what the Word says about anger, I used the color wheels (from my Logos software) for the words Paul uses in Ephesians 4:26. They have the same root word in Greek, so they look similar. One is a verb, “be angry,” and the other is a noun, “anger.” The color wheels show me how the translators interpreted the word into English and then there is a list of instances below that when the word is used. I examined the verb usage first.
The Verb “Be Angry”
Here is the verb “be angry.” I went to all the places the word is translated as “angry” and took notes, which I will show you in a series of stickies.
Compiling the data from the blue stickies, I started a list on this green sticky.
- Jesus talked about anger a bit
- Seems to be a special case for fellow believers? “If angry w bro = judgment
- God (king, master of house in parables) angry and takes action at idolatry and apathy toward himself
Next I investigated the noun “anger.”
The Noun “Anger”
When looking at the noun, I did the same thing as with the verb, taking notes on the Gamma green stickies this time. I jotted the context in the upper corner and then observed the cross references.
Keeping my notes somewhat organized by color-coding the types of notes, I summarized what I learned using this green sticky again.
- 2 different uses of word
- God’s anger/wrath
- man’s anger defined as what is earthly
- God’s
- ↳ angry w hard hearts
- ↳ wrath coming bc sexual immorality, impurity, idols, all the rest
- Man’s
- ↳ if related to bitterness, clamor, slander = bad
- ↳ be slow to get there, but allowance to get there
- Anger not aligned with mind of God does not accomplish God’s will
Because God is the same God all the time, I wanted to know what anger/wrath was present in the OT. I perused the LXX from the Bible Word Study in Logos for the noun “anger.”
Here are some details I noticed from my quick glance.
- Translated into English as wrath, fierce anger, fierce wrath, hot anger (God’s)
- Talk of how can anyone stand before God in his anger?
- Why is he angry?
- Evil
- Sin
- Idols
- Rebellion against him
See what I mean? What made God angry in the old covenant still makes him angry in the new covenant. He’s the same God.
Reflection
First of all, God gets angry. Assuming we start with the same assumptions that God is perfect, holy, right, and good (among other attributes), anger cannot be sin. It cannot be a wrong reaction in the cases when God gets angry or there is anticipated anger coming down the line.
We know that man is made in the image of God. Therefore, whatever emotions and reactions God has, they are in man because God put them there. Since they are there, they began as “good.”
However, after the fall, just like everything else, man’s emotions are corrupted. Therefore, like the rest of man, they need to be renewed. They need to be calibrated to agree with God. Line up with his mind.
They are in man as a reaction and in order to be like our Father in heaven, there are situations where anger is not only allowed, it is the only right reaction.
There is something wrong with us if we don’t get angry at what makes God angry. This is one of those “are you more holy than God?” situations.
If I am called to have the mind of Christ, to be renewed in the image of my creator, then my mind need to line up with God’s. God gets angry. But critical is WHAT makes God angry. Whatever makes my Dad mad should make me mad.
An Example
Recently, at the church where my three youngest kids graduated from high school, there was a youth pastor who confessed to being sexually immoral with his students. Ugly. Evil.
As part of the process of dealing with this heinous sin, the elders asked parents to talk to their kids, looking for more victims. The conversation with my daughter, my youngest, was colorful. She is furious with the man and the situation. She expressed her rage using various methods and means. At one point, she said, “I probably am wrong to feel this way” or some facsimile of that.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
It is not sin to be angry! Clearly in scripture, sexual immorality (grooming young folks and then taking advantage of them), impurity, evil desire, all of these things are SIN. On account of these things, the wrath of God is coming. Jesus got angry with the religious elite and their pious “goodness,” their hardness of heart for the man with the withered hand. There wasn’t anger for their desire to follow the law. The anger was over their hardness of heart. They had no compassion.
If Jesus felt anger, if God is angry, why are we compelled to call a God-mimicking reaction bad in favor of our own definition of what is good?
Hearing the news of this trusted youth pastor, my girl wasn’t bitter or malicious in her anger: she was outraged over the years of hidden sin that hurt a number of young people in our community. So is God. Anger isn’t sin here, it’s one of many appropriate reactions.
Wrap Up
When we study scripture, there are things that we know. Assumptions we’ve made based on what we have learned before. Sometimes the backpack containing those needs to be laid down before we proceed. However, there are other assumptions that we should hang onto. Cling to. Truth of the character and nature of God is one of those.
For our Bible Study Bite today, I want us to consider what God does, what reactions for example, and remember that we are created in the image of him. What needs to be laid down before we study, in the case today, is what we’ve previously learned about the reaction.
And use logic. If God feels an emotion, can that be wrong if our minds are renewed and aligned with God’s mind? I’m not saying we are going to be perfect, obviously. But just like everything else, we are in process of growing into the image of Christ. And he got angry.
If we only did things “perfectly” or that came naturally, where would growth occur? Do I perform every Jiu Jitsu move perfectly? Have I ever failed to climb over a pile of rocks on my mountain bike? Does every sourdough loaf come out perfectly? NO. Our heavenly Dad loves our crayon drawings that we bring to him; our efforts to be like him.
Employ the non-negotiable truths, fellow student of the Word. Who is God? In light of that, who are we created to be?
Thanks for studying with me today. If you find anything useful here, please share it with other students of the Word. It would help me out! We will get back to The Plan next time.
