ANGER-UNRIGHTEOUS
If your anger
is due to your recognition that a holy God has been offended by another's
behavior, that anger is righteous. In
other words, if we are angry because God's revealed will (not His decreed will;
for everything that happens has been foreordained by
Him) is violated, our anger is righteous.
On the other hand, if your anger is the result of not having your
personal desires met, that anger is likely to be sinful.
The Complete Husband, Calvary
Press, 1999, Appendix H, www.calvarypress.com.
Anger may be
handled wrongly in either one of two ways: blowing up and clamming up.
Jay E. Adams
Christian Living in the Home, P&R
Publishing, 1972, p. 31, Used by Permission.
A sermon
often does a man most good when it makes him most angry. Those people who walk down the aisles and say,
“I will never hear that man again,” very often have an arrow rankling in their
breast.
Do not say, “I
cannot help having a bad temper."
Friend, you must help it. Pray to
God to help you overcome it at once, for either you must kill it, or it will
kill you. You cannot carry a bad temper
into heaven.
Anger and
bitterness are two noticeable signs of being focused on self and not trusting
God’s sovereignty in your life. When you
believe that God causes all things to work together for good to those who
belong to Him and love Him, you can respond to trials with joy instead of anger
or bitterness.
Self-Confrontation Manuel,
Lesson 11, Page 1, Used by Permission of the Biblical Counseling Foundation.
Anger and
bitterness are formidable detriments to biblical love, harmonious
relationships, and maturity in Christ.
Failing to put off anger and bitterness grieves the Holy Spirit, gives
Satan an opportunity in your life, obscures your witness to others, and
disrupts the unity in the Body of Christ.
Dealing biblically with anger and bitterness requires wholehearted
obedience to God’s Word in every circumstance and with every person, even if
your feelings dictate otherwise.
Self-Confrontation Manuel, Lesson 11, Page 2,
Used by Permission of the Biblical Counseling Foundation.
Is it any
merit to abstain from wine if one is intoxicated with anger?
Love to God
is opposite to a disposition in men to be angry at others’ faults chiefly as
they themselves are offended and injured by them: It rather disposes them to
look at them chiefly as committed against God.
The Spirit of Love the Opposite of An Angry or Wrathful Spirit, 1 Corinthians 13:5.
Pride is one
chief cause of undue anger. It is because
men are proud, and exalt themselves in their own hearts, that they are
revengeful, and are apt to be excited, and to make great things out of little
ones that may be against themselves.
Yea, they even treat as vices things that are in themselves virtues,
when they think their honor is touched, or when their will is crossed. And it is pride that makes men so
unreasonable and rash in their anger, and raises it to such a high degree, and
continues it so long, and often keeps it up in the
form of habitual malice… If men sought
not chiefly their own private and selfish interests, but the glory of God and
the common good, then their spirit would be a great deal more stirred up in
God's cause than in their own; and they would not be prone to hasty, rash,
inconsiderate, immoderate, and long-continued wrath, with any who might have
injured or provoked them; but they would in a great measure forget themselves
for God's sake, and from their zeal for the honor of Christ. The end they would aim at,
would be, not making themselves great, or getting their own will, but the glory
of God and the good of their fellow-beings.
The Spirit of Love the Opposite of An Angry or Wrathful Spirit, 1 Corinthians 13:5.
Anger blows
out the lamp of the mind. It’s a child’s
reaction to an adult situation.
Anger is one
letter short of danger.
Anger is
(not) in itself sinful, but…it may be the occasion for sin. The issue of self-control is the question of
how we deal with anger. Violence,
tantrums, bitterness, resentment, hostility, and even withdrawn silence are all
sinful responses to anger.
R.C. Sproul
The
Intimate Marriage, P&R Publishing, 1975, p. 72.
No form of
vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking
communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating
homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood; in
short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence stands
alone.
It is only
our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our
good temper down to ourselves.
No matter how just your words may be,
you ruin everything when you speak with anger.
Four wrong ways
to deal with anger:
1.
Repress.
Hold it in, ignore, deny, push it under, stuff it.
a.
Internally.
Seethe with bitterness, jealousy, etc.
b.
Externally.
The “silent treatment” (Eph. 4:26).
2.
Express.
“Dump it;” “get it off your chest.”
a.
Direct
expression. Explode. Blow up (Gal. 5:20; Prov. 12:16; Prov. 14:29; Prov. 29:11;
Prov. 29:22; Eccl. 7:9).
b.
Indirect
expression. “I’ll get even” (Lev. 19:18; Rom. 12:19).
c.
Substitutionary
expression. “Ventilation.”
3.
Digress.
Turn aside. Get your mind off of it.
4.
Profess
to be powerless. Make excuses. Disclaim responsibility.
James Fowler
Excerpted from: Anger, Study Outlines, 1999, www.christinyou.net.
Five correct
ways to deal with anger:
1.
Suppress.
Restrain; subdue the negative expression (Prov. 29:11; Prov. 17:14; Prov. 20:3).
2.
Assess.
Evaluate the situation objectively.
a.
Consider
the other person’s perspective.
b.
Consider
your contribution to the problem (Matt. 7:3-5; James 1:19).
3.
Confess.
“Say the same thing as God” (I John 1:9).
4.
Process.
Proceed to make it right.
a.
“Turn
the other cheek” (Matt. 5:39).
b.
Gentle
answer (Prov. 15:1).
c.
Meekness
(Eph. 4:2; I Peter 3:15).
d.
Forgiveness
(Matt. 18:22; Col. 3:13).
e.
Give
a blessing (I Peter 3:9).
5.
Access.
In computer terminology this means “to connect with,” “to communicate with.”
The foregoing behavioral expressions must be a result of the Christian
having "accessed" with God (1 Peter 2:23).
James Fowler
Excerpted from: Anger, Study Outlines, 1999, www.christinyou.net.
Bitterness
arises in our hearts when we do not trust in the sovereign rule of God in our
lives
Jerry Bridges
Copied
from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 120. Used by
permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com.
All rights reserved.
Uncontrolled
temper is soon dissipated on others.
Resentment, bitterness, and self-pity build up inside our hearts and eat
away at our spiritual lives like a slowly spreading cancer.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p.
141. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com.
All rights reserved.