Anger

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. There is a kind of anger that is sinful. It comes from loving the wrong things or loving the right things out of proportion.

If anger is a destructive energy released in defense of something that you love, then if your loves are out of order, then your anger will be out of order as well. Hey, thanks for joining us today here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer of the Summit Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Do you remember that one time in the Bible when Jesus got angry and he didn't hide it, and then the most remarkable part, he didn't sin? Pastor J.D. is helping us see how we can be angry like Jesus, too. We're discovering what the Bible really says about our emotions as we continue our teaching series called Smoke from a Fire.

If you missed any of the previous messages, you can always find them free of charge at jdgreer.com. But for now, grab your Bible and let's join Pastor J.D. in God's Word. Ephesians chapter four, we are on week number three in a series on some of the most controlling emotions in our lives. We are calling this series Smoke from a Fire. It's playing off of an analogy that the fifth century theologian, Saint Augustine, used when he said that our most dominating emotions, our deepest emotions, often function like smoke from a fire that can show us what is actually going on in our hearts. The first week we looked at depression and anxiety, and we found out that smoke from depression.

The second weekend we looked at anxiety. This weekend we're going to deal with another emotion that all of us deal with to some varying degree, and that is the emotion of anger. Anger, as we know, can be a very destructive emotion and one that is quite difficult to deal with in our hearts.

I heard about an elderly couple here at the Summit Church who were talking one evening about the many fights that they had been in over the years of their marriage, and the wife in just a moment of really humble candor. She said, honey, I just admire the way that you always respond so calmly in our fights. I blow up at you, and I yell at you, and you just respond so calmly.

How do you stay so calm when I get so irate? To which the husband replied, he said, oh, it's easy, sweetheart. After you blow up at me, I just go and clean the toilet. She said, that works?

He said, oh, yeah, because I use your toothbrush when I do that. There are good ways and there are bad ways. That story is totally made up. There are good ways and there are bad ways to deal with anger.

We know that. I don't know anybody, anybody who doesn't look back and wish that there were certain things that they could take back that they said or did in anger. It reminds me of one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes, and I know I'm dating myself a little bit there, but Seinfeld episodes where George Costanza calls up some girl and just leaves this horrendous voicemail because he's so angry. He finds out later it was a mistake, and you should have been angry at her. The whole episode is him trying to get to her voicemail before she gets to it so we can delete the message and she doesn't hear it. All of us have had some kind of thing like that.

We're like, I just wish I could take that back, or wish I could crawl through the phone line and pull back what I was trying to say there. Maybe you sent an email to somebody that you wish you could go through cyberspace and get rid of it before they saw it. Have you done that? Or maybe you copied somebody on the email that should not have been copied. Has that happened to you? Most of us can look back and see some relationship that was destroyed or at least damaged through anger.

Some of you may have lost jobs. You might even, some of you have gone to jail because of an inability to control anger. By the way, don't make the mistake of thinking that if you're not a person who is prone to violent outbursts that you got no issues with anger. Some of you are more aggressive in how you express anger, and that means people make you mad, you yell at them. Others of you, when people make you mad, you have more of a passive approach, so you give that person the silent treatment or the cold shoulder. You punish them by removing the blessing of your presence from them as if you're God and merely turning your face away is punishment enough from them. And you nurse a bitterness toward them that comes out first usually as sarcasm either to them or about them and then turns into some kind of emotional withdrawal from them where you turn off the fountains of your emotions and you just cease to care. Eventually that can turn into disdain for that person or maybe even the entire group of people that that person represents to you. Brad Hambrick, who is our pastoral counselor here, wrote out a list of statements that I saw that he said shows us that we are probably nursing anger we may not have admitted to ourselves. Statements like, for example, I'm not angry, I'm just frustrated. Well, why can't I have a bad day without it being a big deal?

Oh, and I guess you never make a mistake. Or you're being too sensitive. Or, you know, I'm sick of being the only one who says I'm sorry in this relationship.

Or, sorry to unload on you but I just need an event. Chances are, he says, if you've made any of these kinds of statements you're dealing with an anger issue that you've never admitted to yourself and an anger issue that can end up being destructive even in really subtle ways. Now our focus today is not on the best or the healthiest expressions of anger. That'd be another sermon for another day. Our focus this weekend is on what our anger reveals about the state of our hearts because that's where the Bible begins. Before it teaches you how to manage your emotions, before it teaches you strategies to cope with them, it wants you to read these emotions to understand what they reveal about what's going on in your heart.

Right? And so Ephesians 4, I feel like Ephesians 4 could be written for our society alone. We have an angry society, do we not? And if you don't believe that, just flip on the talk show, any talk show at night. And over there in CNN and MSNBC, they're losing their minds on something.

And you flip over to Fox and they're losing their mind on the same issue just from an opposite perspective. It seems like people are cued up and ready to be angry, whether they're going into the classroom or whether they're at the workplace or driving down the freeway. People are ready to explode, which is what makes me feel like Paul somehow had in mind American society in the 21st century when he wrote Ephesians 4 verses 26 through 32. Be angry, he says, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't give the devil an opportunity. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. Let all bitterness and anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you along with all malice and be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you. In that passage, I see first a confusing command. Be angry and sin not. What does that mean?

We'll explore that. Then I see Paul's answer to anger, which we will unpack also. And then lastly, I see some indications for how you and I can be angry in the right way, which we'll call how to be angry like Jesus.

Okay? First, a confusing command. Be angry and do not sin. You should first note in this passage that Paul begins his instructions on anger with a command to be angry. Be angry is an imperative. There are times you can and should indeed must be angry. Some of us were raised to think that any feelings of anger are wrong, but that is not a Christian idea. It is the Buddhist who teach that the annihilation of emotion is a virtue.

Christians do not believe that. Rather, the Bible teaches anger as a necessary component of love. Anger is a destructive energy released in defense of something that you love, which might sound bad, but just think about it. When you love the person that is dying of cancer, you hate and are angry at the cancer that is destroying them. And so you release a destructive energy.

It's called chemotherapy to try to rid the person you love of the cancer you hate. If I love my children, I hate and I am angry at things that threaten to destroy them, whether that's physical harm or whether that is a moral cancer like dishonesty or rebellion that I see destroying their souls. If you love the glory of God, then you will be angry at whatever diminishes that or seeks to attack it. Jesus was a person we saw get angry throughout the gospel, sometimes even violently so. He didn't walk around in a sea of tranquility.

I know what you had on your flannel graph board when you grew up in Sunday school with Jesus with the serene look and a little glow in his face and his Ric Flair hair floating in the background and his Superman costume on or bathroom or whatever it was. He wasn't like that. He got angry throughout the gospels. Mark 3, for example, after he heals the man with a shriveled hand, he discerns that the Pharisees are only interested in catching Jesus break the Sabbath. Mark says, Mark the gospel writer says, that Jesus got indignantly angry with them because they were elevating religious custom over their care for the individual.

His anger toward them grew out of his love for him, for the man. In Matthew 21, Jesus gets violently angry at the religious leaders and money changers who basically set up shop in the one part of the temple that was supposed to be for the outsider and for the vulnerable. And Jesus says, you've taken this away and you've used it for yourselves. And so he makes a makeshift whip and he drives them out of the temple. There's nothing in the gospels that indicates that Jesus regretted that later.

He never got the disciples together and said, you know, man, I just, I'm sorry, y'all. I just let my emotions get the best of me. I probably should have used my words back there.

And I probably should have been more patient. No, Jesus went to the cross sinless, which means that his anger, even when it caused him to form a whip was not a sin. Now, just to be really, really clear here. Okay. I am not saying that you should drive out people with whips when you get angry. All right.

Because you have neither the clarity nor the control that Jesus had. We all clear on that. I do not want to hear something. You sent me an email this week about you doing this and saying that I gave you the idea. I'm not saying that at all.

Okay. I'm just trying to say that if you never get angry, you're not very much like Jesus. If you never get angry, you're not very much like Jesus.

The church father, John Chrysostom, shortly after Augustine, he actually preached at the Hagia Sophia, if you know what that is. John Chrysostom said, it is true that he that is angry without cause sins, but it he who is not angry when there is cause also sins and perhaps to an even greater degree. You should be angry when you hear about the rights of others being trampled on.

You should be angry when you hear stories of people being abused by people that they trusted. You should be angry when you see somebody selfishness and sin destroying their lives and the lives of people around them. In the face of evil, if you aren't angry, you aren't loving. Jesus got angry precisely because he cared so much.

So be angry. Be angry, Paul says, but do not sin. There is a kind of anger that is sinful. It comes from loving the wrong things or loving the right things out of proportion. If anger is a destructive energy released in defense of something that you love, then if your loves are out of order, then your anger will be out of order as well. St. Augustine said that the essence of being a sinner is that our loves are out of proportion. We love the wrong things and we love the right things out of proportion. And if what we love is messed up, what our anger, what we're angry at, it will be us up also.

It is not wrong, for example, for you to value your name and reputation. But if you love those things too much, you will get inordinately angry when your ego is insulted. If you love control, if you love convenience, if you love comfort, then when those things are attacked or they are threatened, you will get angry in response to that. Anger is defense and release of something that you love. Whenever something makes you bad, you ought to always ask what your anger is defending. It's the energy and release in defense of something you love.

So what is it that I love that is being attacked, that I'm defending? What's my anger defending? For example, when your teenager comes home late, what is driving your anger? The fact that he or she caused you to lose sleep or to worry is not the biggest issue. Emotionally, you might want to make that the biggest issue, because that's how the episode affected you.

But the biggest issue is their disregard for rules and what that's doing to their soul. Is that what your anger is focused on, or is your anger focused on the effect that their actions had on you? If I get mad at my wife because she's texting when I'm trying to talk with her, is my anger lovingly motivated because I am concerned with the harm her self-absorption causes to her and those around her? Or am I irritated because I feel inconvenience that she's not doing what I want her to be doing right at that moment?

I'll be honest now. What's your anger directed at in that moment? Anybody else get mad when traffic is slow on 540 and those cars shoot all the way down that little ramp and cut in at the last possible minute?

Right? Ooh, I get righteously angry at that moment. And I get like two inches from that bumper in front of me. I'm like, you are not cutting in here, right here. And I feel totally righteous in that. Now, is that a righteous anger or is that a selfish anger? Because I'm being inconvenienced. Here's why I know mine's not a loving anger. Because when I'm the one that's shooting down that ramp as far as I can get, I'm like, I got places to be. And these people should understand that and they should just let me in because I got stuff to do. When you get mad at work because your contributions were not recognized, is your anger fueled by a love of your own praise?

Right? I mean, do you get just as angry when credit is withheld from other people? That's the same moral corruption, but it probably doesn't anger you as much because it didn't trample on your own selfish desires. The point is our anger becomes problematic because our loves are out of order. And that means the way that we deal with disordered anger is by addressing the disordered loves that fuel it. The way we deal with disordered anger is to deal with disordered loves first, which is what Paul is going to turn his attention to. So number two, Paul's answer to unrighteous anger is to put on the new man. You might notice that Paul's whole discussion of anger here, his whole discussion of anger comes as a series of commands. Commands that, honestly, when you read them on the surface seem impossible. For example, Paul verse 31 commands us, let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you along with all malice.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another. To somebody who is really angry or really hurt, that seems like an impossible command. I mean, how do you just stop? How do you just turn off an emotion? Stop being bitter. Start being happy.

Stop being hurt. Start being compassionate and forgiving. You know, whenever I talk about forgiveness or anger or these kinds of things, I've learned that there are three different kinds of people out there who really struggle with what I say. The first kind who really struggles with it is the person who knows they ought to forgive, but they just can't work out the courage and the strength to do it. The second kind of person who really struggles with what I say is the person who feels like if they forgive, they'll be letting the offender off the hook. And that just feels like it's minimizing the injustice and it feels wrong to them.

Like it wouldn't be right to give that person forgiveness. The third group that really struggles claims to have gone through the motions of forgiveness, but memories and hurt and anger keeps coming back into their heart, making them wonder if they've ever really forgiven at all. So the question is not what do these commands say? The more important question, I think, is how do you develop the ability to actually obey these commands? Well, see, that's where it helps to consider that these commands are all part of a bigger section in Ephesians, starting in verse 24, in which Paul is telling us that we got to put on the new man. Put on the new man, which means that we need to begin to live in the new reality that Christ has created for us. Paul hints at two elements of this new reality that enable us to get rid of unrighteous anger. The first is at the end of verse 32. He says, forgive one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. If you're taking notes, I want you to write that down in a phrase that I hope is very familiar to you.

Number one, you write this down. We recognize that we are first sinners and only secondly sent against. That's a phrase I've explained to you was first introduced to me in a marriage counseling session that my wife and I had gone to, because we were both angry at each other. We'd been married for a couple of years, and I was angry at all the ways she was disappointing me and things she wasn't doing right, and she was angry at me because all the ways I was disappointing her and things I wasn't doing right. So I spent a half hour telling the counselor about my side of it, and she spent a half hour telling the counselor about her side of it. In the end of it, the counselor looks at us and says, the problem with both of you is that neither of you really seem to understand or believe the gospel, which is a bold thing to say to a pastor, by the way. He said, you don't understand the gospel. He says, both of you are talking as if you are righteous, perfect people, and the other person has sinned against you. He said, that's probably partially true, the latter part you've been sinned against. He said, but you seem to have lost touch with the fact that you are first and foremost a sinner that has been deeply forgiven by God, and only secondly are you sinned against. There is nothing that your spouse has done to you that compares at all to the way that you have treated God and what God has forgiven you. That doesn't change the injustice.

It doesn't mean that what that person did was not wrong, but I promise you it will change your perspective to that person in that moment of injustice. Now, let me be very clear. What I don't want you to do with that statement, first and second sin against, is to use it to beat your spouse over the head with.

What are you complaining about? You treat God way worse than I'm treating you right now, okay? So first and second sin against. Remember, do not do that, okay?

I don't want an email about that at all. It is something that you use to apply to your own heart, where you say, you know, I realize that, yes, this person may have wronged me, and I'm gonna have to deal with that, but I realize that I am first and foremost a person deeply forgiven, and I can't ever get over that, and that just changes how I treat those who have sinned against me. It means that I approach any situation deeply aware, deeply aware of how much I've been forgiven of. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was the German Christian who was martyred in World War II, said that he often saw this in Christians in church when they would really start to get serious about God. He said, you know, especially new Christians, they would always come to a point where they got disgusted with everybody else in the church and all the hypocrisy and inconsistency. You know anybody like that?

Maybe you are that person, okay? By the way, maybe you're at home listening to this because you just can't bear to be in church with all the hypocrites and all the inconsistencies, right? You're just at home with you and Jesus and your little glory circle there. So he said, why get good news and bad news when you get to that stage? Good news, he says, you're growing in Christ. We know that because you're becoming more sensitive to sin and it bothers you.

He says, that's good news. Bad news is you're only at stage one in your spiritual growth. He said stage two, a much more important stage, is when you become more disgusted at your own sin than you are everybody else's.

He said that's stage two. He says stage three, the most important stage of the three is now you're ready after going through stages one and two to re-enter the church. This time is not as a self-righteous Pharisee who is there to condemn everybody else, but a broken sinner who has received grace and is ready to help others find the same grace that you have found. It means that when you understand how deeply you've been forgiven, it just changes your perspective to those who have weaknesses and sins and are sinning against you. Paul gives the second element of this new reality at the end of verse 26 when he says, don't let the sun go down in your anger.

You would write this down simply as, it means we've resigned as judge of the universe. Not letting the sun go down in your wrath means I don't have to carry with me to bed the burden of righting all wrongs. When the sun goes down, I'm not thinking about it because God is the one who rights all wrongs, not me. God's promised to do that.

That means I can lay my head down on my pillow at night and I can just go to sleep. Paul only alludes to this here in Ephesians 4 with that quick little phrase, don't let the sun go down in your anger, but he really unpacks it in another place where he talks about anger. By the way, if you want to get into varsity level Bible study, Paul's a preacher, which means he's got like 10 topics that he talks about and he just talks about them at different times and different letters, but it's the same stuff.

If you really want to see something fascinating, look at where he just like quickly introduces it in one letter, but then really unpacks it in another. He introduces it in Ephesians, but to the Romans, he just kind of unpacks this concept. If you're super fast with your Bible, flip over to Romans 12 or scroll down to Romans 12. He says, repay nobody evil for you. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peacefully with all. By the way, this is Paul's acknowledgement that sometimes it's not always possible. He's got in mind here that there are certain relationships that, for example, are abusive and he's not saying you just stay there and take it.

There is a time that it's no longer possible to live peacefully and you have to remove yourself from the situation. Regardless though, he says, verse 19, beloved never, whether you stay or whether you go, never avenge yourselves, never. You got to leave that to the wrath of God for it is written, vengeance is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord to the contrary. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink for by so doing, you'll heat burning coals on his head. By the way, I love that phrase because you're like, well, that's exactly what I wanted to do to my enemy. I wanted to heat burning coals on their head.

So talk to me here. Well, you notice this is a quote. He's quoting from Proverbs 25, 21. That's a Jewish metaphor, heat burning coals on their head. And what Paul meant when he used that was heaping burning coals would have one of two effects. Number one, it could wake the person up, right?

Hot water, cold water, either one will wake a person up out of their slumber. He's like, by doing kindness, you might actually change their heart and wake them up to the stupidity and the wickedness of their injustice towards you. And that, in that way, you'd be overcoming evil with good. That's one thing. The other thing that might happen is as you continue to do kindness to this person who is doing you evil, right, and they don't change, God in heaven is just taking notes.

He's just writing it down. And what Paul is saying is on the day that comes when God brings vengeance, all that kindness that you did to them is going to be like more hot coals of judgment that are coming on their head. God's going to be like, really, after all this person did to you, they responded to you this way, good, this way, good, this way, but you did this and this and that. And it's going to make it that much worse for them on the day of judgment. Either way, the point is, either way, I don't have to carry around the burden of feeling like I'm the one that's got to make things right, because God promises to carry that burden. And the good news is, God is not going to do that. The good news is that if God is carrying the burden, you can show grace.

Trying to play judge over wrongs done to us will just corrupt and build pride in us. Continuing our teaching series on emotions called Smoke from a Fire, you're listening to Pastor J.D. Greer on Summit Life. If you've missed any part of this study, or if you'd like to share it with a friend, the whole series is available free of charge at smokefromafire.com. So Pastor J.D., last week we introduced a new resource to help us remain steadfast in our time with God, no matter what is going on in our lives, called Smoke from a Fire.

That's right, Molly. We have created a 10-day workbook to guide your time in reading scripture. It's different because it allows you to reflect and pray more independently through whatever difficult emotions you may be feeling.

And we all go through a range of emotions every day. It's not so much an in-depth, you know, study like a commentary, as much as it is to explore your emotions like anger, envy, depression, and anxiety, and also what the scripture says about the root causes of those. Every day in this study is going to give you a short passage of scripture to read and reflect on, and then it's going to give you some space and some prompts to process what you're reading and what's going on inside you. We've included a handful of devotionals on five specific emotions just to spur you along. I think it's a great resource.

I think it'll really help you get in touch with what's going on inside you, because that's the place that Jesus wants to rule. You can get yours today as always at jdgreer.com. I would love to give you one of these.

I think it'll be a big help to you. So reach out to us there. Thank you, JD. Ask for the Smoke from a Fire 10-day devotional and scripture guide when you donate today to support this ministry. Give us a call right now. 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or you can donate and request this book online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. I'm so glad that you are with us today, and be sure to join us tomorrow as Pastor JD continues our teaching series on emotions and specifically this message about anger right here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.