Be Angry …

In many ways, the Christian life is a process of responding to divine imperatives—the commands of God found in Scripture. In the Greek tongue, as in our own, these Scriptural imperatives are always in a certain form. Our verse for today is in this form. The main thrust of this verse is a warning against a misuse of anger, but the verse begins with an imperative—a command that we should “Be angry.” While Paul will go on to qualify these words, he is clearly exhorting his Ephesian readers to do something. And that something, as strange as it may seem, is to express anger.

In order to understand what Paul is saying here, we must read this verse in light of the general principles of Christian behavior, particularly that Biblical principle that calls us to imitate Christ, just as He Himself imitated God. Christian virtue is a matter of imitating the one who reveals the standard of perfect righteousness. As we have seen, there are times in Scripture when both God the Father and God the Son are angry. Therefore, we may conclude that there are times when we also should be angry. Just as the Father and the Son are “automatically” angered by sin, certain things in the world, the government, and even the church ought to anger us. For instance, we should be angry when we see people blatantly violating God’s law. We should be angry over any distortion of the truth of God. We should be angry when we see any sort of denigration of human beings, who are made in the image of God. And the list goes on.

But Paul is not giving us a license to experience and express anger as we like. On the contrary, the only anger that is proper for us is the kind of anger exercised by the Father and the Son—righteous anger. We are never free to exercise anger for selfish reasons. David’s anger at Nabal may have fallen into this category, although he may have been justified in feeling enraged that Nabal would treat God’s anointed successor to the throne so dishonorably. In any case, we are called to show anger against the same things that upset the Father and Son. Our response to the evil that we encounter in the world must mirror that of Christ. Still, even righteous anger may lead us to sin. We will explore this danger in tomorrow’s study.