The Great Marriage Killer

00:00:04.000 | Well, what is the difference between unholy anger and holy anger?

00:00:08.000 | And does that difference have any application to our own lives?

00:00:12.000 | This is the question today from a listener named Renee.

00:00:14.000 | Pastor John, hello and thank you for taking my question.

00:00:17.000 | I hear the phrase righteous anger used a lot, but I'm not 100% clear on what that looks like or what makes anger righteous or sinful.

00:00:26.000 | I understand that we are to feel anger towards sin.

00:00:29.000 | Jesus overturned tables in his anger, but I don't think we should respond to sin by breaking things.

00:00:35.000 | So how does righteous anger play itself out for the Christian?

00:00:38.000 | What does it look like towards people, towards sin, and towards the devil himself?

00:00:43.000 | Well, I was much more optimistic about a righteous place for anger when I was 30 than I am now.

00:00:55.000 | I have seen the destructive power of anger in relationships, especially marriage, to such a degree over the last 40, 50 years that I am far less sanguine about so-called righteous anger than I once was.

00:01:13.000 | Anger is not just a relationship destroyer.

00:01:19.000 | It is a self-destroyer.

00:01:22.000 | It eats up all other wholesome emotions.

00:01:28.000 | If it is not dealt with, it consumes everything in its path and leaves a woman or a man with nothing but bitterness and anger.

00:01:40.000 | They are not capable of any other emotion.

00:01:45.000 | It is either silence or anger, and it is a horrible development.

00:01:52.000 | Therefore, the overwhelming message of the New Testament is, this is Colossians 3.8,

00:01:59.000 | "Put away all anger and wrath and malice," or Ephesians 4.31,

00:02:07.000 | "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

00:02:16.000 | Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

00:02:22.000 | Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them."

00:02:28.000 | It's very interesting that that word "harsh," "pikriniste," is the same root as the word "put away bitterness" in Ephesians 4, "pikria."

00:02:40.000 | And that word means, "Don't become deep, long-term, embittered, and angry with a spouse."

00:02:48.000 | This is what kills a marriage way more often, I think, than sexual misconduct does.

00:02:55.000 | And of course, there are the Proverbs. "Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding," Proverbs 14.29.

00:03:04.000 | Or, "Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty," Proverbs 16.32.

00:03:11.000 | Or, "Good sense makes one slow to anger," Proverbs 19.11.

00:03:17.000 | And then, there's the—this is the most important thing for me—there's the pervasive Christian emphasis in the New Testament on loving our enemies,

00:03:28.000 | doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us, not returning evil for evil,

00:03:34.000 | and all of this because Jesus died for his enemies, died for the ungodly, died for people like me,

00:03:43.000 | and prayed for his enemies while he was dying. He was not seething with anger as he died under the hand of horrific abuse and injustice.

00:03:56.000 | That's our great and most difficult calling, according to 1 Peter 2.21.

00:04:02.000 | But, we also know Scripture says that God has anger, and he's holy.

00:04:10.000 | And Jesus, in Mark 3.5, looked around on them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.

00:04:17.000 | And Paul, in Ephesians 4.26, says, "Be angry and do not sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger."

00:04:25.000 | And James, in James 1.19, said, "Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger,

00:04:32.000 | for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

00:04:36.000 | Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls."

00:04:44.000 | So, Rene is right to ask about the role of holy or righteous or good anger, since clearly the Bible says there is such a thing.

00:04:56.000 | But I want to make crystal clear that I consider one of the foremost and difficult battles of the Christian life

00:05:05.000 | not the battle to stir up righteous anger, but the battle not to be angry at all when you're not supposed to be angry.

00:05:15.000 | It seems to me that the great miracle, the great miracle of the Christian life would be experiencing the wonderful secret

00:05:25.000 | of how to obey the command, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor be put away from you."

00:05:32.000 | What a miracle that would be. What a world changer. What a marriage changer. What a parenting changer.

00:05:39.000 | What a church changer that would be.

00:05:42.000 | But let me answer Rene's question about what righteous anger might look like.

00:05:49.000 | I'm going to do it negatively. I'm taking my cue from Paul's statement that we should not, not let the sun go down on our anger,

00:05:58.000 | and James' statement that we should be slow to anger and that the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.

00:06:07.000 | The fact that James and Paul say that anger is dangerous and therefore it should come slowly and go quickly says to me,

00:06:17.000 | "Don't savor it. Don't cherish it." This is the great killer.

00:06:23.000 | You feel so justified in your anger because what somebody said or did, you savor it.

00:06:29.000 | You suck it like a candy and it just kills everything.

00:06:35.000 | So here are my suggestions, and I'll just say them real quick, of what righteous anger is.

00:06:41.000 | One, righteous anger does not savor being angry as a means of self-vindication and self-exaltation.

00:06:50.000 | God opposes the proud.

00:06:51.000 | Number two, righteous anger does not savor being angry as a kind of emotional damnation of other people.

00:07:00.000 | We are to bless those who curse us, not damn them.

00:07:03.000 | Number three, righteous anger does not savor being angry with no prayer or effort to heal and rectify the situation that made us angry as much as possible,

00:07:16.000 | like Romans 12, 18 says, with a view to helping those who made us angry, helping them change.

00:07:25.000 | Number four, righteous anger does not savor being angry as though we ourselves were not sinners,

00:07:34.000 | as though we had not given far greater cause to God to be angry with us than anybody has given us to be angry with them.

00:07:44.000 | And five, righteous anger does not savor being angry as though God were not sovereign,

00:07:52.000 | as though he cannot lift this burden from us and turn all things for his glory.

00:07:57.000 | When Paul was imprisoned in Rome, he put the emphasis not on becoming bitter and angry that his ministry had been frustrated and stopped.

00:08:07.000 | Instead, he went way out of his way to show how God was turning it all for good and that what had happened to him was advancing the gospel, Philippians 1, 12.

00:08:17.000 | And finally, righteous anger does not savor being angry as though God, not we, were not the judge.

00:08:30.000 | God is the judge who will one day settle all accounts with perfect righteousness so that we don't need to and shouldn't become vengeful.

00:08:41.000 | "Vengeance is mine. I will repay," says the Lord. "If your enemy's hungry, feed him," Romans 12, 19.

00:08:49.000 | But I'm going to end, Tony, I'm going to end with one more sentence.

00:08:52.000 | Let me just say once more that the older I get, the more angry I am at my reflexive, self-justifying anger.

00:09:06.000 | And yet, I don't think that even my anger at my anger is a very redemptive remedy.

00:09:15.000 | Yeah, so important to reiterate this point at the beginning and the end.

00:09:19.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, for this really good overview on anger and its destructive power in our lives.

00:09:25.000 | And I think next week, on Wednesday of next week, I believe, we're going to look more closely at anger inside of the home.

00:09:32.000 | But thank you for listening and making the podcast a part of your day or your commute or your bike ride or housework.

00:09:39.000 | Whenever you listen, we thank you.

00:09:41.000 | It is an honor to join you as a part of your day.

00:09:44.000 | You can subscribe to our audio feeds to keep up with new episodes, and you can search our past episodes in our archive,

00:09:50.000 | and even reach us by email with a question you may be facing about life, like this very good one.

00:09:54.000 | You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:01.000 | We are going to break for the weekend now.

00:10:03.000 | And on Monday, we hear from a high school student who wants to know, "Is dating in high school a waste of time?"

00:10:10.000 | I'll ask John Piper his thoughts on Monday.

00:10:13.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:10:14.000 | We'll see you then.

00:10:16.000 | [end]

00:10:19.000 | [end]

00:10:20.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

The Great Marriage Killer

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