(upbeat music) - Well, does holy anger kill our delight in God? It's a good question from Matt, a listener in Wisconsin. Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast. I think we're living in an age where Christians are taking hard stances on just about anything and everything, making decisions about vaccines and politicians and masks, decisions all held with unflexing biblical conviction.

And then those staunch positions and the resulting strong language is justified by Christians in terms of righteous anger, like Jesus flipping tables and not sinning. A long time back in an episode on abortion, APJ 672, you made a case for using righteous anger to call out the evil of killing the unborn.

It witnesses to the world the degree of such an injustice as abortion. But later you were asked about the distinction between unholy anger and holy anger. That was in APJ 1100. And there you said, quote, "I was much more optimistic "about a righteous place for anger when I was 30 "than I am now.

"I have seen the destructive power of anger "in relationships, especially marriage, "to such a degree that over the last 40 to 50 years, "I am far less sanguine about so-called righteous anger "than I once was. "Anger is not just a relationship destroyer, "it is a self-destroyer. "It eats up all other wholesome emotions." End quote.

I'm wondering if that last phrase is connected to your overwhelming emphasis in your ministry on delighting in God and desiring God. Were you there suggesting that righteous anger tends to eat up the proper, more dominantly necessary emotions of delight and satisfaction in God? And where are you now in life with the value or dangers of righteous anger?

- I'm glad to address this again. I feel very strongly about it. So was I suggesting that righteous anger can become a destructive anger that eats up the God-glorifying emotions of joy and peace and delight in God? Yes, absolutely. I was suggesting that, and believe it. Anger of a certain kind and a certain duration will not only eat up all God-glorifying emotions, but it will eat up virtually all emotions and leave a person with an outward, plastic, superficial personality or persona and an inward, easily offended cauldron of suppressed anger.

I have seen it in life. I see evidences of it in the Bible. So let's look at a few passages for why I see things this way and feel as strongly as I do and perhaps can give some help not to go there. You have this famous statement in James 1, 19.

Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Now, notice the logic, the logical connection. Be slow to anger because the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. So a quick-tempered person is generally experiencing anger that is not of God.

And guess the logic. It is simply man's anger. Quick anger is regularly man's anger, not God's anger. It's not righteous. It's destructive. Now listen to these Proverbs to see where James has rooted all this. I think James is the closest thing we get to the book of Proverbs in the New Testament, but I don't doubt that he was deeply schooled on the Proverbs.

So Proverbs 14, 17, a man of quick temper acts foolishly. Proverbs 14, 29, whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who is hasty in temper exalts folly. Proverbs 15, 18, a hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention. Proverbs 16, 32, whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

Proverbs 19, 11, good sense makes one slow to anger and eases his glory to overlook an offense. So then you go over to James 3, really important, I think, to align James 1, 19, and 20 with James 3, 14 to 18, and you see the heavenly alternative to the merely human anger that does not produce the righteousness of God.

Here's what it says. The wisdom from above, it's heavenly now, it's not just a man, the wisdom from above is peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere, and a harvest of righteousness. Remember, those verses back there said, anger doesn't produce the righteousness of God.

So here you get a harvest of righteousness, and it is sown, this harvest is sown in peace by those who make peace. In other words, the opposite of anger. Anger seldom accomplishes the good ends that James is after, namely a harvest of right, good, wholesome, just, loving behavior. It may, you know, I'm gonna get to the fact that there is such a thing as righteous anger, but it is really rare, I think, and therefore, James says, be slow to go there, very, very slow to get there.

So the very least we can say from James is, if anger should come, it should come slowly. Not necessarily temporally slowly, though that's probably the case ordinarily, but rather in the sense of it's got to go through some real serious filters in your soul. It's gotta go through the filter of humility, and through the filter of patience, and through the filter of wisdom, and through the filter of love, and through the filter of self-control.

And if it comes out on the other side, it might be righteous anger. Slow in the sense that put it through the paces, man. Don't just go there. Now, here comes Ephesians 4. This is the only other serious, I mean, text we'll look at in a significant way. Ephesians 4, 26.

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Do not give place to the devil. So James says, be slow to get angry, and Paul says, be quick to stop being angry. That's really significant, isn't it? Puts a high premium on the duration of anger.

Don't let the sun go down on your anger. Be done with it by sundown. It's dangerous, and the danger is the devil. So James and Paul treat anger as a hot potato. Be slow to catch it, and if you gotta catch it, toss it quick to somebody else, or better toss it in the river.

Now, why? And Paul gives the reason why it's so dangerous. He says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Get rid of it quick. Don't give place to the devil. So to go to bed seething, go to bed with a grudge, go to bed with undealt with anger, not forgiving people, holding a grudge, is an invitation as you go to sleep to the devil to come on in, come on in.

And it seems that the devil specializes in moving in to this deadly work, his deadly work, where anger is held onto day and night. So one of the signs of righteous anger is that it comes slowly and it leaves quickly. It does not dominate. It does its work in the moment, and it doesn't stay around to contaminate.

It doesn't give place to the devil. And what I've been saying for years is that what the devil does when you give him place by holding onto anger longer than you should, what the devil does is eat up every alternative good God-glorifying emotion. And I would add, from what I've seen in recent days, that he not only eats up good affections and emotions, but that in the absence of those affections, he eats truth.

That is, he distorts true perceptions. We don't see things as clearly when anger eats us up. I have seen it. I've seen people move from the most mild assessments of someone's error to damnation. (laughs) I mean, just, you wonder, where did that come from? That they would move to the point of actually damning another person for what started out to be a relatively minor fault.

And I think part of the answer is anger eats up love. Anger eats up affections. Anger eats up thankfulness. And anger eats up true perceptions of reality. So the point is that the devil hates joy in God. The devil hates tenderhearted compassion. The devil hates us to be kind to suffering people.

The devil hates sweet affection for our families. He hates it when husbands and wives are tenderhearted and kind and forgiving to each other. The devil hates wonder and admiration at the beauties of nature. The devil hates all the fruit of the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, meekness, faithfulness, self-control, he hates them all.

And when we give him place in our hearts at night, going to bed with anger, the jaws called anger consume over time all those precious affections. So the present state of my mind, he asked, "Where's your mind presently on this issue?" The present state of my mind, both biblically and culturally on this question about anger is that anger is a dangerous emotion, not necessarily sinful.

God, by the way, is the only person who's holy enough to manage it really well. And he does get angry and he never sins by it. We, however, being fallen and sinful, must consider it much more dangerous for us than it is for God. It's not dangerous for God.

Nothing's dangerous for God. It has a proper place, therefore, only when it comes slowly, leaves quickly, and in between is truly governed by a love for people and the glory of God. So let me end the way Paul does, following up on his admonition not to go to bed angry.

He says in the next verses, this is chapter 4, verses 30 to 32 of Ephesians, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger." So now we're told, not only do you give place to the devil, but you grieve the Spirit if you hold on to anger.

"So let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice." And here comes the alternative. "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you." And there's the key, isn't it? "Let our affections be joyfully overwhelmed, that while we deserved wrath and anger from God, yet amazingly, we have been forgiven by the death of the only innocent person who ever lived." That state of mind and heart, that forgiven, amazed at our forgiveness, like John Newton, amazing grace, that state of mind and heart will keep anger from rising too quickly or staying too long.

- Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for the wonderful follow-up question, Matt. If you have a follow-up question, send it to us through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Wednesday, we're back to look at that incredible episode in 1 Kings 18 of God's defeat of Baal's prophets. And we're gonna look at the whole point of that story, which is made clear in the text about a God who turns hearts to himself.

It's a great observation from the text made by Pastor John. Up next time, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday. See you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)