Be Angry, but Don’t Sin
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, Nathan W. Bingham here. Before we get to today's episode, I'd like to ask you to please pray for this Saturday's Always Ready Youth event in Panama City, Florida. Teenagers will gather for a one-day training event, helping them to defend their faith and encouraging them to stand firm on the truthfulness of God's Word, even in a world filled with deep fakes and malinformation. And if you're age 12 to 18, consider joining us. You can learn more and register at Ligonier.org slash North Florida. Thank you.
There are things, beloved, that go on in the world, in the school, in the government, in the church that ought to make us angry. When the truth of God is maligned and distorted, we should be angry about that. When human beings are violated, we should be angry about that. And when we're not angry about it, it reveals a profound indifference to sacred things. But the key is to have our responses mirror and reflect the responses of Christ. We should be angry at the things Christ is angry about and not angry about the things he's not angry about.
Our emotions can lead us down a path of sin, anger, grief, bitterness, even joy if we seek joy in the wrong places. So it's important for us as Christians to know what the Bible says about these topics, especially anger, for the Bible doesn't say that all anger is sinful. Welcome to the Monday edition of Renewing Your Mind. And over the next four days, we'll consider both anger and joy. R.C. Sproul's teaching on these topics is immensely practical, and they're topics not often addressed today from a biblical perspective. So when you give a donation in support of Renewing Your Mind at renewingyourmind.org, we'll send you two titles from Dr. Sproul, Is Anger Always a Sin? and Can I Have Joy in My Life?
Plus, we'll add both series to your digital library in the free Ligonier app. Well, to start this week's study, here's Dr. Sproul on the Apostle Paul's command to be angry and do not sin.
The Christian life in many ways is a life of responding to divine imperatives. An imperative expresses an obligation. It is a way of saying what it is that we must do. We have a special form for it in the English language, and we call it the imperative mood. And all languages have some way of expressing necessity, moral necessity by way of the imperative. And that was also true, of course, in the Greek tongue in which the New Testament was written. There are many imperatives in the New Testament, but there is one that sort of strikes us as being somewhat strange, and we find it in the fourth chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Listen closely to what Paul says in chapter 4, beginning at verse 25.
He says, "...therefore putting away lying..." Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. And verse 26 begins with these words, "'Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.'"
What makes us angry according to R.C. Sproul?
Now, obviously, the main thrust of this verse is a warning regarding a misuse of anger, and we'll talk about that in a moment. But did you notice the strange way in which Paul introduces the subject? He begins with an imperative, and he says, be angry. Now, yes, he's going to go on and qualify that. But here we actually get an exhortation to be something, to do something. And the Word of God tells us with the imperative form to be angry. Isn't that strange? Doesn't that just seem utterly inconsonant with everything else that we learn in Scripture about anger? norms and standards for human behavior. We don't want to be known as angry persons, do we? We don't want to be known as being hotheads or as angry young men or angry young women or angry anything.
And yet the Bible says, be angry. Well, I think we have to understand this against the background of the general principles of Christian behavior, which always and everywhere is a behavior that is to be imitative. That we are called to be imitators of Christ who himself imitated God. And so Christian virtue is a matter of being a copycat, of being an imitator of someone else who reveals the standard of perfect righteousness to us.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:14
2
What makes us angry according to R.C. Sproul?
4:14–9:25
3
How can anger reflect the responses of Christ?
9:25–12:45
4
What does the Bible say about righteous anger?
12:45–18:59
5
Why is it important to differentiate between righteous anger and sinful wrath?
18:59–24:36
6
How should Christians respond to anger?
24:36–26:13