Pauls's Epistle to the Ephesians
Chapter Eleven
GODLIKE ANGER.
" Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath." EPH. iv. 26.

A QUESTION may be raised as to the force and meaning of the first imperative; "Be ye angry." Is it a mere permission; the recognition and acknowledgment of a necessary evil? You may be angry; you cannot help it; but it must be under certain carefully considered conditions and restraints. Or is it more than that? Does it imply that anger may be right and lawful, nay, that it may be a duty, that it may be wrong not to be angry? The best way of meeting this question is, as it seems to me, to connect the text with the preceding context.

Who are they who are least assumed to be angry? They are those who, in obedience to the previous command, have put away lying, or falsehood, and speak truth every man with his neighbour.

Now, in the first place, this putting away of lying, or falsehood, as we have seen, implies a deep and thorough inward process of spiritual renovation or renewal. It implies the laying aside of all guile; in all the relations in which we have been guilty of guile before, and are naturally prone to guile; first and chiefly in our relation to God, his government and law, his throne of grace and his blessed gospel; then in our relation to ourselves, our own hearts and consciences ; and, last of all, in relation to our fellow-men, as they are in the sight of God, and as they have claims upon us in the view, not of time only, but also of eternity.
Then, secondly, we resolve to speak as we believe; to speak truth every man with his neighbour; whoever that neighbour may be, on whatever grounds his neighbourhood to us may rest; we are to speak out truly what we think and feel, whenever we speak at all. Can this be done, ought it to be done, without anger, without our spirits being stirred within us, without the rising of that emotion which the sense of wrong calls forth? Surely, within the sphere which the apostle, or rather the Spirit, is here regulating, anger is not only inevitable, but lawful and right. This may appear more clearly as I proceed to inquire -
I. What is the sort of anger here allowed or enjoined?
II. What are the conditions annexed to the allowance or injunction?

I. What is the sort of anger here meant? Evidently it must be anger of such a sort as shall be in keeping and in harmony with the sphere in which it works or operates. In this view consider again what that sphere is. It is the sphere of the truth as it is in Jesus, in contrast to the deceit or lie of which the devil is the father. You have learned Christ, hearing him and being taught in him. This brings you into the region of the truth as it is in Jesus; into the full blaze of the true light shining in him. The spell of Satan's dark falsehood is broken. The truth, in the person and work of Jesus, the real truth, the whole truth, as regards God and man, and their relations now and for ever, possesses your whole soul. You have done with the lusts of the old man, which are the blind ministers of the devil's lie. You have to do only with the righteousness and holiness of the new man, which are the bright ornaments and blessed agents of God's truth in Jesus. Thus you are ushered into a new sphere, a new world; a sphere, a world, in which you no longer swallow the devil's lie, and in terms and under shelter of it indulge your natural lusts; but believe with your whole hearts God's gracious, glorious truth, in Jesus; and follow after the righteousness and holiness which it demands and inspires.

In this new sphere, this new world, and with reference to all its interests and concerns, you are to be inwardly upright, honest; altogether without guile or reserve; putting away all deceit; all deceitful dealing in the inner man; laying the whole inner man bare and open to the truth of God in Jesus: and you are to be outwardly speakers of truth; speakers of that truth; and of all truth in the light of it. You are to do this as required by the law of neighbourhood generally, of course according to the Lord's interpretation of it in the parable of the good Samaritan; and also as required by the special consideration of our being in him members one of another. Now if it is to this peculiar sphere of life, and to this thorough truthfulness, inwardly and outwardly, in it, that the precept or permission, "Be ye angry," refers, it is plain that the anger meant must be of a very peculiar sort; and the question about it is very limited. It is not, for instance, the question raised by Bishop Butler, and so handled by him, that he must be a bold man who ventures to touch it after him; the question as to the place which anger legitimately occupies among the original elements of man's moral nature or constitution, its use and abuse, and the principles which should regulate its exercise and expression. It is both a narrower and a loftier view of anger which we are here called to take. We are to look at it as forming part of the new man, created after God, and as working in the new sphere of his divine life, of truth, righteousness, and holiness, in Jesus. No doubt it is still radically the same passion. But it is modified in itself, and in its manner.

The only sort of anger that can enter into the kingdom of God is that which has respect to the intention and purpose of the party provoking it; to the moral character indicated by that, whatever it may be, in him or about him, which, when perceived by us, awakens our indignation. And here, therefore, any question as to the nature of the passion must necessarily turn on the standard by which we judge of purpose, or intention, or moral character, and our singleness of eye in judging.

To a large extent, even natural men, in natural things, judge rightly, unless warped by interest or prejudice. A cruel murder, a base act of treachery, the recital of a story of oppression, will make most people of any natural feeling angry; and justly so. But natural feeling is fitful, variable, capricious. Men under its influence differ widely from one another as to what makes them angry, and how angry they are; and they differ from themselves at different times. A breach of decorum will irritate the fastidiously polite; a breach of delicacy the sensitively pure; a breach of honour the chivalrously highminded; where coarser souls, or even these very persons in coarser moods, might see nothing to offend. Nay, familiarity with some slight violations of the law of honesty and truth in your worldly dealings may so blunt the moral sense as to render you very tolerant of things, at the bare mention of which you would once have been indignant. Such is anger in the old man, and in the old world; surely, at the best, a doubtful weapon and motive of power, even in what may be called its own appropriate domain of natural morality, amid the ordinary ongoings of natural life and society. And then as to that other domain, pertaining to God and the things of God, it is all but absolutely powerless. Sin, as such, as it touches the law and the throne of God; blasphemy, profanity, the treatment which his Son receives; the affront offered to his Spirit; the insolent rejection of his overtures of grace; the impious defiance of his judgments, arouse no passion; inflame no bosom; kindle no eye.

Now look at anger in the new man, created after God - after his image. Will it not, like the new man it belongs to and forms a part of, be itself after God, after his manner? What makes God angry? How is God angry, it will be ever asking. Nay, it will be ever instinctively feeling, under the teaching of the Spirit, what it is that makes God angry, and what his anger is. For this anger of the new man is, in one word, sympathy with God; intelligent, confiding, loving sympathy with God. In its highest and purest form, when not selfish but generous, natural anger may be said to be sympathy with man; a fellow-feeling with the injured, rousing resentment against the injurer. So anger here is genuine, thorough sympathy with God. And hence, in the first instance, in so far as it is genuine and thorough, it takes cognisance of a class of wrongs and offences wholly beyond the range of the merely natural principle.

But it is not limited to these. It takes cognisance also of all that lies within the range of that other anger. And it does so not only with a sounder judgment, but with intenser earnestness and warmth. He is but a poor specimen of the new man, if entitled to be accredited with that character at all, who is roused to passion by any hasty or even inadvertent inroad on some sacred form, while he can listen, callous and unmoved, to the wronged orphan's cry, or pass by on the other side, without anger and therefore without pity, while the traveller is stripped and beaten by thieves. The real Christian is a man still; and nothing human is foreign to him; of nothing human can he say, It is not my concern. But more than that. He is the new man created after God. He looks on all human things with God's eyes; with God's heart; seeing them as God sees them; feeling them as God feels them. They move him as they move God. His anger about them is truly Godlike.

Thus, to be angry at what makes God angry, is one chief and primary condition of this Godlike anger of the new man created after God; another, is to be angry as God is angry. Here let it be settled in your minds as a great fact that anger in God is a reality, a real feeling. It is not to be explained away as if it were a mere figure of speech. Nor is it to be confounded with his calm determination to enforce law and execute judgment. There is no anger in that. If there were, the sinner might have some better chance of getting off. God, as judge, is not angry; no, never. But he is angry as a moral being. And his anger arises out of his very perfection in that character. He could not be perfectly holy if the sight of sin did not awaken the anger of loathing and abhorrence ; or perfectly righteous if the perpetration of injustice did not awaken the anger of indignation demanding redress; or perfectly good and loving if the spectacle of cruelty did not awaken the anger of pitying resentment, calling aloud for vengeance. He could not be in earnest in the mission of his Son, and in the mission of his Spirit, if unbelief in the Saviour and the offence against the Holy Ghost did not move him to anger. Nor can you be holy, righteous, good and loving, as he is; nor can you be in earnest, as he is in earnest, about the great work which he is carrying on in the earth, for the glory of his own great name and the saving of poor lost sinners; unless you know what it is to be angry even as God is angry.

II. But you are to be angry only as God is angry; only in his spirit and after his manner. Therefore, your anger must be
(1) sinless in its character ; and
(2) brief in its duration. In these two respects your anger, if it is to be the anger of the new man, created after God in the righteousness and holiness of the truth, must be itself after God.

1. It must be sinless. "Be ye angry and sin not." This is not a mere vague and indefinite warning against sin of any sort mixing itself up with your anger. It is precise and definite. It points to sin in the matter of the anger. The anger itself may become more or less sinful; yes, even though its motive is the righteousness and holiness of the truth as it is in Jesus ; and its original impulse is righteous, holy, and true. Let this be ever kept in mind, especially by warm and zealous men, in warm and zealous moments. All anger in you, even Godlike anger, tends to sin; and must do so as long as you are in the flesh. For it too readily allies itself to that self-love in you which is the real root and ground, the source and spring of the anger of the old man, which is altogether sinful, and of whatever is sinful in the anger of the new man.

God's anger is absolutely holy. For he is never angry on his own account, or for injury done to him. In one sense, indeed, it may be said that his anger is kindled by insults and affronts offered to himself and to what is his. Nay, that may be said to be the true ultimate cause of his anger, even when it is manifested in the avenging of his elect and the ruin of their persecutors. But there is no self-seeking in all this. What makes him angry, however it may be opposed to his nature and will, does not really touch his essential glory and blessedness. His glory - the glory of his essential perfections - he can, and must, and will vindicate, not only in spite of, but by means of, opposition the most wilful. His blessedness - the blessedness of his eternal rest - no jarring elements of creature strife can even for a moment disturb or interrupt.

It cannot be for their bearing on himself personally, that he is angry when these ills are done. No. But they vex him because he is so holy, pure, loving, true. They vex him for the inherent malignity that is in them; for their sapping the foundations of that righteous government on which the well-being of the universe is based; for the disaster which they bring on helpless victims; for the mischiefs that recoil on the ill-doers themselves. These surely are intelligible enough and warrantable enough motives of anger, even in the breast of infinite benevolence; of him whose nature and whose name is love. They must be felt to be so by all of you who know and believe the love wherewith he has loved you in Christ Jesus.

Entering into these motives, and making them yours, you cannot well sin in your anger. In so far as you do so you are surely safe. But the risk always is that self intrudes; the old self; the self of the old man. Anger springs so much more naturally and spontaneously from selfishness than from godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity, that there is ever apt to lurk at the bottom of it, even when it seems to be most disinterested and most divine, some root of bitterness ready to spring up and give trouble. Were its objects, the things we are angry at, mere abstract principles, opinions, practices, there would be comparatively little danger. But they are living persons. Now there lies the snare. Even when we try to conceive of what provokes our righteous and holy anger in the most impersonal possible way, after the most abstract possible fashion, in spite of all that we can do, it becomes embodied. It takes shape and form in living men and women. So there is an inlet for personal feelings stealing in : and personal feelings in such cases are apt to beget sin.

But is it not so, even with God? Is not his anger like yours, stirred and provoked not by abstract qualities and acts, but by living personal agents? True. It is so. And that it is so is a very solemn consideration for those who stir and provoke his anger. God is angry with the wicked. Not with their wicked attributes and wicked deeds, but with themselves; he, personally, with them personally. 0 wicked man God is angry with thee! But he has no personally vindictive feeling against thee. He has no personal wrong to avenge; no personal grudge to gratify. No! Far from it. He loveth thee with a pure and holy love, though he is angry with thee for thine impurity and unholiness. Angry as he is with thee, he would have thee to be pure and holy as he is himself. Thus the sinlessness of God's anger is secured by his infinite, universal love. Thus it is divested of every element of personal feeling. God is love.

Would you learn how to be angry and sin not? First, be sure that you know and believe the love that God has to you : and then be sure that you love as God loves. Only then can you be angry as God is angry; and so be angry and sin not. Let love, divine love, the love of God flowing forth out of the heart of God through his Son Jesus Christ; flowing into your hearts in the Holy Ghost; flowing again forth, through the same Lord Jesus, and in the same Holy Ghost, from your heart, in which now it has its home; let that love give its tone and temper to all your anger, whoever may be its object, be he the worst of enemies, the worst of men. You are angry; you cannot but be angry; you do well to be angry, when you see his crimes and hear his blasphemies. But you love him as God loves him, and would have him to be saved, even as God shows that he would have him to be saved, when he swears by himself, "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked ; but that the wicked turn from his way and live," So be ye angry and sin not.

It must be short, as well as sinless, this anger that is here sanctioned. It must be of brief duration. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." In this respect also the anger is Godlike; it is such as it is in God. For the anger of God is not one of the eternal attributes of his nature. It is a feeling or emotion (I cannot help using human phraseology here) called forth by passing events and circumstances in time; and not therefore necessarily lasting. It is not like his justice, always and unchangeably the same. On the contrary, it is temporary, and, if I may so say, occasional. It must be so, if it is real. For what, in this connection, is his anger? It is the effect produced upon his moral nature by what offends it in the current history, the actual ongoings of the world; in the daily doings of its inhabitants. It is the present effect of a present cause. It is, even in God, not an abiding principle, but a transient affection. I repeat that, so far as I can see, it must be so, if it is real. For, if real, it partakes beyond all doubt of the character and quality of emotion. It is the occasional acting, not the abiding state, of the Divine mind. This is a view of the anger of God which I think I might prove, did time permit, to be strictly scriptural. It is a very solemn one for both saint and sinner, for the wicked and the righteous.

God is angry with the wicked; it is said, he is angry with them every day. His anger is a daily anger. It is new and fresh every day; as they commit new and fresh wickedness every day. It is real anger against them personally; and it is very fierce and terrible. The expression of it, when he sees fit to express it, cannot but be dreadful. He does not always outwardly express it. For the most part he holds his peace and keeps silence. All the more appalling may the expression of it be, when he does speak out, not in word only, but in deed. Still, it is the expression, not of a past purpose, or of a prospective sentence, but of a present feeling on the part of God. As such, I repeat, it cannot Tout be terrible. God forbid that I should mitigate its terror.

But it is not the worst terror for the wicked. It is not with that that their final punishment is connected; it is not on that that it is based. I nowhere find their condemnation represented as flowing from God's anger. If it did, it might not be so hopeless as it is. But it comes of his justice; and that is a very different affair. Anger, in the breast of God, may not be a lasting emotion. But justice in his kingdom is an everlasting principle; an eternal unchangeable necessity. And it is God's justice, not his anger, that seals your irreversible and irrecoverable doom.

God is angry with his own people when in their character and conduct he sees what offends his moral nature. He must be so, for no change in their relation to him can possibly change his moral nature. Nay, he is more angry with them than with the wicked. He may well be so. He cannot but be so. For what in them provokes him to anger is far more inexcusable than it would be in the wicked. It pains and vexes him far more. And he may express his anger in their case, in his dealings with them, more clearly and emphatically than for the most part he does in the case of the wicked. Nay, he must needs do so. He cannot let them, as he lets the wicked, alone. He cannot conceal from them his anger. They must be made to feel its effects.
"Why should you be stricken any more?" may be his language to you who believe not. It is of no use; of no avail. There is no sound part in you on which the stroke of my anger might tell. Ah what a state! You escape the temporary visitation of his anger to fall into the inexorable hands of his everlasting justice.

To you who are in Christ there is now no condemnation. Justice, in your case, is satisfied. You have nothing to fear from it. Nay, it is what constitutes your security. God is just, and the justifier of you who believe. You are at peace and on terms of friendship with God for ever. But he to whom you stand thus so blessedly related is the same moral being that he has ever been. The Lord your God is holy still. He is angry when what you are, or what you do, is contrary to his moral nature, contrary to his holiness. He cannot but be angry; and angry too, in very proportion to the love he bears you, and the favour he has shown you. And his anger is a real emotion; it will be felt by you to be real; a real distress; a real grief in your inmost soul; causing many tears; and it may take effect upon you in real and awful inflictions even of penal severity, not to speak of salutary chastening. Still it is but for a moment. For hear his own gracious words of comfort: -"For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer." ..." For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee" (Isa. liv. 7, 8, 10).

Now, if a moment suffice for the anger of God, surely a day may be more than enough for yours. If his righteous and holy wrath endureth but for a moment, yours may well subside ere sundown. It may be well that it do, if you would be angry, and not sin in your anger. For your anger, even at the best, is not, like that of God, perfectly righteous. It is not so righteous and so holy that you can afford to nurse it, or be safe in keeping it long. Alas, it soon loses its disinterested character of sympathy with God, his truth, his righteousness and holiness. It ceases to be his: it becomes your own. It is not generous indignation on account of wrong done to him or to his saints, but a sense of personal wrong inflicted on yourselves. It passes into that sad frame of mind which the psalmist confesses so feelingly -"As for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. . . . Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency" (Ps. Ixxiii. 2, 3, 13). Therefore, as is elsewhere counselled -"Fret not thyself because of evil doers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in anywise to do evil" (Ps. xxxvii. 1, 7, 8). That your anger may be sinless ; not selfish, carnal, earthly; but pure, upright, heavenly, divine ; that ye may be angry and sin not; "let not the sun go down upon your wrath."

And now, in conclusion, adverting again to the question with which we set out, we surely cannot greatly err if, under the qualifications and limitations specified, we interpret freely, broadly, fearlessly, the precept, "Be ye angry," as not an allowance or permission merely, but a warrant, a sanction, a command. It is not the toleration and regulation of a necessary evil. It is the commendation of a good thing ; the enforcing of a high and holy obligation.

Yes, it is a duty to be angry. It is good to be zealously affected in a good thing. Who is the man who has learned to pass through this world of sin, and suffering, and sorrow, calm, unruffled, unmoved; his ear not pained, his soul not sick, at rumours of oppression and deceit, of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled; the placid, mild philosopher; smiling in imperturbable serene tranquillity amid the groans of oppressed virtue and the shouts of triumphant vice? Call you him a model man? One of whom you would make a patriot, a philanthropist, or anything more noble than a vulgar hero, a callous conqueror of empires, wading remorselessly through slaughter to a throne? Who is the Christian who can pass through a city wholly given to idolatry without his spirit being stirred in him? Certainly no second Paul. Who is the follower of Jesus who can see men turning his Father's house into a den of thieves - or making long prayers while they devour widows' houses, and not be roused to righteous wrath? Certainly he is not like-minded with his Master.

Let Christ here be your study, your pattern, your example. Let him be more. Let him be your life; Christ living in you; dwelling in your hearts by faith. And as it is not you who live, but Christ who liveth in you; so let it be not you who are angry, but Christ in you. Never be ye angry, where you are not sure that he would have been angry. Never be ye angry, otherwise than as you are sure he would have been angry. Never be ye angry longer than you feel he would have been angry. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Let all be pure and calm at eventide.

Would you lie down in peace and take quiet sleep? Can you, if there be sin in your heart? In all your anger there is sin, or risk of sin. Therefore let not the sun go down upon your wrrath. Again I ask, Would you lie down in peace and take quiet sleep? Can you, if there is trouble in your spirit? In all anger there is trouble, unquietness, perturbation. When Jesus slept so soundly in the storm without, there was no storm within. The tumult of the people, the contradiction, vexed him no more than the noisy and adverse billows of the sea. It was his own calm repose that he imparted and expressed, when he said to the disciples, Why are ye so fearful, and to the rolling waves, Peace, be still. Would you have the same sound sleep that he had? Would you have him to give you, as his beloved, his own sleep? Then let not even righteous anger be prolonged.

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Once more I ask, Would you lie down in peace and take quiet sleep? Can you, if you lie down tonight in any other frame than you would choose to he found in were tomorrow's wakening in eternity ? And what frame is that but what was in Jesus, when the sun was going down in deepest eclipse, not on any wrath in him, but on his dying love, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do "-" Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"?
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