Scripture has much to say about anger and may be divided into divine and human anger. Human anger may be further divided into righteous or sinful. “Anger is our whole-personal active response of negative moral judgement against perceived evil.”[1] Divine anger is God’s patient and righteous response and wrath towards sin and evil in the world (Ps. 103:8). Human righteous anger mirrors divine anger when we rightly respond to sin and evil that we correctly identify as evil or against Scripture (Eph. 4:26). Righteous anger must be accompanied other righteous attributes like long-suffering, self-control, love, mercy, and more. Christ is the perfect example of human righteous anger (John 2:15-17). While it is possible to experience human righteous anger, most often anger leads to sinful responses. Human sinful anger is a whole-person active response that proclaims judgement towards a perceived evil or injustice, typically committed against themselves (James 1:20).
Human sinful anger may be seen as an outward expression of outburst, red-faced yelling, rage, or the like. Proverbs warns not to associate with such a man (22:24). Anger may also be seen as inward expressions of bitterness, concealed anger, passive aggressive attacks, unforgiveness, and the like. We are called to be slow to anger and not easily provoked, whether that anger is burning outward anger or cold inward anger. Christ put anger in the same category as murder (Matt. 5:22).
Implicit in anger is that God has not or will not respond to the offense so I must. It is a demanding that others respond to the way I think the world should be. Anger has a way of convincing us that it is someone else’s problem. They made me anger by their actions. While external circumstances influence our responses, it does not determine them. We must own our own sin regardless of the situation. “Anger always starts in the heart, with evil desires and wrong beliefs—lusts and lies.”[2] Scripture is clear that “out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).
We must see anger as against the Lord and desire another way through prayer, meditation, and Christ-like growth. Proverbs has much to say about anger and virtue of being self-controlled and patient (15:1, 18; 16:32; 19:11, 29:11). James encourages us to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. Anger arises from a sense that we must defend and protect ourselves, but we must remember that God is sovereign and to leave room for God’s wrath (Rom. 12:19). Anger finds itself in the list of sinful behaviors to be put off and to be replaced by righteous attributes, in doing so we model our savior (Col. 3:8, 12-14).
[1] Jones, Uprooting Anger, 15.
[2] Jones, Uprooting Anger, 22.