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Understanding Anger Rather That He Should Turn from His Ways and Live” (Ezekiel 18:23)

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Understanding Anger Rather That He Should Turn from His Ways and Live” (Ezekiel 18:23) God’s anger is never capricious or ill-humored. He Anger Part 1: responds justly to what is wrong and offensive. But He “takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, Understanding Anger rather that he should turn from his ways and live” (Ezekiel 18:23). Human beings were intended to love by David Powlison the one who made and sustains them, whose “riches Every human being deals with anger. In a world of of kindness, forbearance, and patience” all have expe- disappointments, imperfections, miseries, and sins rienced (Romans 2:4). But “their adulterous hearts (our own and others’), anger is a given. You get angry. turned away…and their eyes played the harlot after I get angry. Those you counsel get angry. No doubt their idols” (Ezekiel 6:9). Is God’s anger unfair? When that’s why the Bible comes packed with stories, teach- challenged, God’s response is straightforward: “Are ings, and comments about anger: God intends us to My ways not right? Is it not your ways that are not understand anger and to know how anger problems can be resolved. This article has three parts. “Understanding Anger” will focus on how we think about anger. The You can’t understand God’s love second and third parts, which will appear in future if you don’t understand His anger. issues, will look at implications and how we counsel angry people. What is anger? How do we make sense of it? Let’s begin with five general statements about something right?…I shall judge you according to your ways and we often experience but seldom stop to understand. according to your deeds.”4 The crimes that arouse God’s wrath are capital 1. The Bible is About Anger crimes: betrayal, rebellion, deceit, blasphemous The Bible is about anger. Who is the angriest per- beliefs. The human heart is treacherous; we desire to son in the Bible? God. When God looks at evil, “His believe anything but what is really true about God. anger does not turn away,” as Isaiah repeated over The feelings aroused in us when we hear someone and over. In Romans, Paul mentions God’s anger and described by the word “traitor” give a hint of the rea- its effects more than fifty times, beginning with, “The soning within God’s wrath. Human beings were wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all intended to listen to God’s life-giving voice and to ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Romans treat one another with love. But we have hearts of 1:18). John says that the wrath of God “abides” on stone. We are headstrong: “You are each one walking whoever will not believe in the Son of God for mercy: according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart, anger was, is, and will remain on their heads.1 without listening to Me”; “Everyone did what was That God is angry tells us something very impor- right in his own eyes.”5 God would be less than good tant. Anger can be utterly right, good, appropriate, if He did not hate such evils. beautiful, the only fair response to something evil, God, of course, is also the most loving person in and the loving response on behalf of evil’s victims. In the Bible, and the Son of God expresses the fullness of fact, “it would be impossible for a moral being to His love. We often fail to see that God’s anger and love stand in the presence of perceived wrong indifferent are entirely consistent with each other as different and unmoved.”2 It is no surprise that Jesus Christ was expressions of His goodness and glory. The two work filled with anger when He encountered people who together: “Jesus burned with anger against the perverted the worship of God and contributed to or wrongs He met with in His journey through human were calloused to the sufferings of others.3 life, as truly as He melted with pity at the sight of the 1John 3:36; cf. 3:14-21. 3See, e.g., Mark 3:5 and 10:14; Matthew 18:6f and 23:2-36; 2B. B. Warfield, “The Emotional Life of Our Lord,” The Per- John 2:14-17. son and Work of Christ (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & 4Ezekiel 18:29 and 24:14. Reformed, 1950, pp. 93-145), p. 107. 5Jeremiah 16:12; Judges 21:25. 40 The Journal of Biblical Counseling • Volume 14 • Number 1 • Fall 1995 © 1995, The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation All rights reserved. No portion of this publication should be reproduced, copied or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. Inquiries should be made in writing, addressed to CCEF, 1803 East Willow Grove Ave, Glenside, PA 19038. world’s misery: and it was out of these two emotions and a clearing conscience do feel good. God remakes that His actual mercy proceeded.”6 You can’t under- us progressively into love, joy, peace, and wisdom— stand God’s love if you don’t understand His anger. His own image. God’s anger remedies and destroys Because He loves, He’s angry at what harms. ongoing sin. Because He loves us, He’s angry at our But notice the way God’s children experience His self-destructive sinfulness; our growing faith and obe- anger: His anger is expressed on their behalf as dience is His glory and our joy. God’s loving anger on supremely tender love! As we will see, the Bible is our behalf nourishes and encourages faith: it assures consistent about this truth. Yet anger is by definition us that He will keep working both inside us and against things, with an intent to destroy, so how can around us to set us free of indwelling evil.8 In the new God’s wrath become something God’s children love birth and sanctification, God’s destructive power and trust rather than something they fear or dislike? works within us against what is wrong with us. He is In what way is God’s anger an expression of how He for us, making us new, teaching us to listen, remaking is for us, rather than the expression of how He is us like Jesus. In the daily outworking of love, we expe- against us? The Good News is always presented in rience God’s anger working FOR us. In response, we terms of how love and anger come to be resolved. God energetically cooperate and obey. expresses His love for His people by each of the three ways Third, in love, God’s anger will deliver you from the pain He expresses His anger at wrong. He promises to free of others’ sins. His anger at sin will be expressed again believers from three things. for your well-being. In the future He promises to end First, in love, the anger your sin deserves fell on Jesus. all suffering from others’ sinfulness.9 God hates the God’s anger at sin was expressed—but for your well- way people hurt other people. In steadfast love, He will being. Once and for all in the past, God set you free deliver us from our enemies; on the last day all causes from ever experiencing His wrath against your sins. In of pain will be destroyed forever. At the same time, the steadfast love, He freely offered His innocent Son to Bible is clear that those who oppose God and hurt His bear the wrath deserved by the guilty. God’s anger people exist for a purpose: they are God’s unwitting punishes and destroys, giving our sin its due—but it agents in the sanctification task. They act for their own was taken by Jesus, the Beloved Lamb, the Savior of sinful reasons, but also accomplish God’s purposes for sinners. Because He loves us, He offers Himself to good as He tests and transforms us through suffering. bear the fire of anger; the way of our deliverance is They are agents of God’s loving discipline towards His His glory and our joy. God’s loving anger, expressed people that we might learn patience, faith, love for ene- in a way that brings us blessing, is the basis of life mies, courage, and every good fruit that can only be from the dead: it assures us of true forgiveness. Justi- learned in tough times. Yet they are under wrath for the fication by faith and adoption as the children of God malice with which they do what they do.10 God’s anger rest upon that form of love called substitutionary atonement. What we deserve, another bore because 8Hebrews 12:5-11. He chose to love us. In this supreme act of self-giving 9Revelation 21:4 culminates a theme that runs throughout love, we experience God’s anger acting FOR us. In this entire book of comfort for God’s afflicted people: the wrath of the Lamb (6:16f) brings about mercy and life for the response, we confidently repent and believe. people of the Lamb (7:16f). And now in part we experience Second, in love, God’s anger works to disarm the power temporal deliverances (e.g., the promises of Psalms 31 and of your sin. His anger at sin is again expressed for your 121, and many Bible stories). In fact, on the whole God well-being. In the present, He deals continually with rarely allows human sin to play out its intrinsic violent indwelling sinfulness itself.7 The Holy Spirit, who logic.
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