Understanding Anger In Ephesians 4

Eph 4:26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: (better translated RAGE)
Eph 4:27 Neither give place to the devil.

Now look at Ephesians 4:31. "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice..."

There are few better examples in the Bible of apparent contradictions. In the space of five verses, the Apostle Paul on the one hand says, "Be ye angry..." and then five verses later says, "Let all...anger...be put away from you..."

Such an apparent contradiction must be explained or the Bible can be found guilty of issuing directly contradictory commands. And contradictory commands can never be obeyed because it is impossible to both do and not do something at the same time in the same context of action. (A context of action is a place, or a space, where an action can be reasonably seen to actually take place. For example, a context for the action of swimming would be a swimming pool; a context of action for killing a lion would be a jungle in Africa, etc.)

The only way the apparent contradiction from Paul can be resolved is if it can be seen that Paul was referring to two separate contexts of actions in the space of that five verse teaching.

And that is exactly what the Apostle Paul was doing.

Paul's teaching method becomes understandable when you see that to the people listening to the Apostle Paul--both those at Ephesus and those throughout the rest of the Roman Empire--there was no fact more obvious that this: They lived in two separate contexts of actions at the same time. Those two separate contexts were: 1. The context of world or the flesh; 2. The context of the Spirit. (There were other symbols used by the Apostles to describe these two separate contexts. For example, the world or the flesh was also described as the kingdom of the god of this world, while the Spirit was described as the context for the Kingdom of God. But the point is Christians had been taught by the Apostles to be very sensitive to which context of action was being referred to in the messages they received from the Apostles. Read Galatians 5:17-25 to see a well-known place where Paul contrasted the two separate contexts the Christian had to understand if they were to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.)

There was one very important reason Christians had learned to be very sensitive and diligent in understanding which context of action was being referred to by the Apostles when they tried to understand the messages they received from them. If you were a Christian, Caesar's government might kill you for no reason other than you confessing your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. If Christians were at risk of death for merely confessing that Jesus Christ was Lord, then how much more risk would they have encountered if it could be proven that Christians were being taught that it was not sinful, or evil, to be angry at Caesar or Caesar's government. Under those circumstances, the apparent contradiction of Paul's teaching becomes perfectly reasonable. Not only reasonable: necessary.

Most Bible teachers today have little insight into the fact that the Apostles, especially the Apostle Paul, had to frame their messages and their teaching so that they were able be fruitful in two separate contexts of action at the same time. Here's another way to think about the two different contexts: The Apostles had to teach Christians how to serve God in the world: a world filled with powerful pagans who were authorized to murder Christians in exactly the way mothers are today authorized by the government of the USA to kill unwanted unborn babies; and, at the same time, the Apostles had to teach Christians how to conduct themselves when they were alone with other Christians in the Church, the Ecclessia.

It is in understanding that the Ephesians passage is one of the best examples in the Bible of how the Apostles walked the tight rope God had strung for them above both the world and the Church that we can make sense of what the Apostle Paul taught in Ephesians 4.

So let's examine again what Paul said in Ephesians 4: 26, "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:"

Remember that one of the contexts was the deadly threat faced by Christians in the Roman Empire. Paul could not even mention that particular context without putting both himself and his listeners in grave danger. It does not take a political scientist to understand that in the context of the Roman Empire of Paul's day, the less said about Caesar, the better.

But even in that context, the central brutal fact for each and every Christian willing to confess Jesus as Lord was this: Caesar was killing Christians all over the Empire for doing nothing other than what the Lord Jesus Christ commanded them to do. Anyone who thinks it is possible for people to live in that kind of environment without being angry at the people who are unjustly killing them is denying reality and utterly deluded about the most obvious facts of life.

Such delusion is common among Christians today. In fact such delusion has been commonplace among Christians since the time in the third century AD when Caesar turned from murdering Christians who claimed Jesus as Lord to claiming that Jesus was Lord himself. From the 3rd century onward, government, instead of persecuting Orthodox Christians, became the protector of Orthodox Christians. As soon as that happened Orthodox Christians ceased to be able to understand the two contexts Paul had been addressing in Ephesians 4.

Paradoxically the only Christians after the third century who could hear the Apostle Paul talk about the two contexts were Christians who had been ruled to be heretics by the now-Christian rulers in western civilization. But in Paul's day all Christians were heretics in the Orthodox Roman Empire that worshipped Caesar as Lord. Unless the Apostle Paul could find a way of teaching Christians how to be angry in the Roman Empire without teaching people that they wanted Christians to be angry with Caesar and Caesar's government, Paul would be guilty of teaching that which was not expedient, that which was unwise--that which was deadly even--and calling it the Word of God, the mind of Christ.

It is when you see the wisdom Paul was teaching by telling people they could be angry, but at the same time telling them how to direct their anger in a way that would expediently fulfill their ministry to the Lord Jesus Christ that you will understand what Paul meant in Ephesians 4:26.

Be angry, Paul said. But do not sin. And not only do not sin in your anger, but get rid of your anger quickly each time you are struck with it: Don't let the sun go down on your anger.

And furthermore, don't let your anger be an occasion for the devil to get his claws in you.

Such is the wisdom of the Apostle Paul about anger--the wisdom of God about anger. Don't deny that anger is created when people are treating you--or your brothers and sisters--unjustly, especially when you are being put in danger of death for serving the Lord Jesus Christ. But don't sin in your anger. Express it quickly in a way that is not sin, and does not open the door to the devil's influence in your life.

The Apostle Paul saw that anger could be an engine for action. It was such in the Apostle Paul's life and he never tried to hide the times he expressed his anger. But he was diligent in being an example of a man who learned to express his anger in constructive, life-giving ways, rather than death dealing ways such as those in the world practiced.

Key to the way the Apostle Paul dealt with his anger was to learn how to make each and every action of his life an effective expression of the anger that propelled him. That's what the Apostle Paul was teaching in Eph. 4:31. With the Apostle Paul anger had propelled him to learn and teach more each second that he lived about the love that had come to him because of the great, unfathomable gift he had received from the Lord Jesus Christ. That gift of love made all the anger the Apostle Paul felt morph into a love that had the Apostle Paul serving everybody around him. Had him serving even the Caesar that would kill him, was going to kill him in fact. Anger that led to that kind of love was what the Apostle Paul was talking about, was teaching in the fourth chapter of Ephesians. Anger that would result, when Christians were with those who were in Christ Jesus themselves in a love that put away all anger and clamor and every sign or the presence of the flesh, in a peace that passed understanding, a joy that was full of grace, all the Fruit of the Spirit, fruit that could be summarized in one word: agape.

So that is why Paul placed his apparent contradiction in such bold relief in his message to Christians about anger.

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