Having a Righteous Anger Against Evil — B.B. Warfield

“Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.” — Ephesians 4:26-27

Warfield,

There is a righteous anger, as well as an unrighteous. Else we would not read, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” If to be angry were already sin, we could not be exhorted not to sin in our anger. God is angry. He is angry with the wicked every day. His wrath is revealed from heaven against all that work iniquity. If it were not so, He would not be a moral being: for every moral being must burn with hot indignation against all wrong perceived as such. That is precisely what we mean by a moral being: a being which knows right and wrong, and which approves the right and reprobates the wrong. If we do not react against the wrong when we see it, in indignation and avenging wrath, we are either unmoral or immoral.

Therefore also, Christ was angry. The Gospels are filled with instances of the manifestation by Him of the emotion of anger in all the varieties of this emotion: from mere annoyance, as when He rebuked His disciples for forbidding the children to be brought unto Him, to burning indignation, as when the unfeeling Scribes would not permit Him to heal the suffering on the Sabbath day—yes, even to what the Evangelists do not scruple to call outbreaking rage which shook with its paroxysm His whole physical frame, as when He advanced to do battle with death and sin—the destroyers of men—at the grave of Lazarus. Even the Lamb feels and shows wrath. Christ is our perfect example. And if we are to be His perfect imitators, we not only may, but must, be angry; we not only may, but must, exhibit wrath—whenever, that is, good is assaulted and evil is exalted. We too, must be found, on proper occasion, with the whip of small cords in our hands; we too, must not draw back when righteousness is to be vindicated or when the oppressed are to be rescued. In this sense too, the wrath of man is to God for praise. We please Him when we are righteously angry. He who never feels stirring within him the emotion of just indignation is not like God in that high element of the image of God in which he was made—His moral nature. Indignation is an inevitable reaction of a moral being in the presence of wrongdoing, and it is not merely his right, but his duty to give it play when righteousness demands it.

No doubt we are to seek peace and ensue it. But this is the peace not of the condonation of evil, but of the conquest of it. We are to conquer evil in ourselves. We are to know no inordinate anger. We are to be slow to anger and quick to put it aside: we are not to let the sun go down upon our wrath. We are to remember that anger is a short madness, and not trust ourselves too readily in wreaking it on others—even when we think it righteous: not avenging ourselves, but giving place to the wrath of God, knowing that in His own good time and way He will avenge us. We are to conquer it in others: by the soft word which takes away anger, by the patient endurance which disarms it, by the unwearying kindness which dissolves it into repentance and love. Love is the great solvent; and love is the bond of peace. Where love is, there wrath will with difficulty live, and only that wrath which is after all outraged love can easily assert itself. But so long as there is wrongdoing in the world, so long will there be a place in the world for righteous indignation.

taken from: Warfield, B.B.. Faith and Life. 1916. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1990. pp. 28-30

Benjamin Breckenridge (B.B.) Warfield (1851-1921) “The Lion of Princeton” held The Chair of Didactic and Polemic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1887 until his death in 1921. To this day, Warfield’s work The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible is considered the standard on the subject of the Bible’s inerrancy and authority.

3 Marks of Righteous Anger

It may be one of the most difficult imperatives in all of the Bible: “Be angry and do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). This verse assures us there are times we ought to be angry, but with one all-important caveat: we must not sin in our anger. Any honest person will need to acknowledge the sheer difficulty in doing this. Anger comes easily; righteous anger does not.

In his book Uprooting Anger, Robert Jones offers help. He gives three distinguishing marks of righteous anger.

The first mark of righteous anger is that it reacts against actual sin. It arises from an accurate perception of what is actually evil. The Shorter Catechism helpfully summarizes sin as any “want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.” This is what ought to arouse our anger.

This means that for anger to be righteous, it cannot arise in response to a violation of my preferences. It cannot arise because I have been inconvenienced or I feel that my rights and freedoms have been trampled upon. Righteous anger reacts against what is really sin.

I love it when Aileen greets me when I get home from work. It makes me feel good because it makes me feel loved. But here’s the thing: Running to the front door to greet me isn’t always the first thing on her list of priorities. She gets busy with life, and often when I get home there is no welcoming committee with signs and balloons and a brass band. It’s right in this moment that I can find myself getting angry. I don’t blow up and yell and scream and throw my computer bag across the room. Instead, I sulk. I get angry, but try to pretty it up by letting it be that brooding anger instead of that explosive anger. When Aileen does see me and does come to give me that hug, I tighten up or move away. Now I don’t want anything to do with her.

Has she sinned? Did she sin against God? Of course not. She hasn’t sinned, she just hasn’t accounted for one of my petty preferences. In that moment, I am making a moral judgment as if I am God, as if I am the one who makes the rules that govern this world. Aileen has not conformed to the law of Tim, and this is the source of my displeasure. I’ve elevated myself to God’s place so that against me, me only, has she sinned, and done what is evil in my sight.

Righteous anger reacts against actual sin, not a violation of my desires or preferences.

When we turn to the Bible to find accounts of righteous anger, we see that this kind of anger focuses on God and his kingdom, his rights, and his concerns, not on me, my kingdom, my rights, and my concerns. It is the violation of God’s name or God’s fame that motivates anger, not my name and my fame.

Think of David’s great confession of sin following his adultery and murder. David prayed to God, “Against you, you only have I sinned.” He saw that his sin against Bathsheba, against Uriah, and against the whole nation, was first a sin against God. As he came to see the reality of what he had done, he understood that even before this was an offense against people, it was an offense against God.

When I witness someone sinning, I tend to see their sin as being against me. When my children or wife or friends sin against me, I rarely raise my eyes high enough to see their offense as being first against God. Instead, I react to the ways they have offended me or the ways they have violated my rights or interfered with my plans. I hate that they have done this, and respond with anger—with unrighteous and ungodly anger.

Righteous anger is motivated by Godward and biblically-informed concerns. Before it sees how someone has offended me, it sees how he has offended God. My child has not embarrassed me with his display of rudeness, he has violated God’s command to honor father and mother. Jones says it well: Righteous anger throbs with kingdom concerns.

Finally, righteous anger is accompanied by other godly qualities and expresses itself in godly ways. True anger properly diagnoses what is actual sin, it focuses not on personal offense as much as Godward offense, and then it expresses itself in ways consistent with Christian character.

Anger is too often opposed to self-control. When we are angry we lose control of words, of tone, of facial expressions, and even of fists. But righteous anger expresses itself in a controlled way. It does not rant and rage, it does not swear and curse, it does not mock and sulk, it does not sink to self-pity and despair, it does not blow off people and storm away from them. Righteous anger is a controlled anger that moves toward good and specific ends. “Godly strains of mourning, comfort, joy, praise, and action balance it.”

Do you want to see this kind of anger in action? Consider Jesus in the synagogue on the Sabbath day (Mark 3:1-6). He entered a synagogue and spotted a man there with a withered hand. The people watched to see if Jesus would dare heal him on this day of rest. Jesus called the man to him and then asked the crowd a simple question: “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” They were silent because they knew the answer.

Then Mark tells us, “he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.” Jesus was angry at them, not because they were angry at him, but because they were hindering his work and were not showing compassion to a man who was loved by God. Jesus saw their offense as being against God and his anger was mixed with grief. His anger was righteous anger because it was motivated by godly concerns and it expressed itself in godly ways.

Does God allow his people to express anger? Yes, he does. But only under these circumstances: You are reacting against actual sin, you are more concerned with the offense against God than the offense against yourself, and you are expressing your anger in ways consistent with Christian character. And as we can all testify, this kind of righteous anger is difficult and rare.

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There is No Death for the Righteous

“She is not dead, but asleep.” Luke 8:52
“Your brother will rise again.” John 11:23
Let these words suggest thoughts of unutterable solace and refreshment to those who may now be seated in tears and sackcloth under the “Palms of the Valley.”
Death is but a quiet sleep. The ‘Bible,’ it has been said, ‘with its finger of love, turns what we dread into gold.’ Here the Bible, with its finger of life, turns dreaded death into a peaceful slumber. Soon the morning hour shall strike; the waking time of immortality arrive; and the voice of Jesus will be heard, saying, “I go that I may awake them out of sleep.”
It has been often noted that there is a beautiful and striking progression in our Lord’s three miraculous raisings from the dead. The first in point of time was in the case of the daughter of Jairus, spoken of in our first motto-verse. She was raised immediately after death had taken place; when the body was still laid on its death couch. Her soul had but taken its flight to the spirit-world, when the angels that bore it away were summoned to restore it. The second, in chronological order, was the raising of the son of the widow of Nain. Death had here achieved a longer triumph. The customary time for mourning had intervened; he was being borne to his last home when the voice of Deity sounded over his funeral casket. The third and last of this class of miracles, was the raising of Lazarus of Bethany. Over him death had attained a still more significant mastery. The funeral rites were over; the tomb held in its embrace ‘the loved and lost’—four days had these lips been sealed before the life-giving and life-restoring word was uttered.
There is one other gigantic step in this progression—”The hour is coming when all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth!”
In the first case cited, the time elapsing between the dismissal of the spirit and its recall was measured by moments, the second by hours, the third by days; the fourth is measured by ages—centuries—a MILLENNIUM. But what of that? What though in conventional language we speak of the tomb as the “long home,” and death as “the long sleep”? By Him (with whom a thousand years is as one day), that precious, because redeemed dust, shall be gathered together, particle by particle. “I will ransom them,” He says, as He looks forward through the vista of ages to this glorious consummation, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be your plagues; O grave, I will be your destruction.” Blessed, thrice blessed assurance!
As in the case of Jairus, it was his own loved daughter who, in form and feature, was again restored; as the widow of Nain gazed on the unaltered countenance of her own cherished boy; as the sisters of Lazarus saw in him who came forth from the grave, no alien form, strangely altered, but the brother of their hearts; so, we believe, on that wondrous morning of immortality, shall the loved on earth wear their old familiar smiles and loving looks.

In the case of the widow’s son, it is expressly said, “they delivered him to his MOTHER;” as in Bethany, we are allowed to look into the home circle again reunited—Jesus, once more, loving “Martha and Mary and Lazarus,” and they loving one another—so may we believe that, on the Resurrection day, the affections which gladdened and hallowed homesteads here, shall not be dulled, quenched, annihilated; but rather ennobled and purified. Like the fabled Phoenix (the “Palm-bird”) they shall rise from their ashes in forms of new and more glorious life. Brothers, sisters, parents, children, shall be linked in the fond ties and memories of earth, gathering in loving groups under the shade of immortal palms, by the living fountains of waters, and singing together the Song of Eternity.
–John MacDuff