Articles

It is painful to be sinned against, especially when those you love and respect lie about you, betray you, mistreat you, or manipulate you. We are disappointed when this happens at work or in some business transaction, but when it occurs in the church, it hurts deeply. This is not right. We get angry.

Jesus, our Savior, got angry, too. He flipped the money changers’ tables at the temple when they usurped the Gentiles’ place to pray and grew indignant when His own disciples blocked children from His blessing. There is a place for anger. It is the natural result when something or someone we love is attacked.

Of course, a great deal of my anger is because someone has attacked my precious ego, which, sadly, I love. For this anger I repent. But some of my anger is righteous. Abortion and euthanasia anger me, as well as willful promotion of false doctrine and practice.

The danger is that the sins that others have committed may knock me into a rut of bitterness. “Anger has the same shelf life as manna,” Pastor Scott Bruzek told me once. Hold onto anger for more than a day and it breeds worms and stinks. As Saint Paul teaches “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” (Ephesians 4:26-27)

Practically speaking this means we need to repeatedly pray for the Lord’s forgiveness of those who have sinned against us. I imagine that each day that Joseph woke up in Egyptian slavery he recalled again how his brothers sold him into slavery. Evidently, he must have forgiven them again and again, so that when they show up in need and he had the power to enslave or kill them, he instead serves them in love.