Anger, Noble and Ignoble.
In this injunction, delivered by St. Paul to a body of Christians, the privilege and duty of anger, as well as the danger attending its display, are fully recognised. They might be angry; they must be angry. Circumstances would continually arise to call out this emotion. They were not to crush it, only to watch it, lest it changed from a feeling worthy of God into one worthy only of the devil.
I. What then is the emotion which is here by implication commended? Anger is not the same as temper, or irritability, or ill-humour, or hatred; anger is displeasure strongly excited: that is its definition. An enthusiasm of love for righteousness includes an enthusiasm of hatred for evil; and this last emotion is called in one word "anger."
II. To be capable of anger is a strength, and not a weakness. Think of St. John, the very Apostle of charity, but also the son of thunder, who lay upon his Master's breast, and who in his last hour bade his children love one another as the completest gospel he would leave to them think of him and the fire of indignation that burned in him at the thought of wrong. He could denounce not the less, but the more, because he loved much. Only he who loves much knows what it is to feel that anger which is ennobling and Godlike.
III. "Be ye angry, and sin not." The warning follows the injunction to remind us how easily the holy feeling may merge in the unholy. Self is always ready to creep in and usurp the place of the holier object. Let anger do its work, and then dismiss it; let it fire you to protest, to denounce, to witness against evil. Put the fire that is kindled in you to its one righteous use, but do not make a plaything of it, or it may consume you. Aim to rise into that higher region where God is and where self is annulled; aim to be so filled with the Spirit of God that obedience is freedom, and not slavery. And this you will attain by the study of the character and the words of Christ, for they are spirit, and they are life.
A. Ainger, Sermons in the Temple Church,p. 166.
References: Ephesians 4:26. W. Braden, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 388; Bishop Stubbs, Ibid.,vol. xxiv., p. 209; R. W. Dale, Ibid.,vol. xxxv., p. 81; J. J. S. Perowne, Sermons,p. 1; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 11.Ephesians 4:26; Ephesians 4:27. A. Blomfield, Sermons in Town and Country,p. 147.