Ephesians 4:30
“All bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice”.
This is all poison. Unfortunately, we choose it at times. Our flesh gets hurt and these can be the responses. It's very natural to cling to these. However, these are not of God. He has freed us from them and wants to continue to do so.
The longer we walk with Christ, we learn that He is all about love. I Corinthians 13:1-3 says, "If I speak with the tongues of mankind and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to removemountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give away all my possessions to charity, and if I surrender my body so that I may glory, but do not have love, it does me no good."
Paul brings up many things that we celebrate and seek to do: eloquent words, words that reveal good things and future things, have great faith to believe big things, If I am generous and give to great causes, If I am martyred for the gospel, and so on. These are amazing things that we should aspire to. However, his point is that without love, these fall short.
Jesus reduced all the commandments to two, to love God and love people. It's all about love. It should ooze out of us. All our words and all our deeds should emanate love.
This list is the opposite of love. It's focused on self, our needs, our hurt reactions that could feed motivations for revenge. They are stains on our souls and wreck our witness.
The Holy Spirit will convict us if we harbor these. He will help loosen our grip to let go of them. There is an odd attraction to them. In time, they poison us.
One of them is anger. This is an appropriate response at times. However, it's dangerous. It's like molten metal, it must be handled with care. It shouldn't reside in us long. A few verses ago, it said, "don't let the sun go down on your anger", (verse 26). It requires action. We are to go to the person and address it. Sometimes we are to forget it.
The rest of this list are what happens when anger is left in us. It's likefood going stale or rotting. It's not attractive or healthy.
These can be addicting. God wants to set us free from them. He is powerful to do this. He is able and willing. If these are in a believer, it's priority one on His agenda to deal with them. He knows they are harmful to all.
If ignored, they will put distance between us and God. The verse prior to today's says, "Do not quench the Holy Spirit". Harboring these things will do so. We will begin to lose the sense of His presence and His peace. We can't have both.
Lord, thank You for Your peace and joy. Help us to deal with anger appropriately and to be rid of it as soon as possible. Thank You for Your power and wisdom that You provide.