Walking with the Wise #214: Control the Rage

“A hot-tempered man stirs up strife,
but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.”
—Proverbs 15:18

God has made us in His image (cf. Genesis 1:26-27; 9:6; 1 Corinthians 11:7), and yet, we are also made in the image of Adam (cf. Genesis 5:3). Being made in God’s image means that we can love, feel, do, etc. Being made in Adam’s image means that we are fallen and our desires, emotions, etc., are also fallen. Adam’s image is the image of God marred and the only way to correct this marred image is through Jesus, who is the restoration of God’s perfect image, enabling us to be restored to wholeness through Him (cf. Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15).

One of the many ways by which the marred image is seen in us is through our anger. Not that anger is entirely bad. Anger is one of the signs that we are made in God’s image, because God Himself displays anger. Although His anger is perfect and is the consummate manifestation of righteous anger, we don’t always perceive it rightly. God’s ways and thoughts are transcendent of ours, and while His anger may appear capricious at times in the biblical narrative, we take it by faith, knowing that His character is perfect and that He knows something we do not. Our problem is we judge by human standards, and our standards, as has been clearly shown, are marred and incomplete. Only God is able to perceive and know the matter of a subject perfectly.

As we experience anger or rage, we all too quickly discover that our anger provokes responses from those who are subjected to it, intensifying them and ramping up the conflict between us. We must learn to control our anger, making sure that it doesn’t control us. The Scripture shows that if we learn to control our anger, or be slow to it, then rather than ramping up a rift, we are more likely to quiet it, or as another proverb has said, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger”—Proverbs 15:1.

Without the spirit of God, we can only rein our anger temporarily, but with the Spirit of God (which all Christians have), we can control it (as we continually mortify our flesh and walk in the Spirit):

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires”—Galatians 5:16-24.

May the Lord our God, who saw us in our affliction, whereby we were once controlled by our flesh, being slaves to sin, enable us to live the Spirit-filled, Spirit-controlled life afforded to us by Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, so that we might live lives in which Christ is manifested in us, to the glory of Almighty God and life-giving joy to us. Amen.