Jonah 4:4

John 4:4

(with Ephesians 4:20 )

The former text implies that there is an anger which is sinful; and the latter text implies that there is an anger which is not sinful. The difference lies not so much in the character, or even in the degree, of the emotion; but rather in the motive which rouses it and the object towards which it is directed.

I. There is a feeling to which we give the name of moral indignation; by way of distinguishing it from other kinds of anger, more or less selfish and self-asserting; moral indignation is characterized chiefly by this that it is quite unselfish. It is the feeling which rises in the breast of a man when he reads of or looks upon the ill-treatment of an animal, or the deception of a child, or the insulting of a woman. To stand by and see these things without remonstrance or without interference, is not forbearance; it is a cowardice, it is an unmanliness, it is a sin.

II. There is place, again, and room for anger, not only in the contemplation of wrong, but in the personal experience of temptation. There is an indignation, there is even a resentment, there is even a rage and fury, which may be employed, without offence to the Gospel, in repelling such an assault. Nor is that anger necessarily misplaced, because the lips of friendship or love are those which play the seducer. The tempter, like the bully, is a coward; the very eye undimmed by sinning will scare him off, like the rising sun of the Psalmist, to lay him down in his den.

III. Be angry with yourself, and sin not; let the time of this ignorance and folly and fatuity go at last and bury itself; awake to righteousness, and sin not; see if a moral indignation, powerful against others, may not beneficially be tried against yourself.

C. J. Vaughan, Temple Sermons, 463.