Seven Deadly Sins – Anger

Our next deadly sin is the sin of anger or wrath. Evolutionary science tells us that our anger is something that was once beastly that has become something beautiful. That we had a fight of flight reflex that was used to defend ourselves; or a hunting instinct to hunt and overcome our prey for survival; or a territorial aggression that preserved our pack, and now as ‘evolved apes’ we have to reign it in and make it useful to the community. This is exactly backwards. The bible teaches that our anger was once something beautiful that has become beastly. We are made in the image of God, God is said to have righteous anger. The NT does have two different words for God’s wrath, one scholar describes them this way, ‘God’s anger ( thumos ) is his vehement fury or boiling rage. His wrath ( orge ) is his settled indignation or his settled anger. In other words, in God’s anger the emphasis falls on the emotional, boiling intensity of it. And in God’s wrath the emphasis falls on the controlled, settled, considered direction and focus of its application. But we dare not draw a hard line between them.’ 1 It is a wrath that is revealed against all unrighteousness and ungodliness, Rom. 1:18. It is because of God’s character as righteous and His role as judge that He is righteously angry, Ps. 7:11, ‘God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.’ God is only angry against that which is sin, evil, unjust and wrong, against that which is contrary to His holy will. God is not volatile, He is slow to anger, Nahum 1:3, ‘The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty....

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