Daily Bread

Do Not Sin When Angry – Ephesians 4:26

“In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” – Ephesians 4:26

One of the greatest commandments of Christ is to love your neighbor and your enemies as yourselves. It is very hard, especially the part when Jesus wants us to love our enemies. How can we love our enemies? It is even hard already to love people who are not close to you, how much more those people who made mistakes against you? It is indeed hard and mostly impossible. 

In our verse today, this is also one of the teachings of Christ about our enemies. However, we are going to learn more about the process before someone becomes our enemy. It is all about anger issues. Paul mentioned here that in our anger, we should not sin. What does he mean by this? What does God mean by this? Does this mean that anger is still not a sin? 

Indeed. Anger is not a sin. There are really moments that we feel this and we are put into this emotion. There is reasonable anger and unreasonable anger. Therefore, anger itself is not a sin but God wants us to understand that anger leads to sin. It is not a sin yet but it is a very thin line to sin. Anger and sin have a very thin wall between them which means that when we are angry, it is so easy for us to sin. However, it doesn’t mean that being angry is wrong because there are really moments that we get angry. God was angry; Jesus was angry when He flipped the tables of the marketers in the temple but that doesn’t mean that God sinned but no. Again, anger itself is not a sin. 

However, God wants us to understand through this letter of Paul that it is very easy for us to succumb to sin every time we are angry. We must always be vigilant everytime we are angry so that we will not sin. We should not let anger cloud our judgment and God’s command to us. When Jesus was angry, He also did not let His anger cloud His mind but instead, He calmed down. We are asked to do the same. 

So, after this, Paul gave us the solution. He knew that everytime we let anger get a hold of us, we then succumb to sin. Therefore, God is telling us to settle our anger, our issues before the sun set. We should not let the sun set with anger in our hearts. Meaning, we should not keep the reason and the cause of our anger into our hearts for this will just breed vengeance and hate and God knows that this will lead us into sin. 

We must remember that God was once angry with us too. His wrath was upon us and we deserve it, but His love was greater than this and that is why He died on the cross for us. Therefore, as people who were also shown forgiveness by our holy God, we too are expected to show forgiveness and mercy to the people who angered us and who sinned against us. We should let love rule us and not anger. 

Again, anger itself is not a sin yet but what anger can bring to us is the sin. It can make us hate people, seek vengeance and unloved people. We should not let our anger pull us into sin and we should not let the enemy have its footing inside us because of our anger. Instead, let us deal with the issue and do not let the sun set before settling our issues. 

Always remember that Jesus has forgiven and shown us love too even if we don’t deserve it. So, whenever  we think that the people who angered us don’t deserve forgiveness and love at all, always remember that we too don’t deserve God’s forgiveness and love but He gave it anyway. 

In our anger, we should really not sin but instead, we should let love overrule us and let it overflow in us so that we will be able to manifest God’s love in our lives first. Let us become good examples to people around us as we walk in love. May we not let our anger get a hold of us. May we always remember that in our anger, we should not sin and that we should not let the sun set without addressing the issue. It is not literally the sun setting but it only means that we should not harbor hate and anger in our hearts for a long time. Instead, we should just confront people, tell them their wrong and forgive them, just as Christ has forgiven us.

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