God's Desire for Human Anger - Part 1 James 1:20-21

God's Desire for Human Anger - Part 1
James 1:20-21

“...because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.  Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.” 

God’s desire for us is a righteous life and man's anger can disrupt the process of becoming “mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1: 4).  Before we discuss the righteous life God desires we need to understand an important concept in Scripture.  Let’s review verse 19 again.  James says everyone should be:

1. quick to listen
2. slow to speak
3. slow to become angry.  

 I believe whenever you see “a list” in Scripture, there is an order to that list. 

Let me explain.  Some have criticized the Bible as simply a collection of writings by men, compiled by other men, but the Bible itself claims to be written by God.  In 1 Timothy 3:16 we read, “All Scripture is God-breathed…” and in 2 Peter 1:20-21 we find, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophets’ (writers) own interpretation.  For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”  Faced with these two passages we are forced to make a choice. Either the Bible was written by God speaking through these writers, or the writers lied when they wrote these words, causing all the writings of Scripture to be suspect.

Jesus, himself, reinforced the writings of Scripture when he stated "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished" (Matthew 5:18).  His reference to the least stroke of the pen is important and refers to what we would call the dotting of the “i“ or the crossing of the letter “t”.  We also see, in Revelation 22:18-19, that adding to or taking away from Scripture is forbidden.  Putting all these verses together leaves me to not only believe God wrote the Bible and that the Bible is without error, but to believe God placed each word in a specific order.  Therefore, when we come along a list, or a series of statements, we need to examine the order in which they were written.

A good example of this can be found in Galatians 5:22-23 where a very familiar list known as the Fruit of the Spirit tells us, “...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control…”.  Examine the order of the list and ask yourself if they are random or in order of priority?  If you were writing such a list yourself, would you put them in a specific order?  I believe God is showing us a list of qualities that all flow from love, which begins the list.

1. The Holy Spirit gives us God's LOVE.
2. From love flows JOY in knowing God.
3. From joy comes PEACE with God.
4. From God's love, joy and peace we can have PATIENCE with others.
5. From patience flows KINDNESS towards other people.
6. From kindness flows GOODNESS towards others.
7. From goodness flows FAITHFULNESS in our relationship with others.
8. From faithfulness we can express GENTLENESS when dealing with other people.
9. And lastly, from gentleness we can (because we are mature and complete) demonstrate SELF-CONTROL toward others.

Note how the first three qualities connect us to God and the remaining qualities connect us to other people.  This fulfills Jesus' statement in Matthew 22:34-40 of the greatest commandments being to love God and love neighbor.  How about the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1-16 known as the beatitudes?  Did Jesus randomly choose the words he spoke? ...or is there an order to the things he said?  Consider the most famous list in all the Bible.  The Ten Commandments, in Exodus 20, are unquestionably a list.  Is there an order to the list?  Have you noticed the first four commandments pertain to our relationship to God while the remaining six commandments pertain to our relationship to other people?  Do you see a pattern in Scripture?  Returning to study in James, I believe this small list of three items are also in a particular order.

In James we are told (in order) to be: 1) quick to listen; 2) slow to speak; and 3) slow to become angry.   Why?  Because man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.  The order tells us we should first be eager to be in God’s word (quick to listen).  Secondly we are to be careful not to speak our opinions too quickly about the Word, as though we are an authority on the Scriptures (slow to speak).  Thirdly we are not to become angry with God when we do not like what the Scriptures are telling us (slow to become angry).  The idea of "slow to become angry" pertains to acting without thinking.  God asks us to think and meditate on things before reacting.  Have you ever wished you could take back something you have said or done in haste?  Our human nature tends to make quick judgments without taking in all the facts.

God’s goal is to mold you into a mature believer who has strong faith.  He wants you to be eager to read and study His Word, but he does not want you to become angry about it due to a lack of maturity.  This anger does not fit into the program of His maturing process and it does not demonstrate a life of integrity.  A life of righteousness is a life that lives out what you believe.  How is your integrity?