Bible Verses About Anger: Understanding and Controlling Your Anger

Some things in life can aggravate you and can get your back up. Those things will vary for each one of us. Maybe for you, it’s when people are late and don’t let you know in advance. It might be when you see waste of whatever sort, or it could be standing in long lines.

It might be when you witness cruelty to children or animals, or it could be because of injustice or abuse of power, or perhaps it could be over a particular political or social issue. In this article, we’ll consider various tips and methods for controlling your anger.

When a person feels angry, they must first take an honest look at it and -ask God to help them know whether it is truly righteous or unrighteous anger. Once they have identified it, they have a few options for what they will do with it. If it is unrighteous anger, there is only one thing to do with it – let it go and repent before God.

Since anger is a powerful emotion that typically spurs a person to do something about whatever instigated it, people respond to their even righteous anger in both godly and sinful ways. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Bible has a lot to say about anger just as it does about many other areas of life.

The Pitfalls of Anger

One of the challenges when it comes to anger is that it can easily overwhelm a person’s good judgment. One passage of Scripture says, “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools” (Ecclesiastes 7:9, NIV). Anger can move a person to engage in all sorts of rash actions and the Bible calls that person a fool. (see also Proverbs 14:29)

Anger can stir up or worsen conflict and damage relationships with others. Have you ever said or done something in anger that a second or two later you regret? Sometimes, when you’re in the middle of a fight, you need cooler heads to prevail, and not to inflame passions further. This echoes the words “A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel” (Proverbs 15:18, NIV).

Just as other emotions and thoughts can cause damage if we allow them to be expressed in sinful ways, it’s important to be able to deal with anger well. The key is self-control so that what you express is what you intend to. This is the wisdom of “Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32, NIV). Self-control guards you against harmful excesses.

The problem with anger is that often both the action that provokes it and the resulting behaviors are sinful. James writes that “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19-20, NIV).

We are frequently angered because of envy or pride, making the anger, itself, sinful, but how we react in anger frequently fails to glorify God and show love to others.

Getting a Clearer Picture About Anger

This doesn’t mean that all anger is necessarily bad. Our emotions serve a purpose in helping us to navigate our environment and they are reactions to how we experience the world around us. When you’re angry, for instance, it can mean you’re experiencing something that poses a perceived threat to something you care about, whether it’s your time, your loved one, your sense of self-worth and dignity, or (most frequently) your own selfish desires.

Anger is provoked when you don’t like what’s going on around you, and can, in some cases serve a helpful function. However, like all emotions, anger can be either righteous or unrighteous, holy or sinful, and in a real sense, even our most righteous anger is still contaminated with our own sinfulness.

For the most part, when Scripture talks about anger it is addressing sinful anger which, as James put it, does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Consider some of the things we get angry about, and then what we allow that anger to drive us to do. If your browser doesn’t load fast enough, or someone inconveniences you, it can lead to a blowout that includes all manner of sinful acts.

This is problematic because it fails to see the bigger picture or ask the question “Why am I angry, and should I be angry in the first place?” As those made in God’s image, people have great value, but in our anger, we often overlook that, and end up judging or labeling them unfairly. Jesus said of this,

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell – Matthew 5:21-22, NIV

Jesus is getting to the heart of the problem, which is our hearts. That’s where our deprecation of our brothers and sisters begins; a subtle but powerful devaluation of others that allows us to call someone fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image a fool. Jesus is drawing a straight line from there, saying that this angry attitude toward others is what gives birth to murder. These are hard and sobering words about acts we might take for granted.

The problem, then, is that human anger is far too often provoked by things we ought to be overlooking resulting in sinful actions as expressions of that anger. It does not justify our sinful anger to point out that God gets angry. After all, He is persistently and consistently angry with sin because of how it violates His commandments and destroys the people He created and loves.

But His anger is perfectly holy because He is perfectly holy – a state we will never reach in this world. Even our best anger and the behaviors that accompany it will always be stained by our sinfulness, so we can never seek to justify our anger simply by pointing to God’s anger. God’s anger is always right and good because it is provoked by the right things. You can tell a lot about a person by what moves them and what makes them angry.

Jesus was angry about people keeping children from Him (Mark 10:14-16), the prioritization of ritual over human need (Mark 3:1-6), about how sickness and death ravage God’s creation (Mark 1:41; John 11:33), and at people twisting worship and seeking to profit from others (John 2:13-17; Matthew 21:12-17).

We, on the other hand, become angry when someone does something that we don’t like, whether it was sinful or not. We fly off the handle when someone cuts us off in traffic, or when our toddler asks “Why?” for the hundredth time, or when with inanimate objects, or situations that have nothing to do with us. Our anger and God’s anger are generally poles apart.

Controlling Your Anger: Finding Help for Expressing Anger Well

Anger can be a good thing, depending on whether it is directed at the right object, whether or not it is proportionate to what is provoking it, whether it is out of control, and how we choose to express it. Anger need not always be expressed, especially when it is sinful anger. But even if it is righteous anger, we must be careful how we express it.

Some people want to avoid any feelings or appearance of anger, and they wind up going the route of repressing their anger. That is not healthy either, and it can result in significant emotional and mental health challenges.

Other forms of expression such as passive-aggressive behavior are also not healthy. Passive aggressive behavior such as giving the silent treatment, being snarky or snide, and pouting can destroy relationships just as much as explosive anger can. Anger outbursts may destroy a relationship in obvious ways, but passive-aggressive behavior subtly but effectively undermines trust and healthy communication in a relationship.

Keeping in step with the Holy Spirit will steer you away from “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy,” and toward “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:20-21,22-23, NIV). When the Spirit guides your anger, it will mean not being as easily provoked, or expressing anger in harmful ways.

Controlling your anger takes time and concerted effort, which means knowing how to diffuse it as well as how to express it well. There may be ingrained patterns of thinking and being that affect how one reacts, and there are also issues such as depression, stress, and poor sleep that make anger a problem. It is important to find appropriate help to address these underlying issues and gain tools for controlling your anger.

You can seek help from a Christian counselor who can help you come to a healthier understanding of the place anger has in your life. They can also teach you tips for controlling your anger so that you don’t damage your relationships, and you can express your anger in healthy ways. Reach out to a counselor who specializes in anger management to get help with controlling your anger and learning to express it well.