_CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANGER_
EPHESIANS iv. 25-32.
"Let all anger be put away from you." And yet only a moment ago the
Apostle had written the words, "Be ye angry and sin not." My power of
anger is not to be destroyed, it is to be transformed and purified. Anger
can be like an unclean bonfire; it can also be like "a sea of glass
mingled with fire." There can be more smoke than light in it, more selfish
passion than holy purpose. The fuel that feeds it may be envy, and
jealousy, and spite, and not a big desire for the good of men and the
glory of God. Worldly anger "is set on fire of hell"; holy anger borrows
flame from the altar-fires of God.
Our anger reveals our character. What is the quality of our anger? What
kindles it? Is it incited by our own wrongs or by the wrongs of another?
Is it set on fire by self-indulgence or by a noble sympathy? Here is a
sentence which describes the anger of the Apostle Paul: "Who is made to
stumble and I burn not?" Paul's holy anger was made to burn by oppression,
by the cruelty inflicted upon his fellow-men. His fire had nothing unclean
in it; it was pure as the flame of oxygen.
This is the anger we must cherish. We cannot "work ourselves up" into it.
We must seek to be "baptized with the Holy Ghost _and with fire_."