Choose Mercy In Your Anger

Church Family:
When you are angry do you explode like a volcano, or do you simmer like water just under a boil? Maybe you become icy like an iceberg?

Anger is more than just some internal feeling. Anger is an emotion that deeply affects your life and every relationship in your life. Anger can take over your entire body, your thoughts, your actions, and your words. Anger is an emotional power from the heart that can kill relationships with words and actions.

Jesus is greatly concerned about anger in our lives. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus wants us to understand the point of the Ten Commandments was never merely to do these things outwardly, not worrying about the heart. Jesus starts with the sixth commandment teaching that not murdering is not just staying away from committing homicide. Instead, He says anger in your heart is much like the physical act of murder. Getting angry and insulting someone is against the sixth commandment (Matthew 5:21-26). Jesus reveals that genuine righteousness begins with a heart inclined to follow the law, not just outward obedience. Jesus does not change the ethics of the moral law, He simply offers examples on what it looks like to obey the moral law from your heart. Jesus wants us to feel the weight of not being far removed, morally speaking, from murderers when we find ourselves angry with or insulting other people. That is a hard truth to receive.
 
Why is God against us being angry? Because we justly deserve His anger, condemnation, and wrath (Romans 6:23; 8:1-8). But, thankfully, God’s mercy controls how He expresses His displeasure toward us. Our Father in heaven reacts to us not out of anger, but out of His mercy. Jesus is God’s mercy toward us to appease His righteous anger that our sin deserves. Out of God’s mercy He does not treat us as our sins deserve. He does not hold onto anger, nor does He bear a grudge against His children. Instead, He pursues forgiveness, grace, and restoration.

Jesus desires to bring good (redemption) into bad (sinful) situations. He commands us to do the same, to live out a strong, clear-minded mercy when we are angered by others. God calls us to live out a mercy that is consistently constructive in other people’s lives no matter what our anger has made us feel about them. Choosing mercy instead of anger intervenes to address and solve whatever relational problem is in front of us. Living with an attitude of mercy does not overlook the presence of wrongdoing directed toward us; rather, it involves us making a conscious decision to extend compassion toward those responsible for such actions. It is the new, righteous way of responding to life that we are called to live out. Living out of a heart of mercy rather than anger means recognizing what is wrong but responding constructively, seeking justice, making things right peacefully and choosing the path that leads to good.

Living out mercy rather than anger can completely transform situations and relationships. Mercy enables you to become a force for good in a world where sin and negativity often prevail. You can only learn this from Jesus Christ. He displays genuine mercy to both you and me. Choose mercy in your anger as a citizen of the Kingdom of God - you will be blessed.

See you Sunday, choosing mercy: Steve