Spiritual warriors are not aggressive; they are assertive in a powerful way. When you partake of the nature of God you cannot be angry in the way you once were. It takes a lot for God to get angry, he is very slow in this regard. If he does get angry, it’s momentary and always for a specific purpose that produces good eventually.
Human anger gets angry, when the old self is offended. Divine anger is against anything that hinders love. We are commanded to be angry with God’s anger, this anger is more objective than it is subjective. Our will has to partner with the Holy Spirit, to get angry at things that are hindering the love of God from being manifested in the earth. This kind of anger is not natural to the human nature. We have to stir up ourselves to get angry and then the Holy Spirit will empower us to bring down the principalities and powers behind what is veiling the Love of God being manifested.
When most people get angry, they mostly assert the unredeemed side of their personality. What we term as our flesh. Our flesh is reacting to something, instead of our spirit responding in the Lord.
That is because we have one new nature, but it is still learning how to submit to the Lord, and unless we are filled with the Holy Spirit our flesh can rise up. Unless our spirit is strengthened by the Holy Spirit we cannot bring our flesh into subjection, so then somedays our heart can be divided. Our anger can be unreasoning and hurtful.
God has no such problem in his personality. He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. In our experience, anger is an emotion representing a change in one’s reaction. In that particular sense, God does not become angry. He only appears to do so in the eyes of men.
Be angry and sin not – Ephesians 4:26 – is how the father works. It takes an incredible amount to make him angry because his patience is overwhelmingly wonderful. His goodness, kindness, gentleness, love, peace, and joy are also so huge that any anger can only ever be momentary; and then the beauty of his nature floods back into our relationship with him.
In a New Covenant of Christ within, and us living in Christ, God’s anger is alleviated by sacrifice. The anger of the devil and the religious leaders was poured out upon Jesus. So, he received whatever anger we may have deserved, and gives us his peace instead.
God’s anger has always been developmental – a necessary chastisement to enable his people to learn more effectively. A step on the way to full maturity. A short, sharp shock that brings us up short and makes us think about things a little harder.
Of course, there have been occurrences when the anger of God has been combined with his people fully reaping what they sowed. In those instances, anger can look like punishment, but it isn’t. Discipline without development is punishment.
In the case of Israel not being permitted to enter Canaan the first time, we see that Israel had learned nothing from 400 years of slavery. Their disobedience had resulted in being overcome by the enemy and taken captive.
They spent 40 years in the wilderness going around in circles and tested the Lord ten times.
The same obstinate characteristics prevented Israel from being free and inheriting the promised land.
In discipline, God stays present. He committed himself to 40 years of presence in the wilderness with the whole of Israel, in order to teach a younger Israel how to be with him. God’s chosen anger is developmental and only occurs when we have repeatedly not given ourselves to learning about fellowship. His anger is always a last resort. He will not always strive with the heart of man – Genesis 6:3. The father has this incredible, astonishing ability to be long-suffering towards humanity. That doesn’t mean he is permanently sad. There are no tears in Heaven. The father’s personal joy is so all embracing it covers everything, just as his love covers a multitude of sins. His long-suffering is immersed in his joy – Colossians 1:11 – and we can be the same. The father’s ability to love combined with his joy in himself is the cornerstone of our relationship with him. His goodness, kindness, gentleness, mercy, patience, faithfulness, grace, and self-control all combine to become long-suffering with joy. Paul’s words 1 Corinthians 13:4 – 8 are descriptive of God’s nature:
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, love does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
In the New Covenant, his anger is not a reaction to our sin, it’s a response that aids our development. He has this intense desire that we should share in his holiness. Righteousness, the lifestyle of thinking, speaking, doing, and living in a holy manner, is a key part of our walk with God. We need training in holiness. Discipline and chastisement are two necessary tools that he uses so that we may learn the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
Hebrews 12:5 –… and you have forgotten the exhortation, which is addressed to you as sons, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him; for those whom the Lord loves he disciplines, any scourges every son whom he receives.
7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
9 Furthermore, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, so that we may share his holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet the to those who have been trained by it, afterwords it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness.
Every one of us needs discipline in our lives. Self-control is an admirable part of our developmental process: living in a vulnerable way before the Holy Spirit; being God conscious before the father as Jesus lived: he said, I only say what the father is saying, I only do what the father is doing. Having our hearts fixed on Jesus – Hebrews 12:1 – 2 is only way to live.
The worst thing we can do to our children – apart from not loving and believing in them – is not to shape their lives in a disciplined manner. There is no greatness apart from self-control. Development that does not include personal government will only guarantee our mediocrity.
God’s chastisement is not anger based, but motivated by compassion for our greatness. Similarly, spiritual warriors save all their anger for the enemy. They live to destroy the works of the devil. When they see God’s people trapped in sin, religious practices, and unbelief, they do not rage against the people. Like Jesus they have a compassion that asserts itself but also a directness of speech and action that engages people with God. We come to set prisoners free – not to sentence the warden and the prison guards.
It is vital that spiritual warriors understand the difference between anger and assertiveness. In discipline, God is asserting his holiness so that we might share in it with him – Hebrews 12:10. In warfare, we are hugely assertive against the enemy. If we have too much aggression, it may be turned against us. Our authority must stem from our submission to God, not from our internal anger. Anger that comes from the soul can be traced back to it, making us vulnerable to a counterattack.
Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you – James 4:7.
We cannot use our own soul against the enemy. Our soul must be submitted to our own spirit that is mingling with the Holy Spirit in our inner man. Being led by the Spirit means we only do things the way God wants them done. Submission is where we make ourselves vulnerable to the goodness of God. Submission is a joyful act of surrender to a beloved sovereign for his own purposes. The enemy cannot stand against that act of loving abandonment.
The 1st rule of warfare is that we cannot take ground from the enemy if he has ground in us. Cleaning and clearing our own house is a vital part of our own self-control and personal discipline. God works in us and through us, and it is important that we know the difference. Otherwise, we will project our own developmental needs onto others. In me first – was the Apostle Paul’s principle for development – 1Timothy 1:16.
Assignment – what is the Lord currently talking to you about in your personal life? What area of self-control do you need to exhibit next? What is the difference between aggression and assertiveness?
Commission – what are you learning about the anger of the Lord and his unchanging nature? Write down some key thoughts on that subject and share them with a friend!