Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Ephesians. 4:26

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Ephesians. 4:31&32

Upon first glance these two verses seem incapable of being reconciled with each other. We read that the Hebrews provoked the Lord to wrath, so that the Lord was angry with them to have destroyed them (see Duet. 9:8). Anger itself isn't a sin. I suppose that one, who believed in the predestination of all things, if he were consistent, would not be angered by the activities of the ungodly. He would attribute all to the will of God. The Scripture saying "be ye angry" would be difficult to explain by one that embraced this heresy. I suppose that there are others that are not grieved or vexed by sin and ungodliness in this world. For instance the men of Sodom seemed to be incapable of either being grieved by ungodliness or vexed by sin. But the child of God is subject to vexations of the Spirit. He is exhorted not to grieve the Spirit, nor quench the Spirit. 

Paul said let all bitterness and wrath and anger and evil speaking be put away from you saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. One sweet day all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor and all evil speaking shall be totally put away from us, but not as long as men live and move and have our being here in this world. Shall we not rather sadly expect the ungodly to engage in these activities? Shall we not as members of the Lord's Church, walk in love, presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, looking unto Jesus who hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour?  Shall we willingly be deceived and suffer the displeasure and chastisement of God; or shall we walk as children of light?  Shall we do that which shall anger the very God that delivered us from darkness and our evil deeds (see Ezra 9:14)? Shall the peace of God that passeth all understand be interrupted by variance, wrath, strife and the works of the flesh?  Shall the child of God use the tongue to engage in blessing and the evil speaking of cursing? My brethren, these things ought not so to be. A child of God can indeed be angered by sin. In fact being angry about sin and the consequences of sin are good evidences of the workings of God in a child of God.

The Church, the Kingdom of God in this world, is not the place to willfully engage in sin. Nor is the Lord's Church a home of the unrepentant sinner. Nor shall the Church offer rest to the soul to those that are in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. Scriptures say that they which do such things as adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings and the like shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Let all these things and those that love doing them be put away from you. Be angry but sin not. 10/15/2004 Marty Hoogasian