Love Vanquishes Anger – Ephesians 5:2

Walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. 

A spark flies, a flaming arrow returns the attack, and a conflagration ensues, rupturing our relationship with another Christian. We feel justifiably angry. After all, we are right, and the other person is wrong, of that, we are thoroughly convinced.

We may wallow in our self-righteous anger if we desire, for the Lord gives us the freedom to do so, but we cannot reconcile such behavior with the teaching of the Holy Scriptures or defend it against God’s perfect law. We can waste our time justifying our anger, but why would we when doing so causes us harm?  We serve the cause of Christ better by ascending to the higher place where kindness, gentleness, humility, and forgiveness reign and the Lord resides. We show ourselves as soul mates with the Lord by imitating Him,[1] who walked in love and laid down His life for all people, including those who treated Him with cruelty and injustice. Rather than hanging onto indignation, we demonstrate our love for Jesus by responding as He would respond.  For He, who is love, instructs us to follow His example by refusing to harbor bitterness for another’s trespasses against us, so we might fulfill a ministry of reconciliation through Him,[2] a ministry focused on bringing people to fullness in Christ, not on preserving ourselves.

Anger, which flows out of pride and self-interest not charity-driven other-centeredness, exacts a burdensome price, destroying our peace and disrupting the kingdom work the Lord has called us to do. God founded His kingdom on love, a love that never acts unbecomingly and does not take into account a wrong suffered. Kingdom love does not fail; the unkind and inappropriate actions of others do not provoke it.[3]  It covers the wrongs of fallible men and women, seeking not its own good, but the good of others.[4]

Love has no fellowship with anger. Therefore, if you have allowed anger to occupy your thoughts and cloud your demeanor, making you resentful over wrongs done to you, exchange it for the superior way of Christ.  Take up love, and go, be reconciled to your fellow sojourner. Trade your wrath and justification for the joy that flows out of a heart yielded to Christ. Obey the word of life that the Lord graciously provides to teach us how to love.

Walk in love, and Jesus’ love will surround you and lead you. Faithfully, devotedly, love others, just as God loves you, and He will perfect His love in you.[5]

[1] Ephesians 5:1

[2] 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

[3] 1 Corinthians 13:5-8

[4] 1 Corinthians 10:24

[5] 1 John 4:7