Summary
Anger
Scripture is remarkably honest about anger. Proverbs 15:18 warns that "those who are hot-tempered stir up strife, but those who are slow to anger calm contention." Proverbs 14:29 adds that the patient person has great understanding, while a hasty temper exalts folly. And Proverbs 29:11 is blunt: "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but the wise quietly holds it back." The old advice to count to ten before speaking is, in its own way, biblical wisdom—a small discipline that honors what God's Word commands.
Yet Scripture does not silence anger altogether. Moses burned with anger at the golden calf. The prophets were enraged by Israel's idolatry. John the Baptist denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Paul flared at those who would add the law to the gospel of Christ. Even Jesus—whom we often picture as serene—drove the merchants from the temple, looked with anger at hardened hearts in the synagogue Mark 3:5, and rebuked James and John when they wished to call fire down on a Samaritan village. Anger itself is not the sin.
Paul holds these truths together in Ephesians 4:26: "Be angry, and do not sin." Just a few verses earlier Ephesians 4:31, he tells us to put away bitterness, wrath, and malice. The teaching of Anger: Count to Ten draws this together with a striking Hebrew image: God is described as "long of nostril"—an anthropomorphism translated "slow to anger" (Exodus 34:6; Psalm 86:15). A long nostril means a long fuse; air—and anger—moves through gently. That is the divine pattern we are called to imitate.
What, then, makes God angry? Scripture answers plainly: wickedness Romans 1:18, disobedience, dishonesty, injustice, the mistreatment of the poor Proverbs 22:22-23, and the catalog of Proverbs 6:16-19—haughty eyes, lying tongues, hands that shed innocent blood, hearts that devise evil, feet quick to run to wrong, false witnesses, and those who sow discord. Christian anger is not free-floating irritation; it mirrors what grieves the heart of God. Slowness to anger does not mean silence when righteousness demands a voice—we can count so high that we never speak when we should.
Still, even righteous anger is easily corrupted by how we express it. We rush, we wound, we exalt ourselves, and sin lies close at hand. This is precisely where the gospel meets us. God took His just anger over our sin and laid it upon His Son. Jesus, the spotless Lamb, bore the wrath we deserved at the cross, and the empty tomb declares that the sacrifice was accepted. Each new day God raises His people up with the word of absolution and sends us out forgiven.
So the church is called to display before a furious world the beauty of long nostrils—patience that does not flinch from naming evil, but speaks slowly, mercifully, and in the strength God supplies. When we find we cannot manage even that, the honest cry "God, help us" is the prayer He delights to answer.
Video citations
- Anger: Count to Ten 7-20-25 — Which open your Bible's please with me for a time and God's Word to Proverbs? The 15th chapter. If you're using a few additional full-day scripture, you're going to find that on page 560 in the Old…