So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. James 1:19-20
I’ve been mulling over this next section of verses for a few weeks, but nothing was really clicking for me. That is until today, all in God’s timing, no?
I couldn’t get past the “So then.” Whenever we see a “So then” we must apply what we are reading now, to the previous statement. If you have time, go back and read Life or Death, It’s Your Choice in it’s entirety. At the end of that passage, we learned that God brought us into being to be His firstfruits. We learned that the Lord wants us to be advanced in maturation. Keeping this in mind, we hit a “So then.”
From this passage we learn how we should behave as the firstfruits of creation. Being advanced in maturation means that we need to be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Why? Because mature Christians know that their anger will not produce God’s righteousness.
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance defines wrath as “anger, indignation, vengeance, wrath.”
Think about this for a moment. How long does it take for a young child to become angry when they feel someone has wronged them? A nanosecond right? They immediately attempt to right the wrong (vengeance). Which is usually not exactly very…profitable.
The same thing happens to us, as adults, when we perceive a wrong done against us, our natural knee jerk reaction is to get angry…or am I the only one that happens to?
It is hard to remember that our anger won’t really get us anywhere. In the heat of the moment we want vengeance. But in that moment, we must remember that our anger can never bring about god’s righteousness! And as the first fruits of God’s creation, we should be seeking God’s righteousness (Matthew 6:33), which cannot be found in our anger.
