Lesson 5: Faith’s self-control
James 1:19-21
19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;
20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
We closed the last lesson with the words that we must be able to believe so we can recognize the truth of a situation that comes to us as being a good and perfect gift. We begin with the same thought of believing to be able to see in this lesson.
Few of us recognize some of God’s gifts as being perfect. Some such gifts might include an illness, the death of a loved one, losing your job, financial collapse, and so on. Many people ask for gifts they think would be best for them, including wealth, a specific spiritual gift, marriage, and so on – and do not get what they want.
How do you react to not getting what you want? Many people react with anger. Our verses today are about this reaction of anger, whether we are angry with the person by whom our perfect gift from God was received, or angry with God Himself. And soon we begin to wonder if God truly loves us!
Verse 20 above reminds us that our anger does not accomplish any kind of righteousness that is Godly. Our anger is usually self-serving; but even our most “righteous anger” is at its best anger without sin (Ephesians 4:26) rather than truly righteous as God is righteous. We might be angry at injustice done to others, but our anger will not correct the injustice. Only thought-filled action taken to correct the injustice can make the injustice go away.
Verse 21 now tells us how to begin seeing how God’s gifts are perfect. The first step is for us to put away two things from our life. Filthiness in the Bible is usually about things we do to our bodies. In this example, it might be giving in to something we want for the purpose of forgetting our disappointment with God. We might want to lose ourselves in alcohol or drugs or revelry leading to sexual sin. “Rampant wickedness” is the kind of activity we do only when we are very upset and are not thinking of consequences to our actions.
The second step is to accept what the Bible says to us. There are examples of almost every kind of gift God gives to people in the Bible, and we can learn from these people how to recognize God’s purpose for the gift. Using the same examples we used above:
- illness: Job (Job 1), Paul (2 Corinthians 12:7-10), and the man born blind (John 9:1-7)
- death of a loved one: Job (Job 1), David (2 Samuel 12:15-23), Lazarus (John 11:1-44)
- losing your job and financial collapse: widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-24), Job (Job 1, 42)
God placed these examples into the Bible so we could follow Him, through these gifts that might look like tragedy, into greater faith in Him (1 Corinthians 10:11).
Memorize Ephesians 4:26-27:
26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,
27 and give no opportunity to the devil.