2 Times Anger Is Acceptable in Marriage and three Times It’s Not

I’m guessing you don’t need a dictionary definition of anger. But should you do need one, anger is defined as “a powerful feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.” The Bible often speaks of anger. And it speaks of wrath.

Wrath is more of a settled disposition. Anger is more of an intense emotional state. Robert Jones defines it as “our whole-personed energetic response of negative moral judgment against perceived evil.”[1] Anger is a biological response to a perceived threat or wrongdoing. It is our body’s way of preparing us to defend ourselves.

In this case, it’s a bit just like the lights in your automobile’s dashboard. Those lights are responding to something that is occurring under the hood. Anger is responding to a perceived injustice. When we feel that “negative moral judgment against a perceived evil,” our anger light comes on. That’s why we would say things like, “You made me offended.” That’s what it looks like. But the fact is that we make ourselves offended—it’s our body’s response to a perceived illness. You did this thing, and I responded with this emotion.

When Ephesians 4:26 discusses anger, it doesn’t say, “You do well to be offended.” Rather, it acknowledges that we have now anger. When this intense emotion comes into our bodies, we’re told to not let it lead us to sin. When we’re told to not let the sun go down on anger, God is telling us that we’d like to look under the hood. Don’t let those dashboard lights keep flashing and beeping. Deal with it.

Sometimes, our anger is the proper response. But over and over, our dashboard lights are set to the unsuitable standard. They beep once they shouldn’t. We are likely to place ourselves at the middle, and the perceived evil isn’t actual evil; relatively, it’s a slight to ourselves. In many cases, what God said to Jonah is fitting: “Do you do well to be offended?”

You’re offended, but must you be? That’s definitely the case once we’re talking about marriage. There shall be many opportunities for anger. But should there be? Should we be offended?

There is such a thing as righteous anger. God may be offended. In fact, there are occasions when anything but anger could be a sinful response. There are some things we should and must be offended about. But I might argue that these are few and much between. Most of the time, our anger isn’t righteous in any respect. Truly righteous anger has the center of God at the middle. Here are thrice when anger in marriage is an accurate response.