Luther in his sermon on Matthew 5: 20-26 speaks about how anger is our hearts is the same as breaking the fifth commandment. Jesus taught this to the religious leaders of his day who were happy to stick to the "letter of the law" and not the spirit of the law which Jesus hereby expands to include anger and the sins of anger. My how this convicts us! Read a part of it:
This Gospel we have fully and sufficiently explained on other occasions, when treating of the entire sermon of Christ, which Matthew the Evangelist records in three chapters; for today we will take a part of it, where Christ expounds and explains the fifth commandment. For here we observe first, that Christ attacks a sin called anger, which is very common and powerfully rules the world.
And it is not one of the gross, public vices punished also by the world, but one of those fine sins of the devil that do not want to pass for sin. For they sail under false colors, so that no one can rebuke and punish them. For instance, pride will not be called pride, but truth and justice; envy and hatred do not want to be reprimanded, but rather extolled as being true earnestness and godly zeal against wickedness. These are really the two colors the devil carries in his realm, namely, lying and murder, which in the eyes of the world claim the honor and praise of being holiness and righteousness in the highest degree.
If you want the rest of the sermon, email me or post your email and I will send you a pdf of the entire sermon.
What do you think about this anger thing??
Have any struggles with it yourself?
Anger, tough stuff.
ReplyDeleteYes, sometimes someone can push you sooo far. You pray and pray and it just, well sometimes we let the devil take over and it explodes to the point where you kinda go out of the mind you should be in and kaboom. We say things we don't mean and say words we shouldn't. Then I have to really pray for forgiveness.
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