Agape Love

A Seven Part Homily Series

Part Four

Love is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.

 

By Michael K. Farrar, O.D.

© God’s Breath Publications

 

I Corinthians 13:4-8

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

 

Love is not easily Angered, Provoked or Irritated

 

The Greek word for anger here is “paroxuno” and refers to “a sudden outburst.” This is usually what happens when we are angry. The sudden outburst may be external in the way we treat others or it may be internal in our thoughts as we contemplate how to get even with those who have hurt us. But God’s love is never ready for a fight or ever seeks to hurt others. It has a long fuse on our emotional bombs. We are to model God’s love and His love is slow to anger (Psalms 86:15, Psalms 103:8, Psalms 145:8). There are things in life to be righteously angry about such as sin, Satan or the defilement of God’s Word and truth. Agape love permits anger towards ungodly things, but never against people.

 

Ephesians 4:26-27 speaks to the issue of anger succinctly. It says, “In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.” This tells us that if we are angry it needs to be righteous anger. We are not to go to bed with anger because it will fester in our hearts, minds and souls through the night. This has the potential of letting Satan have an influence in our spiritual lives. Think of anger like a cut that becomes infected with a small bacterium. As long as the cut is treated properly it will heal, but if ignored for any period of time the infection increases and can even take a human life. Such is the potential of not properly dealing with anger.

 

John MacArthur states, “Anger that is self-centered, undisciplined, and uncontrolled is sinful, useless, and hurtful – and it must be confessed and dealt with before it’s slept on…Commit yourself to get angry over only that which offends God, never over that which offends you. Also, make it a habit to deal with your anger quickly, so that Satan won’t get an advantage over you…If you get angry, upset, and irritated and then blame it on your circumstances, you’re deceiving yourself. The problem isn’t your circumstances, it’s the preoccupation of your mind that you’re important, that your rights matter, that your territory is invincible…Love is the only cure for irritability, because irritability, in the last analysis, is simple self-centeredness.”

 

Irritability is another word we might use to describe anger. An irritable person is not a loving person. Think of irritability like the launching pad for your anger rocket. Irritability is the fuel in the rocket. Everything is ready to launch. You are just waiting for the opportunity to push the lift off button. You are primed for the selfish reaction of anger rather than love and when someone mistreats you or a situation doesn’t go your way, you push the button and launch your anger.

 

Lewis B. Smedes states, “The reason so many things irritate us is that, out of tune with God, we miss the power of agapic love. Lacking that, we make our unfilled ego the axis around which we want the world to turn. Irritability makes us prone to anger, robs us of joy, and pushes us toward hostility.” So we are easily irritated and provoked and express anger because we are out of fellowship with our Savior. When we are not in a right relationship with our Heavenly Father, all manner of fleshly anger can sprout up in our garden and chokes our spirit. This damages us, those we associate with, as well as our relationship with God.

 

Granville Walker tells us that, “Love is the only cure for irritability; for irritability is only another manifestation of self-centeredness. And love that takes a man outside himself and centers the focus of his attention on the well-being of others is its only cure.” So the only way we can take our finger off the fire button and remove the fuel of irritability in our anger rocket is to seek to love as God loves. This is the love spoken of in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.

 

So the reason we are prone to anger and not loving like God loves is that we have wandered from our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Often what has invaded and eroded our relationship with God is our attempt to center our lives on ourselves rather than God. When we become the focus of our life, we take the first step towards accumulating the irritability fuel that will prime the engine so that anger can be released.

 

Anger if not resolved burrows deeper and deeper within us growing like a metastatic cancer invading all our emotional and spiritual organs. That is why it is so necessary to seek to love according to scripture and by the example of Jesus Christ. Proverbs 30:33 states it in a very descriptive manner, “As churning the milk produces butter, and as twisting the nose produces blood, so stirring up anger produces strife.”

 

When we fail to love properly we lose our joy. We find that we are not grateful for the good things in our life or the acts of kindness that others express towards us. Anger has replaced our capacity to love and has corroded the brightness of our joy. We lose our joy because since we have become self-centered and have not gotten what we think we have deserved we have encouraged anger to rule in us.

 

Anger can eventually lead to hostile actions towards others. In our anger we see others as the enemy and can seek to hurt them. We can avoid any notion of making peace, forgiving them or resolving the offense because we want the quarrel to keep going. We do this because we want to stay angry and we want to make everyone pay for the hurt and pain we feel. Our purpose for expressing anger can be several. We may want a specific response from the person we are angry with. We may want them to melt before us in guilt over how they have offended us. We may want them to bow in submission to our power of anger so that we will get what we want. We may also desire for them to return the favor by responding in anger so the quarrel can continue in sinful bliss and this just further justifies our own anger.

 

Agape love does not unleash anger. Expressing anger leaves hurt and bleeding people in its wake. God’s love evaluates the reasons behind the anger and calms the fire and can extinguish it if the angry person is willing for God to minister to them. Agape love does not remove the irritants from our lives, but it gives us the power and strength to deal with them appropriately. Agape love has this power because with the Holy Spirit’s help we turn the energy of anger towards helping the needs of other people and seeing our painful experiences with the spiritual eyes of our Lord and Savior. When we love as God calls us to His love is made perfect in us (1 John 4:12,16.) Agape love takes our self-centeredness off the throne of our life and puts Jesus in its place. When God rules our lives we can avoid the anger that results from our fleshly attempts to be king or queen over our selfish kingdom. Agape love gives us the ability to channel and communicate our anger in constructive and controlled ways. Agape love nourishes our joy and gratitude by encouraging us to avoid outbursts of anger.

 

 Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs it is not Resentful

 

Proverbs 10:12 states, “Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.” God’s love can cover the wrongs done to us. But, anger, hatred and dissension give birth to resentment as we begin to keep records and lists of offenses done to us.

 

“Resentment is yesterdays irritation scratched into the sensitive membranes of our memory…It is yesterday’s hurt grown up into today’s indignation. Planted and tended in our memory, the thorn that first pricked us now stabs away at our peace. Memories of minor hurts become major resentments…Resentment is our memory of the painful, angry past.”

Lewis B. Smedes

 

For some perverted and sinful reason our flesh desires to keep accounts of wrongs done to us. This desire keeps hurts of the past alive within us. In some masochistic manner we want to relive the pains and hurts of yesterday over and over again. Why do we do this?

 

Resentment and keeping an account of wrongs done to us can sometimes make us feel superior to the person who offended us. It can justify our plots for revenge. Sometimes we can feel noble and self-righteous for the hurt that we have endured. This leads to religious pride and can diminish any ability to love in the manner we are called to as Christians. Such resentment targets people and it sours all relationships we have, especially with God.

 

Lewis B. Smedes gives us a realistic picture of acidic nature of resentment. “As we insist on keeping score of hurts, resentment feeds our anxiety that we are behind in this game of ill-will and must catch up. Resentment keeps enemy lists, files on every person who has injured us. Each one must pay for the pain he caused before he can face us as a moral equal.” But he goes on to say concerning agapic love, “Love alone has the power to release memory’s grip on yesterday’s evil, for only love is the power that moves us toward people without expectation of return and therefore with a great tolerance for hurt…Love does not take pleasure in remembering how much we have coming from people who hurt us. For love is the power whose only direction is the help, healing, and salvation of the other person.”

 

Keeping records of wrongs people have done to us causes us to view people through emotional glasses that are cloudy with resentment. We can’t see any good in them. We insulate ourselves from feeling any obligation to remember their needs. We push everything under the carpet of our feelings; we frame the picture of hurt and hang it in the center of our heart, mind and soul to stare at it in our pain. From this we justify our resentment and waste away spiritually and emotionally. When we create such a mausoleum of death in our soul we are trying to hurt the person who hurt us, but in reality we are doing damage to ourselves. We are also trying to convince everyone that we are the morally superior person when this is far from the truth.

 

But God’s love lets the past die. It seeks to move to a new beginning. Christ settled all accounts at the cross and this is something we must remember when we are tempted to feel resentful towards someone or when we begin keeping track of wrongs that have been done to us. Agape love does not protect us from hurts but it does allow us to deal with them in a positive manner. Such love can stare cruel hurt in the face and handle it appropriately. The person who lives by agape love can be a servant who can facilitate reconciliation in relationships. The power of agape love is that it can give us the power and strength to tear up the lists of offenses that we have accumulated in our lives. This frees us from the bondage of resentment and the record of wrongs we have collected.

 

As we seek to love according to the love illustrated in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 we will be less and less irritated or provoked to anger. We will see resentment towards others diminish and we will destroy the lists we have made of wrongs people have done to us. As we are filled with God’s Spirit we will feel the power to love as God loves grow within us and experience the fruits of the Spirit.

 

Galatians 5:22-23

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”