Anger and the Body

6 · Pastor Oswald commends Lloyd-Jones's careful distinction between "flesh" (spiritual entity, indwelling sin) and "body" (physical entity) in Paul's usage—a distinction that clarifies Paul's call to sanctification

Now, Lloyd-Jones is very careful in his exposition throughout Romans to differentiate, and this is a difficult differentiation, and he mentions at the beginning of this sermon a quote that you didn't hear. How a lot of people struggle, a lot of interpreters struggle with this particular piece of exposition. And that is because sometimes it's not so clear whether Paul is referring to the flesh, which is this sort of spiritual entity, this sort of spiritual force that lives in part of our indwelling sin, or when Paul is referring to the body. Sometimes it's not clear in the original Greek. And what he is careful to do, and I think this is one of the reasons why his teaching through Romans had such impact is he's careful to make a distinction and to really unpack what is happening exactly when Paul is calling us to essentially a life of sanctification, a life of putting to death the deeds of the body.

7 · The pastor establishes the foundational theological claim that not all negative emotions are sinful—a corrective to the cultural assumption that negative feelings equal sin

Now, why does this matter for anger? Well, there are a number of principles I want to put forward to you in this podcast about anger. And the first one is, and I won't cover this very deeply, but the first one has something to do with the end of Jones's quote. And that is that not all negative emotions are sinful. Not all negative emotions are sinful. There are emotions that we would consider to be negative: anxiety, anger, jealousy, perhaps some kind of resentment, for instance, those may not be entirely sinful. They're certainly negative, they certainly don't feel good, but they may not be entirely sinful. Another example would be grief, right? It's a negative emotion, not necessarily sinful. Because we've been raised in a culture that is just wanting to feel good all of the time, that desire for kind of constant happiness at a sort of surface emotional level has leaked its way into the church's understanding of emotions. So that now we view negative emotions with sort of a presumption that they must be sin. We think, well, you know, this is making me feel bad, therefore, it must be sin. Because of course, the underlying theology there is, is that whatever makes me feel bad, is sin. But we want to be clear that first and foremost, that anger is not necessarily sin.

8 · Pastor Oswald establishes the core mechanism of sinful anger: the body hijacks even legitimate anger and makes it inordinate

But what is usually going to happen because of the body is that a feeling of anger will— perhaps even righteous anger— will be hijacked by the body in the way that Lloyd-Jones describes as inordinate. And I want to go back to that. I think it's the last minute or so. I want to go back and I want you to hear that statement again. So let's do that right now. The position is this: the body prompts us to evil deeds. It isn't that the instincts of the body are in and of themselves sinful. They're not. The instincts are natural, they are normal, and they're not sinful. But because there is this residual sin within us, it is always trying to turn the natural instincts into something that's wrong— inordinate affection. It tries to exaggerate them, tries to make us eat too much, tries to make us drink too much, tries to make us indulge the other instincts too much. It becomes inordinate. Not that the thing is wrong in and of itself, but that this sinful principle constantly is trying to turn what is normal and natural into something that is sinful.

9 · The pastor traces the mechanics of sinful anger: a stressor triggers a physical response, and if the body were not bound by sin, the response would be ordinate

Okay, so what we would be imagining as we're discussing the topic of anger in particular is that something, some stressor, has entered into our environment and there are some physical things going on there immediately. Our body is responding to a stress. Now, if our body was not captured by sin in the way that Jones describes more broadly in the Romans series and also in this particular sermon, if our body was not captured by sin, we would have a reasonable response to that stressor that is as Jones, and he's stealing this from Augustine, would say, is ordinate. It is appropriate. But what happens is the body, because it is still bound in sin, the body actually overreacts. It goes farther than it should in this particular moment.

10 · Pastor Oswald illustrates the body's inordinate escalation by comparing anger to lust

You can think about this with another kind of sin. For instance, lust. Anyone that's ever struggled with lust understands that there's a spectrum that goes on there. And at the front end of that spectrum, we may not even be talking about sin. Not necessarily sin on the individual's part who's going to wind up lusting. The beginning may simply be a physical response, a physical reaction to a beautiful woman, for instance, or to a handsome man. And right there, we've got a situation that if sin were not an issue, there would be a recognition, an appreciation of the beauty, but then we would just kind of— it would just go no further. It would be there and no further. But of course, because of indwelling sin and its effect on our body, we move from that recognition of beauty into stages of sin. And, you know, you can go quite far from that initial recognition of beauty if the Lord does not stop us, restrain us through His Holy Spirit. It could go quite far. But the very beginning of that is a feeling that itself is not necessarily sin, a recognition of someone's beauty.

11 · Pastor Oswald parallels the lust illustration back to anger: the body builds a cascading, hardwired response to stressors over time

Well, when it comes to anger, we're dealing with the very same scenario. We're just dealing with it in a more negative fashion or a negative situation. You know, a beautiful woman walks by you, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's good that beautiful people exist. Beauty is good. You know, in the situation of anger, someone is experiencing a stressor. And if there wasn't sin involved in this, if we were entirely free of sin, then there would be a recognition of a stressor, of a situation that isn't what we need it to be, what we want it to be. And then that would be, that would be it, or it would, there'd be some sort of appropriate response. But over time, in particular, people that struggle with anger, and I've struggled with this as well, over time, our body actually builds what I can only describe as sort of a an avalanche cascading response that becomes physical in nature, that becomes hardwired in our minds. And we move very quickly through a series of physical responses to that stress. And it leads to something that we could call anger.

12 · The pastor reinforces that anger is both spiritual and physical—it feels difficult to control precisely because it's a bodily overreaction

So one of the things I want us to understand is that what's going on when we're encountering a physical stressor, rather, is something in our body is overreacting to the stress. And so this is why it feels so difficult to control, because what's really happening is, yes, it's spiritual in the sense that there's moral implications to it. But it's also quite physical. And you might wonder, you know, why do some people struggle with this and other people do not?

13 · The pastor introduces the concept of "early permission"—the moment when someone knowingly violates God's command in a particular area, often when young

The way that I have seen particular struggles manifest in people's lives, it comes down very often to early permission given, early permission given. I'm going to pause the podcast right now. You're not going to notice anything. I'm just going to hit pause. But I'm going to go look for a quote that just came to mind from Oswald Chambers. I think it's kind of a hard quote to find. But let me see if I can find that quote that deals with this particular issue. Okay, I'm back. No luck. No luck. I knew when I read that quote, I usually try to grab those things and file them away in my notes file. But boy, I didn't do that with this one. And I just cannot find it online. So I'll just kind of give you the quote from memory. It was very impactful when I read it. And it has to do with this idea of permission. The quote essentially is that from time to time a Christian will come across some particular struggle that seems to be inordinately serious and difficult and difficult to beat. And it's very common that, you know, people have their one thing, you know, their one struggle and so forth. And one of the points that Chambers makes in that quote that I cannot find is that very often when you trace back the roots of this, it started with a sort of an understanding, a clear understanding that you were violating God's commandments. Often when you were young, often many years ago, in this particular area, there was an understanding of, I know what God wants, and I'm going to do the opposite of what God wants. And what will happen sometimes is one of those particular areas becomes what you can almost describe as hardwired into your body itself, so that you begin to, in a particular area, have a constant difficulty overcoming a particular sin, particular kind of sin, because long ago, you sort of gave permission And you said, you know, in this area, I'm not going to be like Jesus, I'm going to do what I want to do in this particular area.

14 · The pastor expands the claim: repeated permission becomes biological—especially when given during formative years

And so what happens in those areas, especially when we're young, especially if this is happening in a time when our minds are being wired, you know, as we're growing up in our teen years, in our early 20s, giving permission in that sense, almost becomes a biological part of us. And again, you can see this more often in a sin like lust, or a sin of substance abuse, for instance. But I think the most common expression I see is in the area of anxiety and in the area of anger, where there was a period of time way back when, perhaps, when a permission was given to indulge in something, whether it be anger or worry or lust. And you've given permission too many times so that now your body has actually adapted a particular response to particular stimuli.

15 · Pastor Oswald illustrates the differential effect of early permission by comparing two men at a pool: one who has not given permission to lust can navigate the environment easily; the other, who has built up a cascading physical response, struggles significantly

And, of course, this means that, you know, the average guy, in theory, who's not, you know, hasn't given kind of permission to lust, for instance, would be able to navigate, say, a day at the pool in a way that's very different than a guy who gave permission and really has sort of built up this physical response that kind of has a cascading effect in his life when he's exposed to say, a beautiful woman.

16 · The pastor concludes this section with a direct statement to those struggling with anger: you have a physical system that overreacts, and you must understand anger as a physical issue requiring daily renewal and the rescinding of permission previously given

Well, people who struggle with anger have a physical system that's built in that takes a stressor and makes more of it than it should, or essentially makes the body and the mind respond to it in ways that are sinful, beyond appropriate. So what you need to understand about anger, if you're struggling with it, is that it is very much a physical issue. And you're going to have to be renewed day by day in the image of God. And you're going to have to consistently sort of rescind the permission you once gave yourself to indulge in this particular sin.

17 · The pastor pivots from explaining the mechanism of anger to practical counsel: he differentiates between anger (the emotion) and fits of rage (the sinful expression)

Now, how do you help someone that's actually struggling with anger? Well, my approach has been for myself, and I think for others, my approach has been to differentiate between anger and what the Bible calls fits of rage.

18 · Pastor Oswald reads Galatians 5:19-21 to establish the biblical distinction: fits of anger are listed as a distinct work of the flesh, alongside but separate from other sins like jealousy and strife

So I have chosen often to differentiate between those two things. Let me read to you from Galatians and show you the differentiation. In Galatians chapter 5, verse 19, Paul writes, now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies. In things like these, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

19 · The pastor directs those struggling with anger to prioritize the thing that hurts others most—the fit of rage—rather than sorting out the complexities of the emotion itself

Now, what I want to put forward to you is that if you're struggling with anger, the very first thing you ought to deal with is not the complexities of the emotions themselves. Again, there is a degree to which your recognition of something that is wrong may not even be sin. There's a degree to which some of your anger may not even be sin. It's a very complicated issue. It also just doesn't serve you well in real time to try to sort those things out. Because in the moment when, for someone that's struggling with anger, in the moment when sort of the stressor enters, and the stimuli is there, your body is going to very quickly take you down a road, and it's going to lead to what? A fit of rage, a fit of anger. So what I try to walk people through is to deal with the thing that hurts others first. Deal with the thing that hurts others first. We're supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves. We're really supposed to put other people before us in many respects. And so this can be helpful because it gives us some sense of a triage of sin. What are the sins I should deal with first? The ones that hurt others, you know. And if you begin to act out of love toward others, and that becomes your sort of your agenda for sanctification, you know, just hopeful I don't get down on a rabbit trail on this. But, you know, you sort of like, man, there's a lot of things you could work on about yourself. And there's a lot of things that aren't like Christ, right? It's like, what are the priorities? Well, look at the things that are affecting others. Look to the things that are hurting others. And out of love for them, which is a godly emotion, a godly choice, out of love for them, target those things first.

20 · The pastor makes the application concrete: work first on self-control—the bodily restraint that prevents the cascade from reaching a fit of rage

So when we come to anger, we're like, okay, well, there's a whole lot of things going on here. Some of them might be sinful, some of them might not be. But what's the one thing that I should work on first? And I always tell people, You know, you want to work first on self-control, just the self-control that keeps your body from cascading into this response that leads you toward what the Bible would call, you know, a fit of rage or a fit of anger. That's not necessarily dealing with the anger you feel. It's simply saying that I'm going to choose to express this anger in ways that are not normal for my particular, you know, training, the way that I've trained my body over time. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to blow my top.

21 · The pastor emphasizes the immediate relational benefit of restraining visible anger and reframes the work as bodily retraining

Now, what that's going to do immediately is that's going to be a blessing to many other people in your life. The truth is, is that your anger is somewhat of a liability in your relationships, of course. And we could talk about this more, perhaps in another time. But the truth is, is that if you could just stop being visibly volume, high volume angry, a lot of people are going to be better off as a consequence of just that choice. And the reason why I introduced this whole topic with that Martin Lloyd-Jones quote is you need to see that what you're really doing is you're retraining your body. You're telling your body, when you receive a stimulus of stress, we're going to go— we're not going to go all the way down that road anymore. We're not going to go all the way to a fit of rage. We're going to deal with that particular issue. And so that's really a self-control issue. It's really just a choice of closing your mouth. It's really a choice of saying— it's really, it's also perhaps just a belief that what God says is true, in the sense that he says that you can in the Spirit have self-control.

22 · Pastor Oswald exposes the fallacy of "I couldn't help myself" by transposing the logic to lust

Many times people who are angry will often talk about, I just couldn't help myself. I just felt so overwhelmingly X, Y, or Z. And again, I would say, let's take that out of the subject of anger and move it into another sin. And say, for instance, lust. It's like, well, can you understand how creepy that sounds when someone talks about it with lust, right? Not to— I don't want to get too gross here. But essentially, someone has a stimulus, they're saying, you see someone, a beautiful woman, the body wants to go this full cascade that kind of terminates in a physical expression of sin in one way or another, whether that be adultery or self-pleasure or whatever. And what you're really saying is, no, if you applied the way that people talk about their anger to lust, you'd be like, well, I just couldn't help myself. It just got to the point where I had to express it. I couldn't keep it pent up anymore. And truthfully, when people are struggling with lust, they will often not say that out loud to people, but they'll often believe that about themselves, that there's sort of this point of no return that they get to. It's like, well, no, that's not true. You ultimately do have a choice over what you do with your body.

23 · The pastor reiterates the application: cut off the final piece—the visible outburst

And so when it comes to anger, the thing that I've found that helps the most is to challenge someone who's struggling with anger, to cut off that final piece of the cascade that they've trained their bodies to go through. And that final piece is yelling, getting, you know, visibly upset to others, so on and so forth. Now, are you going to nail this perfectly? No. But I do think that when you begin, I do think especially so if you're a man, A couple of things to understand. One, there are plenty of people who are every bit as angry as you, but just have more self-control. And those people are better off than you are. And the people in those people's lives are better off than the people in your people's lives. Like, this one piece is a big deal. There's, there's plenty of people who are angry, who have not trained their bodies over time to respond, to have to kind of end the cycle with yelling, or end the cycle with a fit of rage. So we would say that, you know, we would always want to deal with the heart. And we would always say that anyone who's struggling with long-term kind of anger is not okay. But those who know better than to just let it vent, they're better off. And the people, more importantly, the people in their lives are better off because of that element of self-control.

24 · Pastor Oswald expounds Proverbs 29:11, showing that both the fool and the wise man feel anger—the difference is not in the emotion but in what they do with it

Proverbs 29:11 says, a fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man quietly holds it back. And what you've got there— let me read that verse again. Proverbs 29:11, a fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man quietly holds it back. What you've got there is, um, Two people, a wise man and a fool, who are both angry. Right? And what's differentiating these two between the fool and the wise man is what they do with that anger. A fool gives full vent to that anger, but a wise man quietly holds it back.

25 · The pastor applies Proverbs 29:11 to the listener's past: ideally, this training would have happened earlier

Ideally, way back when, before this became a habitual sin, Ideally, you would have, at that time, trained your body and been like, no, you can hold your anger. You don't have to give full vent to it. And that wouldn't deal with the issue at hand in terms of why you're being stressed. It wouldn't deal with the anger itself, but it would make you wise. It would make you wise because you're quietly holding it back.

26 · The pastor reframes Proverbs 29:11 as a promise—God will enable what He commands

Now, this verse, Proverbs 29:11, is also really a promise. Is this is what God will do for you. You know, the Bible says that, you know, when our children ask us for things, we give them to it. We do our best to give them what they need. Because, you know, we love our kids. And Jesus says, "If you then being evil know how to give good things, how much more will your Father give you what you ask?" 'And one version says, give you the Holy Spirit when you ask, and another version just says, give you what you ask.' And they're both pointing to the same thing. So if you're struggling with anger, my challenge is this: you need to understand there's a bodily activity happening.

27 · The pastor breaks down the anger cascade into three steps: (1) stimulus, (2) physical stirrings, (3) vent

And the first thing I want you to do is to begin to figure out how to remove some of the most, what I would say are violent expressions at the end of that anger cascade that your body has learned to go through. And let me, let me break that down just very quickly. Let's say step 1, stimulus of negative experience. So something's not going well, you feel disrespected, you feel misunderstood, you feel alone, you feel like you failed. There's a lot of reasons why men in particular feel anger. You feel these things. And then the next step is, is there's a physical response. Your breathing becomes different, your heart rate changes, you begin to tense up, and so on and so forth. And this is part of your body's, you know, natural response to stress in general. Now, you can regulate that, you can get better at that, you can turn that down from a 10 to a 5 so that even before you've said anything, your body's just responding more calmly to negative stimulus. But what I'm really interested in is that third step. First step, stimulus. Second step, physical sort of stirrings. The third step is vent, you know, venting these feelings. And this is very similar to sexual sin, in that it's all pointing toward a release that will feel good for a few seconds and then lead to shame. And that's exactly where folks wind up when they are on the wrong side of Proverbs 29:11. There's a physical release when you yell, when you get upset, and it feels good for just a second. And then you're sitting in your own shame following that.

28 · The pastor issues a concrete action step: listen to Lloyd-Jones's sermon, take his counsel seriously (as someone who has walked this path), and focus on the expression—the part that hurts others most

So if you're struggling with anger, I want you to maybe listen to the sermon Martin Lloyd-Jones preached. It's, you can just Google Sin in the Body. And I want you to, in particular, take my counsel in this particular area as someone who has and is working through this himself. The main thing to do is to look at what part of this hurts people the most. And the part that hurts people the most is the expression which is a separate sin in Galatians 5 than the anger itself. The expression is its own thing. And if you would deal with that particular issue first, not only are other people going to be blessed, you're going to be more wise, but also in the end, you're starting to chip away at this bodily response you've learned over time. And this can be extraordinarily beneficial in the long run to sort of unwiring that original hardwiring that you built up years ago in response to negative stimuli.

29 · Pastor Oswald closes the podcast, reiterating that the content came from a recent counseling session and inviting members of Providence Community Church to reach out with questions

Well, I think that's, that's a good enough comment on anger. That's one of the keys I wanted to pass on to you that was part of a recent counseling session. So I hope that you appreciate that. And if you have any questions, of course, this podcast is really for the members of Providence Community Church. So if you have any questions at all, you know how to get ahold of me. And I'd love to talk with you more about this particular subject. That's all for now.