Spurgeon on Anger

July 13 : Spurgeon’s Morning Devotional

“God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry?”
Jonah 4:9

Anger is not always or necessarily sinful, but it has such a tendency to run wild that whenever it displays itself, we should be quick to question its character, with this enquiry, “Doest thou well to be angry?” It may be that we can answer, “YES.” Very frequently anger is the madman’s firebrand, but sometimes it is Elijah’s fire from heaven. We do well when we are angry with sin, because of the wrong which it commits against our good and gracious God; or with ourselves because we remain so foolish after so much divine instruction; or with others when the sole cause of anger is the evil which they do. He who is not angry at transgression becomes a partaker in it. Sin is a loathsome and hateful thing, and no renewed heart can patiently endure it. God himself is angry with the wicked every day, and it is written in His Word, “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil.” Far more frequently it is to be feared that our anger is not commendable or even justifiable, and then we must answer, “NO.” Why should we be fretful with children, passionate with servants, and wrathful with companions? Is such anger honourable to our Christian profession, or glorifying to God? Is it not the old evil heart seeking to gain dominion, and should we not resist it with all the might of our newborn nature? Many professors give way to temper as though it were useless to attempt resistance; but let the believer remember that he must be a conqueror in every point, or else he cannot be crowned. If we cannot control our tempers, what has grace done for us? Some one told Mr. Jay that grace was often grafted on a crab-stump. “Yes,” said he, “but the fruit will not be crabs.” We must not make natural infirmity an excuse for sin, but we must fly to the cross and pray the Lord to crucify our tempers, and renew us in gentleness and meekness after His own image.

Protestantism Defined

The Theological Word of the Day recently was “Protestantism”:

Protestantism

A tradition in Christianity which found its self-identity as “Protestant” in the sixteenth-century Reformation. Protestantism began when the church, according to Protestants, lost the Gospel during the middle to late middle ages and reformers began to “protest” this loss. Martin Luther, often seen as the father of Protestantism, rejected the Pope’s claims to infallible authority, believed that the Gospel was being lost to a system of works-based salvation, and confessed the Bible alone was the only infallible and ultimate source of authority for the Christian. Protestantism is not a church, but a tradition which claims to have restored or reformed the Gospel, and hence, the church. Protestantism is made up of thousands of denominations (various expressions of the Protestant faith) and boasts nearly four hundred million members world-wide.

Curiously, the definition references the Pope, but not the Roman Catholic Church. The definition from Theopedia captures this element better:

Protestantism is the movement within Christianity, representing a split from the Roman Catholic Church, which occurred during the 16th century in Europe in what is called the Protestant Reformation.

Commonly considered one of the three major branches of Christianity (along with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy), Protestantism represents a diverse range of theological and social perspectives, denominations and related organizations.

And the division is even more explicitly defined in the article on the Protestant Reformation:

The theology of the Reformers departed from the Roman Catholic Church primarily on the basis of three great principles:

• Sole authority of Scripture,
• Justification by faith alone, and
• Priesthood of the believer.