Bible Gateway Blog

By Craig Groeschel

My first car — an old Buick Century — was the “Sport Coupe” model. It said so right under the spoiler. Or it had before the accident. The guy who’d fixed it painted “Turbo Coupe” instead of “Sport Coupe.” Whaaa? My Sport Coupe was now a Turbo Coupe? Yes!! A Turbo Coupe had a turbocharged engine! Way. More. Power.

Despite what it said on the back of my car, my Buick Century did not really have more power.

Because willpower doesn’t work, you and I really require more power. We can think we’re a Turbo Coupe, but we’re still just a Sport Coupe.

Paul’s Need for God’s Power

Paul knew he needed more power. That’s why he asked in Romans 7:24, “Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?” (NLT). That is the question we all need to answer.

But Paul answered his own question with his next sentence in verse 25: “Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord” (NLT).

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By Brant Hansen

Why isn’t righteous anger ever listed among the things that a Spirit-filled life will bring us? If it’s righteous, why is it not akin to the “fruit of the Spirit,” like love, joy, peace, and gentleness? Why is anger in Scripture so consistently lumped in the other lists with things like, say, slander and malice, with no exclusions for the “righteous” variety? (See, for example, Colossians 3:8).

We aren’t to just pretend anger away or feel guilty for the initial emotion of anger. But we are to deal with it, with the goal of eradicating it within us. This, of course, is not easy to do, but it’s not complex to understand, either.

Few ever present the radical implications of what it means to die to ourselves and what it means to practice a lifestyle of forgiveness. “Stepping out of anger,” Dallas Willard says, “means you are surrendering your will to God. It means you have accepted that you don’t have to have your way.”[1] When I’ve read commentaries on Ephesians 4:31, where Paul says to get rid of bitterness, anger, evil speaking, and so on, the commenter very often inserts the word unreasonable before anger. But that’s not in the text, and the commenter doesn’t extend the “unreasonable” standard to anything else on the list. (What about “unreasonable bitterness”?)

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