Is It a Sin to Be Angry

Official answer 2026-08-22

No — and Scripture is clearer about this than most people assume. The New Testament says directly: be angry and do not sin. The structure of that sentence answers your question by itself. If anger were sin, the sentence could not be written. It separates anger from sin. Further: in the Gospels Jesus himself was angry. He was angry when the temple had been turned into a market, and when facing people who preferred their rules to a person being healed, the text says he looked around at them with anger. So anger cannot be sin in itself, or those accounts would make no sense. Where does the real issue lie, then. First, what the anger is about. Being angry at an offence to yourself and being angry at someone else being oppressed are different things. The first is often pride wearing a costume; the second is frequently right in Scripture. Second, what happens afterwards. The same passage continues: do not let the sun go down on your anger. It does not govern the flash of feeling; it forbids it from becoming a long-term grievance. Anger is a signal, not a residence. Third, who gets hurt. Whether anger turned into attack, humiliation, or revenge — that is the dividing line. Practically: stop blaming yourself for the feeling; it only fixes your attention on the emotion rather than on handling it. When angry, do not decide anything and do not send anything — wait a night. That is not suppression; it is refusing to let one surge of feeling speak on your behalf. And if you find yourself living in a low-grade anger for long stretches, something usually sits underneath — exhaustion, being wronged, going unheard for a long time. Dealing with the lower layer helps far more than fighting the surface.