Love Is Not Easily Provoked

Alba 12-24-2025

LOVE IS NOT EASILY PROVOKED

I Corinthians 13:5

There was an advertisement in the paper: WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE, NEVER WORN. WILL TRADE FOR A .38 CALIBER PISTOL. Do you think someone was angry here? I would say its likely.

Depending on what Bible version you have, First Corinthians chapter 13 verse 5 says this about love: “Love is not provoked”, “isn't irritable”, “is not easily angered”, “isn't quick-tempered”. Is it possible to control your anger, your irritable response even when provoked? Sure it is.

It is not beyond our control; we do it all the time for fear of legal or social consequences. Consider: a mother who has a terrible day. The washer leaks on the floor, kids fight, supper burns, she breaks her favorite bowl, kids track mud on her clean floor. So she explodes, screams at the kids and threatens them. Then the phone rings and its her husband's boss. Suddenly she is quite capable of carrying on a polite conversation.

Dad works on the car. The dealer gives him a wrong part, it won't go together right, then it won't run, and a wrench slips and splits his knuckle. He's screaming and using profanity. Then a car pulls in the driveway; it's the preacher's wife come for a visit. Suddenly he is calm and polite. We have all had some experience, maybe not like these examples, but where we also we made some quick changes in our behavior.

But is it always wrong to be provoked and get angry? One could argue that God gets angry. Read through scripture and you will see a number of times when God expresses His anger. And even Jesus showed His anger. Mark 3:1-5 tells how Jesus was angry at the hardness of the Pharisee’s hearts concerning the man with a withered hand who needed to be healed. And John 2:13-17 tells how Jesus was angry with the money changers who were desecrating the Temple which was to be a house of prayer, and He poured out the coins of the money changers and turned over their tables. Jesus was not always meek and mild.

Do these examples give us the right to express anger whenever we wish to do so? Well, before we do, we should ask another question. When we get angry, is it because we are upset with some evil thing that is happening that we want to correct? That is the example we see in the anger expressed by God and by Jesus Christ. I am afraid that the times we get angry are more often caused by frustration, unmet expectations, or times when we feel devalued, hurt, pushed aside, unappreciated, neglected, or disrespected.

If we want to use God's anger against sin as an excuse for us to express anger any time we feel frustrated or hurt, remember Psalm 145:8 says, “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, Slow to anger and great in mercy.” So God is not easily provoked or easily angered. His anger comes out of His love for us, to protect us from sin.

So what are we to do? We need God's guidance. Again and again we are given instruction in the Bible about anger. Ecclesiastes 7:9 says, “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools” (NIV). And Proverbs 29:11 says, “Fools vent their anger, but the wise quietly hold it back” (NLT). And Ephesians 4:31 says that as Christians we should, “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you..”

Now we all know that this is not easy. There seems to be too many times when something happens that catches us in a moment, too quick to think about ahead of time, and we spout off something that we should not have said. Anger can cloud our thinking and cause us to do foolish things. Things, that later, we often regret. That is all the more reason to follow biblical guidelines and do our best to control anger. Ephesians 4:26 tells us “Be angry, and do not sin”. So if we handle things correctly, our anger will not be sinful. But if we do not have some control over our anger, we will do what the next verse says. We will “give place to the devil”. The devil will take advantage of us and we will not be doing things with love.

As we near the time for celebrating Christmas, there is someone who had every reason to be provoked, to get angry. His name is Joseph. He was a man who had his own business and it was time for him to settle down. Whether an arrangement had been made ahead of time, or if he had seen this young girl and was attracted to her and asked her to marry him, we don't know.