“Don’t go to bed angry.” How many times have you heard some version of this marital proverb? Many bright-eyed couples hear it in premarital counseling and happily nod along in agreement. Those who’ve been married for a while may chuckle at the naivete. We’ll see if they’re still smiling and nodding in a few months.

Once you’re married, the counsel quickly becomes more complicated, uncomfortable, and costly. Sometimes, dealing with anger before bedtime can feel like finishing the basement before bedtime. My wife and I know firsthand, having fought hard over seven years to subdue our anger before exhaustion subdues us. Achieving a cheap, superficial peace may be easy enough, but meaningful reconciliation typically takes meaningful time and energy and, well, work.

The counsel really is good counsel, though, because it’s God’s counsel: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). The command covers all relationships, but marriage may be the hardest place to apply it. For many of us, marriage carries the most potential to make us most angry (or at least angry most often).

Counsel for Couples Battling Anger

This heightened tendency toward anger isn’t a defect in marriage. It’s actually a consequence of what makes marriage beautiful. Marriage has a higher and more consistent capacity for anger because marriage has a higher and more consistent capacity for intimacy. Sin hurts more when we’ve opened and entrusted all of ourselves to someone. The proximity and vulnerability can make even small sins feel like acts of war.

So how can couples fight to put their anger to bed? While many (rightly) turn to Ephesians 5 for a vision for marriage, the verses immediately before that chapter also hold valuable weapons in the fight to love each other well.

1. Anger is a good emotion that we often express sinfully.

Be angry. (Ephesians 4:26)

You won’t often hear those two words together in premarital counseling (or any counseling, for that matter). Before we try to put away our anger for the night, we need to remember that anger can be a healthy and godly response to evil.

“Many marriages suffer because we assume that anger is always bad — or that our anger is always justified.”

Many of us have developed a map of our emotional life in which anger is always out of bounds. We tend to assume that anger — especially any anger directed at us! — is unwarranted and wrong. This was my bent coming into marriage. God’s word to us, however, is not, “Never be angry,” but, “Be angry, and do not sin.” Has your marriage made room for some righteous anger over an offense? Does either of you ever say, “I was wrong. I sinned against you. And it’s right for you to be angry about that”?

Many marriages suffer because we assume that anger is always bad — or that our anger is always justified. Often, we assume the former when it comes to our spouse’s anger, and the latter when it comes to our own. The rest of chapter 4, however, puts checks on the anger that inevitably arises in marriage.

2. Strive to put away all anger.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. (Ephesians 4:31)

Wait, isn’t this a blatant contradiction? Didn’t Paul just say, “Be angry, and do not sin”? There is a tension here, but not a contradiction. Much of maturity and wisdom in marriage (and in the Christian life in general) is found in the ability to know when to apply seemingly opposite commands — when to correct offenses, and when to overlook them; when to speak, and when to stay silent; when to be angry over sin, and when to put away anger.

“Be angry over the sin in your marriage, and don’t go to bed angry.”

The message should be clear: anger has a place in healthy hearts, but it’s a limited and temporary place. It’s right to feel angry over evil, but only within a life that’s actively, persistently laying anger aside — and not just most anger, but all anger (“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger . . . be put away from you”). God gives even our righteous anger an expiration date — and that expiration date is today.

3. The 24-hour day is a mercy for marriages.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. (Ephesians 4:26)

Have you ever wondered why God made each day 24 hours long? Surely there are hundreds of good reasons, but he himself tells us at least one of them here: because it checks our anger and keeps it from breaking into a quiet wildfire. In this way, the 24-hour day is a great mercy for marriages. As the sun crosses the sky each day and begins to bury itself on the horizon, it steadily carries us toward reconciliation. It draws a line in the sand that forces us to choose between submitting to God and seeking reconciliation or refusing his counsel and coddling our hurt.

Many marriages suffer because we let offenses harden into bitterness that slowly erodes trust and intimacy over days, or weeks, or even months. Trust is the currency of intimacy. Spouses can squander that trust in big, obvious ways that we could all name. Trust is also squandered in more subtle ways, though, and perhaps the most common way is by carrying and stoking offenses. The initial hurt or anger may have been completely warranted, but the warrant has long expired, and yet the bitterness quietly remains and wounds and separates. So God pushes the sun around the earth, each and every day, to give us a golden opportunity to put away all our anger.

Let me add one important qualification here: full reconciliation may be unrealistic some days. Releasing our anger does not mean all is well in the relationship. That’s why in our home we talk about pursuing meaningful reconciliation before bed. A little bit of time and sleep can actually be great allies in the process. Insisting on full reconciliation in a short time often will just prolong the pain and discord (again, I’ve learned this firsthand). That doesn’t mean, however, that we should allow ourselves to harbor anger or settle for less than real forgiveness and reconciliation. It just means we’ll have to be patient at times for the warmth and harmony to fully return. The important lesson here is that both spouses resolve to regularly, even daily, put away all anger.

4. Unresolved conflict opens a door for the devil.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (Ephesians 4:26–27)

Maybe we would be quicker to resolve conflict in our marriages if we could see what Satan can do with unresolved conflict. It’s not simply that he can poke and stir unresolved conflict and make it worse over time; it’s that unresolved conflict gives him access to every other area of our marriages. An open wound in one area eventually bleeds onto every other area. Sleeping together gets harder. Praying together gets harder. Parenting together gets harder. Scheduling together gets harder. Serving together gets harder. Just existing together gets harder.

Many marriages suffer because they ignore the spiritual war against marriage. “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood” — including the flesh and blood lying beside us in bed — “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Every marital battle is first and foremost a spiritual battle, and we’ll inevitably lose that battle if we think we’re only fighting each other.

5. Treat your spouse’s sin as Christ has treated yours.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

How many marital crises and divorces might have been averted if these fifteen words had really taken hold?

Notice, Paul doesn’t merely say, “Be kind and forgive one another,” but “Forgive as God has forgiven you in Christ.” God didn’t just overlook our sin and begrudgingly move on; no, his Son bore our griefs, he carried our sorrows, he received our thorns, he was crushed for our iniquities, he was wounded to heal our wounds, he was cursed, all so that we might be forgiven. So forgive as you’ve been forgiven. Nothing you or I suffer in marriage will ask or demand more of us than what Christ bore for our sake on the cross.

Many couples who have practiced this verse have made a startling discovery: conflict is actually an unusual opportunity for intimacy. Why? Because when we treat each other’s sin as Christ has treated ours, we both get to see and experience more of him. For sure, we get to see and experience him on the days when we get along, but how much more present and real does he feel when we extend and receive meaningful forgiveness, when we receive harshness with kindness, when we stay and love when we could reasonably leave?

The moments in marriage that make us most angry can become the clearest pictures of Christ and his church. What else could make a husband so kind, even now? What else would compel a wife to forgive him — again? Where else would a love so selfless, so patient, so resilient even come from?

So, husband and wife, be angry over the sin in your marriage, and don’t go to bed angry.

For much of the past few years, I have been reading and thinking about the formative power of Internet technology on our intellectual, emotional, and spiritual lives. As I’ve shared with people the ideas in my book Digital Liturgies, one question comes up more often than any other: “What do we do about this?”

This is a challenging question not only because identifying problems is easier than developing practical solutions, but also because our first instinct in talking about the effects of digital life is often to attempt the impossible: turn back the clock, put the electronic Pandora back in her box, stand athwart technological history, and yell “Stop!” Even if we could summon the will to delete all our accounts and get rid of all our devices, we would not change the kind of world we and our neighbors inhabit. Faithfulness to Jesus cannot and does not mean time travel. “So,” people will ask confusedly, “what should we do?”

My answer is that we should think not (primarily) in terms of retreat, but in terms of resistance. The bad news is that the thought patterns of the web are so embedded into modern life that we cannot effectively avoid them. The good news is that the same responsiveness to the power of habit that makes online addiction so powerful also makes analog resistance effective. If God created human beings as physical creatures who must inhabit a physical, objective world to live as he made us to live, then this inhabiting of the real world is not a “hack” we must manufacture, but something deeply consonant with our created nature.

Analog resistance simply means practicing habits that accord with our fundamental needs as God-created persons. Let me, then, offer three of these needs and three corresponding habits.

Need #1: Permanent Words

The Internet age is an onslaught of words. The average person in the United States wakes up and, while sleep still lingers in the eyes, reaches for a glass rectangle that will show new words. These words may be about the latest scandal in Washington, DC, or the newest gadget from Silicon Valley, or a life-changing update from an employer, a friend, or a family member. A person can consume all three types of messages before rising from their pillow. There is no limit to the kind of words a digital age can speak to us.

Because the content of our minds deeply shapes the posture of our hearts, the abundance of online words creates an urgent need for something permanent: a bedrock of truth against which the latest novelties, temptations, and anxieties crash and shatter into the ephemera that they are.

Habit 1: Meditate daily on Scripture.

Scripture is that bedrock. The inspired words of the Bible, directly from the throne room of the Creator of the universe, fulfill a human need for permanence. Imagine waking up every single day in a different bed, next to a different person, in a different part of the world, to go do a different job. While the novelty might sound exciting at first, our hearts would quickly despair of the lack of anything solid. Why do we not expect a similar spiritual despair when our day-in, day-out thought life is dominated by this exact kind of transience?

Daily Scripture meditation is a habit of resistance against the rootless digital age. As we return again and again to words that never change, the presence and promises of Jesus will build foundations that a day’s worth of media intake cannot shake. The latest controversy that beckons for outrage will seem less important than the command to consider truth in calm silence (Proverbs 17:27–28). The newest reason for anxiety will seem less ominous as we consider the saints who have gone before us into worse peril, and who never abandoned the race (Hebrews 12:1). Resist the meaningless angst of content culture with permanent words.

Need #2: Godward Attention

The importance of where we give our attention is a subtly significant theme in Scripture. Consider how Moses commanded the people of Israel not only to remember God’s word, but to observe festivals, rituals, and dietary and clothing requirements that served as constant reminders of who they were and where they came from (Deuteronomy 11:18–19; 12:10–12). The wisdom literature in particular prioritizes the skill of listening to righteous instruction (Proverbs 4:20), and the author of Hebrews admonishes us to “pay much closer attention to” the gospel (Hebrews 2:1).

Attention is a finite resource. Contrary to what we often tell ourselves, “multitasking” isn’t really a thing; in order to really hear someone or attend to something, we have to take attention away from other things (at least temporarily). In the online age, not only is our attention spread thin; it is actively harvested and colonized by digital merchants. The fight to put our attention in the right place is an upstream swim against the currents of online culture.

Habit 2: Adopt intentional structures.

In his excellent book The Tech-Wise Family, Andy Crouch advises readers to do more than resolve to use technology better; additionally, we should implement physical structures in our lives that make wise uses of attention easier and unwise uses harder. That may mean leaving your phone in a separate room at night to make it harder to reach for in the morning. It may mean relocating computer use to a central family room instead of individual bedrooms, not just for accountability but to cut off the power of digital isolation. It may mean using apps during the work or school day that block not just inappropriate content but time-wasting and addictive content. The point is that the way we use online technology should tell the truth about what’s most important.

Need #3: Peaceful Rest

In his lovely little book And So to Bed: A Biblical View of Sleep, Adrian Reynolds observes that sleep is, theologically speaking, a reminder of our mortality. Our sleep resembles death, yet the Bible clearly says that God “gives to his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2). How can something that makes us vulnerable and stops our productive work be a gift? Because neither our sleep nor even our death can stop the sovereign God from caring for us and his world. Even as our mental and physical busyness stops, God’s power and love continue.

Habit 3: Take regular breaks.

In the digital age, we can embrace two vital expressions of rest-as-resistance. The first is, simply, the deliberate choice to sleep instead of consuming. The founder of Netflix famously said that the company’s number one competitor was sleep. This was more than a tongue-in-cheek moment. There is something in the nature of digital entertainments that entices us to ignore sleep and keep streaming or scrolling instead. That’s why some are referring to the emerging generation’s accumulating “sleep debt” — a deficit that manifests in poor physical and emotional health.

Do some self-examination. Do you wake up feeling exhausted? Are you often too tired to do your job well, or help someone in need, or parent your children with patience and grace? Ask whether your phone or streaming habits are preventing you from savoring God’s good gift of sleep.

The second expression of resistance is simply abstaining from online consumption for a given amount of time. The best way to do this is with someone else’s help. For example, only my wife knows my Twitter password. I cannot log myself in. Not only does this naturally throttle how much time I spend on Twitter, but it makes my use of Twitter transparent to my wife. She knows how often I ask to log on and can remind me of commitments that I’ve made. This isn’t a magic cure-all, but it has made a profound difference for me.

Let your digital consumption stop regularly so you can be reminded of the world and people outside your screen. Of the habits of resistance listed here, this one has had the biggest effect on me in the quickest span of time. Particularly for one who often feels like he’s drowning in the digital liturgies, disciplined times of genuine restfulness are among the most powerful means of resistance. Learn to shut off the digital world and enjoy God’s good gift of rest, and as you do, you’ll find a level of calm and freedom you may not have known was possible. And let this token of your Savior’s love reawaken you to the most precious realities in the world.

Audio Transcript

After one quarter of a century at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Pastor John looked back and reflected on one of the most troubling trends he followed in Christianity. It was the trend of self-esteem and self-love, big in the 1970s and 80s. Self-esteem was said to be the key to Christian love: love yourself more, and then you will be able to love others more effectively. But such a model was a distortion. Actually, what the Bible demands from Christians is far more radical than self-esteem. It’s more radical because the Bible does not call us to love ourselves more, but to love others with the same earnestness and zeal that we already love ourselves with. This more radical calling to love is such a high and demanding calling, Pastor John will come right out and call this revelation utterly “devastating” — devastating because it really renders Christianity to be “an impossible religion.” Here’s Pastor John, explaining in one of his 2005 sermons.

How is the debt of love we owe to others related to self-love? Romans 13:9 is a quotation of Leviticus 19:18. It’s quoted by Jesus; it’s quoted by James; it’s quoted by Paul. This is the royal law of love: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” My question is, What does “as you love yourself” mean — “as yourself”?

I’ve been here 25 years now. We just celebrated that on Wednesday night. I can remember in the six years before I got here being over at Bethel, and I would say among the dominant concerns of my life from 1974 to 1989 was this issue. What does “as yourself” mean? I point out that little historical fact just because either I’ve got my head in the sand, or things have changed a little bit. I don’t hear as much now as I did, thirty and twenty years ago, the psychological scheme that was built on this verse that was so wrong. But I’m going to tell you what it is just in case my head is in the sand, and just in case it’s got a hook in you. I’m going to try to get the hook out right now.

Gospel of Self-Esteem

For many years, Christians would write articles and books in which they said that this command meant that the reason people don’t love others is because they haven’t learned to love themselves enough, and therefore the task of counseling and the task of education and parenting and preaching is to help people love themselves more so that they would have resources to love other people. And in that little scheme, self-love always meant self-esteem.

So the universal gospel that fixes all problems of children and marriages and business conflict is lack of self-esteem, and therefore the task of all counselors, all preachers, all parents, all educators is to get more self-esteem into these little kids’ lives and into these employees’ lives, and then things will go better because as they love themselves, they will spill over on love to other people. That was the scheme, and it colossally missed the point in several ways.

First, this biblical commandment assumes that all of us love ourselves and don’t need to be taught at all to love ourselves. It is an assumption. Every person in this room without exception has a massive love affair with yourself. You don’t need to be taught at all.

And it has, secondly, nothing to do with self-esteem. Your love for yourself is very simply your desire to be happy and to do whatever it takes to make your life the way you want it. He’s not talking as if first you must learn to esteem yourself, and then out of that rich appreciation for your qualities, you now are free to love other people — which presumably, then, would mean to help them appreciate how wonderful they are.

Everybody Wants to Be Happy

That’s just not the way Paul was thinking. The words are not a command to love yourself; they are an assumption: love your neighbor as you already love yourself — no questions asked about it.

Here’s an example in Ephesians 5. Paul is talking about husbands and wives in Ephesians 5. He’s taking the command to love your neighbor and applying it to husbands and wives. So how does a husband love a wife in these terms? It goes like this: “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” Then he adds this amazingly crucial statement in verse 29: “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:28–29). Nobody ever hated himself, but nourishes and cherishes himself. Everybody, without exception, loves himself — whatever his self-esteem is, high or low.

Everybody wants food to eat and will do almost anything to get it if we get hungry enough.
Everybody wants to drink and not die of thirst, and we will do almost anything to serve ourselves with drink if we get thirsty enough.
Everybody wants to avoid injury and death, and we will do whatever it takes not to walk in front of a train or a truck or drink poison or get ourselves killed in some other way.

We love life and our health big time. And if somebody raises the objection, “Well, what about masochists and suicide victims? Are they exceptions? I mean, they don’t treat themselves well, do they?” The answer is that masochists and suicide victims are not exceptions to this rule.

A masochist is a person who, for very sad and sick reasons, finds pleasure in hurting himself or pleasure in the tending of the doctors. I’ve talked to people who cut themselves. I asked one young woman that we were working with, “Why do you cut yourself?” She had big lacerations on her stomach. She said, “It’s the only time anybody ever touches me.” She wanted to be touched. She loved herself massively. “Touch me. Touch me, doctors.”

The same is true for suicide. The only reason people commit suicide is because life has gotten so painful, they can’t stand it anymore and they want to escape. They just want out of the pain, which is self-love. “I don’t want the pain anymore.”

“Everyone has self-love. Jesus does not command it; he assumes it.”

Everybody likes to be praised, and apart from grace, we all subtly say things and do things to be liked, to be praised. It takes a massive work of divine grace to free you from that idol. We love the praise of men. Everyone has self-love. Jesus does not command it; he assumes it.

Seek Others’ Good

Now, lots of people think it would be very radical if Jesus said, “So stop loving yourself like that, and start doing the duty of love to other people. Stop having those strong cravings for your own happiness and your own welfare. Stop that, kill that, crucify that, die to that, and start doing something that doesn’t flow from desires for your happiness and just do dutiful, loving things.” Some people would say that’s really radical, and it would be, I suppose.

But it’s not as radical as what Jesus says and Paul says and James says and Leviticus says. They say, “Love your neighbor that way: like you massively love yourself. Make your desire to be alive, make your desire for happiness the measure of your desire for other people’s happiness.” You talk about radical, you talk about life-changing, heart-exploding, impossible demands. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

If you are energetic in pursuing your own happiness, be energetic in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor.
If you are creative in pursuing your own happiness, be creative in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor.
If you are persevering and enduring in pursuing your own happiness, be persevering and enduring in pursuing the happiness of your neighbor.

“Make the degree of your own self-seeking, which is very high, the measure of your seeking their good.”

Paul is not mainly saying to seek for your neighbor the same things that you want; he’s saying, “Seek their good in the same way you seek your own good. Make the degree of your own self-seeking, which is very high, the measure of your seeking their good.”

Radical, Impossible Command

This is devastating. You’re sitting at home. You’re just enjoying an evening. It feels good — watching television, watching a video, eating a good meal, talking. And you hear Jesus say, “Love your neighbor as you want this evening.” That’s just devastating. Measure your pursuit of the happiness of others by the pursuit of your own.

How do you pursue your well-being? Pursue their well-being that way.
Are you hungry? Find a hungry neighbor and feed him.
Are you thirsty? Give your thirsty neighbor a drink.
Are you lonely? Find someone who’s lonely and befriend them.
Are you frightened? Find someone to comfort.
You want to make a good grade on the next exam. So do others. Help them.

That is radical. It’s far more radical than saying, “Stop desiring and start doing duty.” It’s far more radical because it says, “Now, all these massive desires that I have for my happiness are not sent away; they are transposed into another kind of music. The same energy, the same longings, the same desires are now desires for you and your salvation and your happiness and your good, your stomach being full and your mind being educated and your life having significance. All the things I want, I now, with that same energy, want for you.”

Christianity is an impossible religion. This is a standard that is overwhelming, and it just makes me long to have a miracle done to me.