Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

The Amplified Version amplifies clamor [perpetual animosity, resentment, strife, fault-finding]. That helps to clarify clamour and its varied spellings. To be totally honest with you all, I need help understanding even my one behavior. Righteous indignation is still indignation.

Let me be as clear on this as humanly possible, knowing the truth does not always tell us what to do with it. Emotions, especially strong emotions, can direct acts that are not always the best course of action given that agape love is perfect love and we are not yet perfect. Strong emotions will often forget to check our actions and reactions against how love acts.

Paul’s caution to the Ephesians here in 4:31 says to put the negative emotions away with malice. Malice is set apart from the other strong emotions as if malice is somehow different.

Malice in the Greek is kakia which is defined as doing evil. I would have preferred the ESV had added the word “along” after that last comma. It would have clarified there is a difference between having these negative emotions and acting on them.

We can judge ourselves too harshly for how we feel at times and Paul addresses them because they are common. There is no need to feel guilty about it as long as those emotions do not lead to ungodly acts. Evil is a strong word and we know who the Evil One is and we do not answer to him. We answer to a loving God.

These times are full of strong emotions. Righteous indignation is prevalent in many of the things that are being said. Some of it has led to civil unrest and violence. That is not God’s Way.

There is very little that can be done to calm all the negative emotions of others. We can only see to it that they do not lead us to react irrationally ourselves. Perhaps the best way to do that is to once again review the love chapter and see how God’s perfect love acts.

Maybe that will help us put away all that negativity.

Maybe we need to pray about it.