Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,(Ephesians 4:26)
O'Brien comments on Ephesians 4:26 using scholarship and biblical wisdom.
Since anger is not explicitly called ‘sin’, it has been suggested that the reference here is to righteous indignation, while the anger of v.[Ephesians 4:]31 which is to be put away is evidently unrighteous anger. There is a proper place for righteous anger, but also the ‘subtle temptation to regard my anger as righteous indignation and other people’s anger as sheer bad temper’. If ours is not free from injured pride, malice, or a spirit of revenge, it has degenerated into sin. The warning of James 1:19-20 makes the same point: ‘everyone should be … slow to become angry, for human anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires’.
In order to prevent anger from degenerating into sin a strict time limit is to be put on it: ‘Do not let the sun go down on your anger’. The particular term for ‘anger’ occurs only here in the New Testament. Elsewhere it usually signifies an active ‘provocation’ to anger that is, the source of anger rather than its result. Apparently this saying was proverbial. Plutarch mentions that if ever the Pythagoreans were led by anger into recrimination, they were never to let the sun go down before they joined hands, embraced one another and were reconciled. Similar texts appear in the Qumran literature. Sunset was regarded as a time limit for a range of activities, for example, the paying of a poor man his wages lest by failing to so one would be guilty of sinning (Deut. 24:15). In the apostle’s admonition this expression with its reference to sunset is used a a warning against brooding in anger or nursing it. It is to be dealt with promptly, with reconciliation being effected as quickly as possible. (O'Brien, The Letter to the Ephesianspp. 339-340,
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