James 1:20

James gives the reason to be slow to anger: the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Human anger, for all its sense of being justified, does not bring about the right and good life that God seeks in His people.

Anger persuades us that it is doing important work, defending truth, setting wrongs right, but James names the lie. Left to itself, human wrath produces only more wrong. The righteousness God desires grows from a different soil, from the gentle and humble heart shaped by His word. The reader is freed from the burden of fighting God's battles with the weapon of his own temper, and pointed toward a better way.