During the four hour drive from Portland to Marysville, I was sharing with Audrey how I lack sympathy when talking to people, but how Christ sympathized perfectly because He was tempted in every way that we were tempted. Audrey then made the statement that it was interesting Christ could sympathize with women even though He was a man. That was something that I had never thought about before.
For all of time, men have been trying to understand women, but they have never scratched the surface. But Jesus understood women perfectly. He knows how they think and what they feel. For the same reason that Jesus didn’t need to be tempted with gambling at casinos to understand the temptation of greed, so He didn’t need to be a woman to sympathize with them.
When I was at ETS I listened to a seminar about the impeccability of Christ and part of that issue deals with how Jesus was tempted. Bruce Ware, the presenting scholar, mentioned how Christ was not tempted in every single way that we were, but He was tempted in the same core areas as we. His temptations then may not have been specifically the very things that we are tempted with today, but they struck at the same desires of the human heart.
All that to say, even though Christ wasn’t a woman, he can sympathize with them, just as He can sympathize with men because He was tempted to love things on this earth more than God.
I have done much thinking and studying on this issue in the last few months. I want to share with you my findings because most people do not know what the Bible says regarding the emotions of God and for me, the study has deepened and broadened my view of the biblical God. When we see Him in light of all that Scripture says regarding Him, He is awesome and majestic. From this study, I have gained a deeper intimacy with God as I stand humbled at His greatness.
I understand that if you have continued to read this far, you just want a brief overview with a summary conclusion. You probably don’t want the full paper that I wrote on the issue. But some of you may want the full treatment. So, I am going to fulfill the desires of the curious and then give you an opportunity to read the paper if you want to. At the end, I will give you some great resources online to read about the issue.
Why is this Important?
In order to help you catch the vision of this subject, let me ask some questions:
Does God “feel” anything? When the Bible says that God loves, is that describing an emotion or an attribute? When the Scriptures say that the anger of the Lord was kindled, does that mean He switched from His love to His anger, and thus changing?
More personally, what does God feel when you sin? Is He angry at you or does He forgo His anger and only shower love on you? If you only shows His love, does that mean He doesn’t get angry at sin?
These are only a few of the questions that help introduce this issue. We must find the biblical solution or we will heretically fall on one side or another, and thus diminishing God. First, we will look at those two erroneous extremes and then we will look at the biblical treatment.
Two Extremes
- Emotional View
In an attempt to view God as personal and intimately acquainted with His creation, many people today have described God as possessing strong passions. They look at the description of God and then conclude that if God did not have emotions then He could not actually love us like the Bible says. They say that without emotion we would be going to a cold, disinterested God and that is not the God of the Bible. This view is typically held by open theists or process theologians and thus they are satisfied to say that God’s emotions change. They see Him as a moody God who changes moods depending on the actions of men.
The problem with this view is that they are creating God in their own image. They see how humans relate and then they apply those same characteristics to God. God is no longer the majestic, sovereign God, but He is the big buddy in the sky who suffers pain like you and with you. This view has robbed God of His fullness and His holiness.
- Detached View
On the other hand, in reaction to the emotional view, some hyper-Calvinists say that God is not like His creation and thus is cold, detached, and uncaring. They want to uphold the immutability of God and so to attach any emotional quality to Him would imply change.
This view diminishes God’s compassion and love which is all over the Bible. They see Him as the God of stone, disinterested in human affairs and only cares for His own sovereign will, which does not take us into account. The Bible tells the story of how God in heaven has been involved with mankind since He created them.
A Biblical View
Upon evaluating the biblical data on the issue, we must understand two things.
First, we must understand that God is knowable. He didn’t give us His Word to further confuse us on who He is, rather to give us a clear declaration of His person. Second, we must understand that God is not fully knowable. He is not human and thus is not limited to the human mind. Isaiah 55:8-9 says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Traditionally, the church fathers held to the doctrine of impassibility. This doctrine stated that God could not be moved by an external source; He moved all things, but could be moved by nothing. This view has been held by the majority of theologians and pastors from the inception of the church until long after the Reformation.
When looking at this, we must affirm several key attributes of God.
First, God is self-existent. He does not rely on anyone or anything. Everything necessary for Him exists in Himself. God does not reveal or express one of His attributes at the expense of another one, for He is a whole being. He does not throw out His love in order to show His wrath, but both operate simultaneously. In this way, God is completely self-contained.
Second, God is omniscient. He knows what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Nothing takes Him by surprise. All events in eternity past, present, and future have, are, and will take place as a direct result from God knowing and willing them to happen.
Lastly, God is immanent. This doctrine deals with the nearness of God. Job wrote, “What is man that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him, visit him every moment and test him every moment?” (Job 7:17-18). The New Testament is also filled passages which declare God’s abounding, gracious love toward believers. From these examples, it is clear that God is not distant from His creation. He isn’t cold and uncaring, insensitive and lacking understanding. Rather He is near, He knows, and He cares.
The question still remains, “How do we understanding the Scripture language that seems to indicate that God has emotions and changes those emotions?”. In order to understand these passages, we need to understand anthropopathisms. We are familiar with anthropomorphisms, which are physical human characteristics applied to God, such as “the finger of God” (Luke 11:20), the mighty hand and outstretched arm of the Lord (Deut. 5:15), and “the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. 6:8). Likewise, when Scripture ascribes emotions or affections to God, they are to be understood as anthropopathisms, which are emotional human characteristics applied to God, such as “the anger of the Lord” (Ex. 4:14), “the steadfast love of the Lord” (Ps. 89:1), and the grief of the Lord (Gen. 6:6). These “emotions” did not come about in reaction to human events. God is not forced to react a certain way because of how humans might live. He is the divine initiator, not the divine responder.
He knows what man will do and how He will act according to those actions. He chooses how He will display His character at that moment in time and we see that specific attribute highlighted. So, when we read in Scripture about how God has compassion on someone, we should not think that means He set aside His hatred of sin, rather He chose to reveal Himself to man specifically in that way at that time.
Conclusion
Does God have emotions? In order avoid confusion, it would be best to say that He doesn’t have emotions, but rather than His character is expressed in language that resembles human passion for the purpose communicating an infinite God to finite creatures. He doesn’t have mood swings, but He is forever constant, never changing. But this does not mean that He is uncaring or disinterested in His creation, rather He is immanent and involved in human history, with the Scriptures as testimony. Our God is fully active in this world and yet remains completely transcendent over it.
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Resources
“Love in Christ requireth no taking beauteousness in the object to be beloved, as not being able to put forth itself without such attracting allurements (Ezekiel 16:6-8). It can act of and from itself, without all such dependencies. This is manifest to all who have the least true knowledge of what that object is in itself, on which the Lord Jesus has set his heart to love him.
Love in Christ decays not, nor can be tempted so to do by anything that happens, or that shall happen hereafter, in the object so beloved. But as this love at first act by, and from itself, so it continueth to do until all things that are imperfections, are completely and everlastingly subdued. The reason is, because Christ loves to make us comely, not because we are so (Ezekiel 16:9-14).” (All Loves Excelling, 49-50)
-John Bunyan
I wondered today why so many of our songs that we sing in church are first-person singular in their pronouns. I’m not referring to the object of the songs, but the subject who is singing the song. The expression of the worshipper is usually not first-person plural. For example, consider My Jesus, I Love Thee, which is a well-loved hymn.
My Jesus I Love Thee
My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign.
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I love Thee because Thou has first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I’ll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death,
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath;
And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
In mansions of glory and endless delight,
I’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright;
I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
While singing this song, I realized that in my own heart I was pulling inward in my thinking and I was virtually the only person there pouring out my heart before the Lord. Although this isn’t wrong, I don’t think it is what Christ intended to happen when His people met together. The question I asked myself is: What makes my worship with all the other believers on a Sunday morning different than when I sing on my own before God? Should our worship of the Lord look different when we gather together than when we worship on our own the other six days of the week?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do think that it would have a different affect upon my soul if we exchanged all the I’s, me’s, and my’s with we, us, and our. Although it messes with some of the poetic nature of the song, a few rhymes and such, here’s what this hymn would look like:
Our Jesus, We love Thee, We know Thou art ours;
For Thee all the follies of sin we resign.
Our gracious Redeemer, Our Savior art Thou;
If ever We loved Thee, our Jesus, ’tis now.
We love Thee because Thou has first loved us,
And purchased our pardon on Calvary’s tree.
We love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
If ever We loved Thee, our Jesus, ’tis now.
We’ll love Thee in life, We will love Thee in death,
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest us breath;
And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,
If ever We loved Thee, our Jesus, ’tis now.
In mansions of glory and endless delight,
We’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright;
We’ll sing with the glittering crown on our brows;
If ever We loved Thee, our Jesus, ’tis now.
