Before assessing what Scripture says about Emotions, let’s define them. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that emotions are “a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.”
Emotions cause a response and reaction. When we feel happy, sad, joyful, or anxious, it causes us to move and respond in a specific way. For example, suppose something jarring happens to us externally. In that case, we may become anxious, triggering the brain to respond by sending a fight-or-flight signal to the body, and cortisol and adrenaline increase. It may cause a stomach ache, headache, migraine, or rapid heart rate. Any decisions made at that moment might now be based on feelings and sensations.
Emotions are often broken down into two categories: positive and negative emotions. Positive emotions include love, joy, excitement, contentment, and hope. Negative emotions usually include fear, disgust, sadness, anger, anxiety, and jealousy. Different emotions have specific responses, brain signals, and hormones. Our minds and our bodies are intricately connected.
What does the Bible say about emotions?
God has emotions. God is love but also feels anger against sin, joy, happiness, and pride. However, because God cannot and does not change, His emotions are not fickle and misdirected like ours. He has feelings, but He is not changed or waivered by them. He is not blowing in the wind like us when we feel joy or anger. He simply is. He will always be angered by sin. He will always love His creation. He will always be compassionate to the poor, widowed, and oppressed. Since He created us in His image, we, too, have emotions.
It's evident from Scripture Jesus experienced the full gamut of human emotion. When angry, he cleared the temple by turning over tables (Matthew 21). In Mark 3:5, we read of his anger with the Pharisees. Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19), in Gethsemane, and over the tomb of his friend Lazarus (John 11). In Luke 22, Jesus was in anguish as he sweat drops of blood, a condition called Haematidrosis. Jesus is also seen on many occasions, showing compassion, healing the sick, and raising the dead.
Emotions are not sinful. God and Jesus feel emotion, and they are sinless. We, as human beings, feel many emotions from moment to moment. Some feel them deeper than others. Understanding the normalcy of human emotions is important because we often misdirect, mismanage, or neglect them.
The Bible is littered with examples of people who have made decisions or judgments based on an emotion:
- From the very first few pages of the Bible, as God creates Eve, Scripture reads, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen2:18). Later in Genesis, we read that Cain killed Abel in anger (Gen4).
- The story of Joseph is full of emotions: jealousy, anger, grief, and remorse. Genesis 43 tells us Joseph was “overcome with emotion” for his brother Benjamin.
- The scriptural account of Barak is full of fear in Judges 4 and 5. He was so fearful that he asked Deborah, the judge, to go with him and fight with 10,000 men against the Canaanite King Jabin.
- Esther was brave and fearful, yet she changed the story alongside God for her nation.
- Daniel 5 tells of a king who shook in terror, King Belshazzar, at the sight of writing on the wall.
- David and Bathsheba illustrate the emotion of lust in 2 Samuel, and the following verses tell us how that impacted them and their families.
- Judas felt guilt after betraying Jesus in Matthew 27; the awful response Judas made to end his own life as he couldn’t bear it.
- Ananias and Sapphira, in Acts 5, reveal to us what selfishness can do to a person’s life when they lie to keep money for themselves.
These accounts only scratch the surface of the emotions noted in the Bible.
God created us to be emotional beings, ones who feel. Not robots who go about our lives untouched by what happens to us, but fully able to feel the joys and sorrows of life. Emotions add color to life and enable us to navigate our experiences. However, humans in a fallen world must keep our emotions in check. As we have seen with Cain, anger can lead to murder, with King David's lust to adultery, and Haman shows us how pride becomes genocide. It is too easy for these things to start as a small seed of annoyance and grow into horrendous situations beyond our control.
Jesus shows us that we can have emotions and not sin. It is possible to keep our emotions checked and in their correct places and to express them in a holy, God-honoring way.
4 Ways to Manage Your Emotions in a Godly Way:
- Recognize emotions for what they are.
Talking about life as though we do not have emotions is useless. We need to take accurate stock of our lives to determine which emotions are running wild or have been pushed down within us. Then, we can tackle them one by one. - Pray.
It may seem like the ‘Christian’ answer to everything, but we can do nothing alone. We must pray and ask God to help us navigate our emotions. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal what lives in your heart and ask God to heal, repair, and out of check or suppressed emotions. - Stop meddling in your own life.
Leave things at the foot of Jesus and ask Him to help you heal and grow. We cannot change the human heart or our difficult habits and hang-ups on our own, so let Him. - Follow God’s ways.
Jesus is the perfect example for us to follow as believers. When Moses asked God who He was in Exodus 3, God replied, “I am.” Then, in Exodus 34, God revealed His own nature, saying:
“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”
Friend, we need to be more like God, working from a place of compassion and grace, and we accomplish this by following Christ Jesus. In Christ, we can be slow to anger and annoyance, willing to pause and give people a chance. In Christ, we can abound and overflow with godly love, which brings glory to God.
Life looks different in Christ as we come to the Father through Him. Let’s pray, ask God to reveal our hearts, and ask Him to make us a little more like Him. Our lives and emotions will grow and change as we submit our lives to Jesus and allow the Lord to teach us wisdom and gratitude for our emotions.
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