God and Emotions

I received a text this morning with the question "Does God have emotion?" What a great question! What a perfect way to begin my morning! I was totally excited about this question and I have been thinking about it all day, with great delight!

I have blogged very recently that emotions are neither good nor bad, and I closed that blog by stating that God has emotions (see Emotions, 12/15/2006). So yes, God does have emotion.

There is a tendency to think that emotions are bad, because we see the fruits of the negative ones, such as anger, jealousy, bitterness, and greed. But there is our first misconception. There is no such thing as a bad emotion. At least I hope not, for notice the following couple of verses that describe two of these negative emotions:

They made him [God] jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. (Duet. 32:16)

Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. (Ex. 34:14)

What fills me with excitement (notice: excitement is an emotion I am feeling based on my reaction to this question) is that this reveals something great about the way we are created. You see, we are made in His image. We have emotions because He does. We feel because He does. If we were to be emotionless, we would not be made in His image.

Emotions add the variety to life. Without them we would all respond the same way to every situation. It is our emotions that allow us to be different: when it rains, some may feel depressed, and others happy. It is the interpretation of the events that generate the emotion. Emotions help give us uniqueness.

So how does God emote? I am so excited about the upcoming Point study on the attributes of God, and the first attribute I believe answers the question: infinitude. This word means "all that God is He is without limit or measure." When God feels, He feels completely, because He is complete! When God loves, He loves completely! When God is angry, it is infinite anger (not in time, but in quantity). Is it any wonder that unbelievers will be paralyzed in fear before God on judgment day?

This is so awesome for me to think about! How boring life would be to serve a God without emotions? His emotions add such variety and color to life! And yet, God's emotions, unlike ours, never rule Him. God is in completely control of Himself. This is accomplished because God is fully Himself in all things. He is completely Love, Holy, Righteous, Just, Mercy, and Truth (to name a few). It is not that one rules the other. He is all things, completely. Hard to imagine, and yet oh, what a great thought!