What Does the Bible Say about Emotions?

A biblical theology of emotions and a practical strategy for keeping them under control

Nov 08, 2024

The unhinged responses to the election this week are a good opportunity to consider how emotions function in our lives and how Christians are called to keep them under control.

This is not a partisan matter, however, though I do believe Democrats exploit people’s fears for political gain. The meltdowns that I’ve seen on social media reveal just how much people have lost control of their emotions to the point that they seem to be living in an alternate reality. The screenshot below is from a video of several women literally screaming into pillows, wailing, sobbing, threatening, and flailing their arms because they are terrified that Republican Nazis will break into their apartments at any moment and take away their birth control pills. They express fear of Handmaid’s Tale scenarios where they will be subjugated and oppressed by cruel men. These examples may be extreme, but they’re not uncommon.

Men lose control over their emotions too, albeit in more typically masculine ways, which often drives them to more extreme behavior. A common way men lose control of their emotions is with anger, leading them to act violently or with rage. Men’s sexual passions drive them to lust, pornography, or much worse. Men can also implode in extreme ways, such as extreme apathy, extreme despair, or extreme addiction. Men commit suicide at a rate four times that of women. Though only half the population in our country, 80% of all suicides is among men. Men are more likely to commit murders (86%) and be victims of murder (79%).

As Christians, we have hope that even though our emotions are broken and distorted by the fall, we can rule over them in the power of the Spirit. Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit and an essential skill of Christian maturity. In this article, I will present a basic biblical theology of emotions. I’ll follow up with another article with practical strategies you can use to rule over your emotions.

What exactly are emotions, anyway?

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines emotions in this way: “A natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.” [1]

Christians need to be careful when utilizing secular resources to deal with emotions, such as psychology materials and secular therapists or counselors. This is because humans are embodied souls. Human beings are a duality of body and soul, which means, what you feel in your body is connected to how you think and perceive reality. Thus, emotions are matters of the soul.

However, modern culture is infected with a therapeutic mindset that is hostile to God and seeks to affirm humans in our sin. And since many Christian counselors are trained at secular institutions, they often end up baptizing secular ideas about the human condition with a few Bible verses.

Years ago, Christian Smith coined the label “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” (MTD) to describe the psychologized, counterfeit Christianity many modern Americans believe. MTD comes from the blending of pop psychology and Christian theology, which can be summarized with the following five beliefs:

God made the world
God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions
The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself
God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when needed to resolve a problem
Good people go to heaven when they die.

I’ve described elsewhere “teenage girl theology,” which is very common these days, and is the sort of theology that undergirds much of what calls itself “Christian counseling.” But MTD is barely Christian, if at all. Yet Christian institutions teach secularized and watered down theology in order to qualify for state credentialing which enables them to bill insurance companies for counseling services. The state will not grant licensure to Christian institutions that teach explicit Christian doctrine, they have to modify their doctrine to accord with secular standards.

As a result, they teach a secular version of psychology with a little Jesus mixed in to make it “Christian.” Therefore, much of what we consider “Christian counseling” is actually secular counseling that uses Jesus and the Bible to accomplish secular, psychological goals. According to the standards of secular psychology, emotions are never wrong. They should not be disciplined or restrained, rather, they should be trusted and expressed.

How does the Bible define “emotions?”

The word “emotions” does not appear in the Bible, though emotions are described without using the word. The Bible does use the word “feeling,” however, which can be defined as follows:

“A feeling is one’s perception of the various bodily emotional states he experiences—or the lack thereof (which is homeostasis). When you say, ‘I feel tired, sad, angry, afraid,” and so on, you are expressing a bodily feeling that you perceive.’” (Practical Encyclopedia of Christian Counseling) [2]

Emotions Before the Fall

Emotions cannot be sharply distinguished from thoughts, because “cognitive” and “affective” aspects of our personalities are intertwined. Our emotions affect our thoughts and our thoughts affect our emotions. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

The “heart,” in both Old and New Testaments, is a comprehensive concept that encompasses both aspects of human personality. “Heart” is used about 955 times in the Bible and “it stands for the center and seat of life, both physical and psychical. Only a relatively few occurrences refer to the physical organ (2 Sam. 18:14; 2 Kings 9:24). The greater number use heart to denote the inner man, the essence of the many facets of his personality” [3].

Therefore, biblically speaking, the heart can be considered the “control center” of the soul, which includes the following four aspects (taken from the Ryrie’s Basic Theology) [4]:

Heart is the seat of intellectual life. It considers (Deut. 8:5); it obtains a knowledge of the Word (Ps. 119:11); it is the source of evil thoughts and actions (Matt. 15:19–20); it has thoughts and intentions (Heb. 4:12); it can be deceitful (Jer. 17:9).
Heart is the seat of the emotional life. It loves (Deut. 6:5); it produces self-reproach (Job 27:6); it rejoices and is glad (Ps. 104:15; Isa. 30:29); it can be sorrowful (Neh. 2:2; Rom. 9:2); it has desires (Ps. 37:4); it can be bitter (73:21).
It is the seat of the volitional life. It seeks (Deut. 4:29); it can be turned aside (Exod. 14:5); it can be hardened (8:15; Heb. 4:7); it is capable of choice (Exod. 7:22–23); it can be uncircumcised (Jer. 9:26; Acts 7:51).
It is the seat of spiritual life. With the heart man believes resulting in righteousness (Rom. 10:9–10). For the believer the heart is the abode of the Father (1 Pet. 3:15), the Son (Eph. 3:17), and the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 1:22). The believer’s heart should be pure (1 Tim. 1:5; Heb. 10:22) and circumcised (Rom. 2:29).

It is my opinion that since humans were finite before the fall, emotions were created to enable people to effectively draw on intuition where information is incomplete. For example, Adam would have experienced some kind of emotional response to the seeing the various animals God brought before him to name. He likely felt one way about a tiny bird and another way about an elephant, though he would have known little real information about either. And he was clearly felt excitement when he first met his bride. His heart was drawn to her in a curious desire to discover all the ways she was the same and yet different from him. He may have had a “gut feeling” about the serpent in the garden, especially when he was tempting his wife to eat the forbidden fruit!

This is speculation, of course, but my point is simply that God created finite humans with the capacity to feel emotions, which would have been useful for taking good action in a world they were just beginning to discover.

Emotions after the Fall

The fall led to the fracturing of emotions such that our perception of reality is distorted and we can be led into sin by irrational emotions. For example, negative emotions can cause one to be irrational and anxious, leading one to impulsive and foolish decisions. Take these examples from the book of Proverbs.

“Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way,” Proverbs 19:2
“The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty,” Proverbs 21:5
“Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him,” Proverbs 29:20

The Lexham Survey of Theology (LST) says, “Human beings experience emotions passively… In this way, emotions reveal the dependency and finitude of human life… Many emotions are associated with the suffering of humankind that points towards death. Sorrow can be deep, even for those who obey God. Fear, ultimately of death, controls much of human life. Shame and guilt follow the fall, as human beings are shown to be not ‘like God’ but naked like the animals. It is by way of the emotions that humans experience the misery that is the consequence of sin. The emotions do not only reveal finitude and misery but also sin. Human anger does not produce the righteousness of God but rather evil (Jas 1:20). Hatred is tantamount to murder because it is the origin of murder (Matt 5:21–26). The danger of jealousy is evident from the first sibling rivalry, between Cain and Abel. While emotions are natural to human beings, they are not for that reason sinless.” [5]

Positive Emotions after the Fall

The above quote says humans experience emotions “passively,” meaning emotions often arise from within us without us choosing to feel them. As such, emotions are a gauge of the soul, like an indicator light on your spiritual dashboard, that tells you something is going on. In other words, emotions are not a guide to tell you what to do, emotions are a gauge that tells you what’s going on. One Desiring God article says it well: “Emotions aren’t imperatives; they’re not your boss. They’re indicatives; they’re reports.” [6]

Therefore, exercising self-control over your emotions does not mean you' should never feel emotions. We experience emotions passively; they often arise from within us, sometimes without cause or explanation.

Therefore, LST continues, “the emotional life that Scripture commends for the believer is not solely one of self-control nor of emotional denial. Christians are supposed to experience peace in relation to God as well as joy, hope, and gratitude. Rejoicing is even commanded (Phil 4:4). Christian fellowship is characterized by participation in the emotions of others, rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep (Rom 12:15). Faith itself is characterized by feelings of confidence and assurance, rooted in trust in God—and is therefore an antidote to anxiety (theologian John Frame calls faith ‘cognitive rest,’ pulling together the cognitive and affective elements of human personality). In hope, the Christian looks forward to a day when every tear will be wiped away and all mourning, pain, and fear of death will be removed. When faith gives way to sight and hope to eternal joy, the emotions will not be eradicated; instead, they will enable the resurrected saints to experience the weight and pleasure of the glory of God.”

Negative Emotions after the Fall

Negative emotions may be sinful, but not always. Think of them as the “check engine” light of the soul. They tell you to pay attention to something. If your dog just died, the sadness you feel is not sinful. That’s an appropriate negative emotion one experiences in grief.

A person who experiences a lot of negative emotions might be described as having “emotional problems.” This expression, however, is “an unsound, euphemistic description of a difficulty that someone is experiencing. When the situation occurs in which one is emotionally upset, his emotions are working well. There is no problem with them. What he means is that he doesn’t like what his emotions are saying to him. God designed us in such a way that when we do wrong, we feel bad. That is because our conscience triggers uncomfortable—or even painful—emotions to alert us to the fact that something must be done to right some wrong. To sedate the emotions under such conditions is to ‘sear’ the conscience (1 Timothy 4:2). That is a serious matter, and should not be done because when the conscience is seared, it ceases to cause discomfort, and a person may go ahead sinning with impunity. God placed the unpleasant emotions that we have in us; we ought to listen to and learn from them” [7].

Emotions and Sinful “Passions”

In the Bible, sinful emotions are often described as “passions.” Romans 7:5 says, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.”

Pleasure, for example, is a positive emotion. It’s an indicator of what you love. But it can be a sinful passion if your love is directed towards a sinful object. Taking pleasure in something is a “gauge,” indicating your love for something. But the pleasure itself should not be considered a “guide,” indicating your love is good.

Suppose a man falls in love with a woman who’s not his wife. He takes pleasure in her, which is a sinful “passion.” He may even claim, “I didn’t mean for it to happen. It just happened.” That claim may be technically true - he may not have deliberately sought her out for an affair. Nevertheless, his positive emotion of pleasure came from delighting in sin. The fact he “feels good” when he’s with her does not make it right.

There’s an obvious connection between the words “passion” and “passive.” Sinful passions make us passive. They can take over. They rule us if we let them. That’s what Paul meant when he said, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (Romans 6:12). We must not be ruled by our emotions, we must rule over them.

The Emotions of Jesus Christ

The Reformed Confessions affirm that God does not experience emotions the way humans do. God is “invisible and has no body, parts, or changeable emotions” (London Baptist Confession of Faith). This is often called the doctrine of Divine Impassibility, which is beyond the scope of this article. For our purposes here, I simply want to acknowledge that God, in his divine nature, does not experience changeable emotions as humans do.

In his human nature, however, Jesus experienced the full range of human emotions, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

A principle of Christology famously articulated by Gregory of Nazianzen is that “what is not assumed is not redeemed.” In other words, Jesus had to take on, or “assume,” the fullness of humanity, including human emotions, in order to redeem us. If Jesus had a human nature that was different from ours, we would not be truly saved. Therefore, in his human nature, Jesus experienced real human emotions, yet was without sin in any measure.

The Lexham Survey of Theology says, “Jesus Christ himself exemplified a proper emotional life. Jesus’ ministry was shaped by compassion (Matt 15:32). In the face of evil, Jesus was deeply moved and troubled (John 11:33). With the religious leaders, Jesus was angered and grieved (Mark 3:5). At the death of his friend, Jesus wept (John 11:35). Looking ahead to his suffering, Jesus felt great distress (Luke 12:50). According to the prophet, he “carried our griefs and [bore] our sorrows” (Isa 53:4) But through his suffering, Jesus loved his own, even to the end. All this he did for the joy set before him (Heb 12:2)” [8]

Therefore, since the victory of Christ extends as far as the curse is found, Christian sanctification includes bringing our emotional lives under his supreme Lordship. Jesus forgives us where our emotions are sinful, and gives us power by the Holy Spirit to bring our sinful emotions into subjection to Him.

In other words, a mature Christian will become more Christ-like in his or her emotional responses to various life circumstances.

Emotions Redeemed through Faith in Christ

This brings us to the Christian virtue of sober-mindedness. Scripture commands us to rule our emotions and not be ruled by them. For example, we are commanded not to “let the sun go down” on our anger (Eph 4:26), to not fear (Luke 12:32), to not be anxious (Matt 6:24–34), and to not be prideful (Jas 4:6). The 10th Commandment forbids covetousness, which is a sinful emotion. Thus, obedience to Christ means we must rule our emotions actively and deliberately.

The scripture uses the language of “sober-mindedness” and “self-control” to describe bringing our emotional lives under the reign of Christ. Romans 7:5-6 says, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.”

Galatians 5:22-26 says, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”

First Peter 4:7 says, “the end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.”

The opposite of “sober-minded” is “drunk-minded.” The substance abuse in this case is not alcohol, but emotions. In other words, Scripture warns us about the dangers of “getting drunk” on our emotions just as we are warned against getting drunk on alcohol. Ephesians 5:18 says, “do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” Emotions can be just as intoxicating as alcohol. We should not be controlled by alcohol, or by passions, but only the Spirit of God. That’s what “sober-mindedness” means. It means keeping our passions under control.

Of course, this does not mean that we no longer feel emotions. I’ve already described above how emotions often arise from within us unbidden and even unwelcome. We may be overcome with sudden grief, or anger, or sadness. While we may not have chosen to feel those emotions, we can choose what to do about them. We must not be ruled by them. We must rule over them.

This is done in the power of the Holy Spirit. The last fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5 is “self-control,” because only in the power of the Spirit can we truly rule our emotions in a Christ-honoring way. By exercising self-controlled over our emotions, we can exercise more self-control over all our faculties for the glory of Christ. In other words, the Scripture’s command to exercise self-control assumes that God has given us the power to do so by the Holy Spirit.

This is a promise. Every child of God has received supernatural power to overcome bondage to negative emotions by the Spirit’s power at work within us. It doesn’t happen automatically, however. We need to have biblical strategies and tools to do it.

That will be the subject of my next article.

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Church Updates

If you haven’t heard, the church I pastor in Cincinnati, Christ the King Church, is in the process of purchasing a new building. This is a prayer I’ve been praying for seven years. A great property has come available recently that we believe would serve our congregation well for generations.

We’ve been working to raise $1,000,000 needed for the down payment, and I’ve been very encouraged by the sacrificial giving of our church members and other friends who have contributed to this project.

We’ve raise $877,322 in the first three weeks!

I’ve never done anything quite like this before, trying to raise such a large sum in a short period of time. Ordinary folks have given extraordinary amounts because they believe in the work God is doing at our church.

In the last week, I’ve had two different churches contact me out of the blue to offer support. One pastor friend called me up to tell me he was going to go to his elder board to seek approval. His church ended up pledging a $25,000 gift!

We’ve still got $122,678 to go. We’re so close! If you’d be interested or willing to make a donation, that would be a great help to our cause and encouragement to our church body.

Here’s two simple ways to donate:

Give online through our giving portal. This link takes you directly to our building fund.
Send a check in the mail. Our address is Christ the King Church, PO Box 198029, Cincinnati, OH 45219.

If you’d like to give in some other way, feel free to reach out to me directly and I’ll be happy to answer any questions.

Bibliography

The New Oxford American Dictionary (3rd Edition). Edited by Angus Stevenson, Christine A. Lindberg, first edition Elizabeth J. Jewell, Frank Abate, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
Adams, Jay E. The Practical Encyclopedia of Christian Counseling. Cordova, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2020.
Ryrie, Charles Caldwell. Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth. Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1999.
Ibid.
Ward, Mark, Jessica Parks, Brannon Ellis, and Todd Hains, eds. Lexham Survey of Theology. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018.
Bloom, J. (2012, August 3). Your emotions are a gauge, not a guide. Desiring God. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/your-emotions-are-a-gauge-not-a-guide
Cross, F. L., and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Matz, Robert J., and A. Chadwick Thornhill, eds. Divine Impassibility: Four Views of God’s Emotions and Suffering. Spectrum Multiview Books. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2019.

Michael Clary

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