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Does Scripture Show God Has Emotions?

Does Scripture Show God Has Emotions?

Last updated on: January 2, 2025 at 10:15 am by Randy Alcorn

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Does Scripture Show God Has Emotions? 2024-11-29T10:20:12-08:00 Randy Alcorn

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I wrote about God’s emotions in my Happiness book, but recently ran across this past video, answering a question about whether God has emotions:

Some people suppose happiness is uniquely human, unrelated to God’s nature: as He gave us a body and hunger, which He doesn’t have, He gave us a capacity for happiness, which He also doesn’t have. I believe something radically different—that God wants us happy because He’s happy! He treasures His happiness and treasures us, and therefore He treasures our happiness! Old Testament professor Brent Strawn writes, “In the Bible, God is happy, and God’s happiness affects and infects the rest of the non-God world, humans included.” The last part of the sentence hinges on the first: if God isn’t happy, he has no happiness with which to “infect” us.

Scripture sometimes speaks of God in anthropomorphisms, meaning He’s described as if He has a human form. For example, the Bible talks about Him having a hand, a face, and eyes (see Exodus 7:5; Numbers 6:25; Psalm 34:15), even though He has no body (see John 4:24). Similarly, some speak of anthropopathisms, indicating that Scripture ascribes emotions to God to show He relates to humans, though He doesn’t really have emotions himself.

But we know that when Scripture speaks of God having eyes, it means that He sees, and the mention of His ears means that He hears our prayers. While God is not a physical being, He is a spiritual being, and He does have attributes of personhood. Passages that ascribe to Him emotional qualities He doesn’t have would mislead us.

God commands us not to “grieve” the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). God is said to be “angry” (Deuteronomy 1:37), “moved to pity” (Judges 2:18), and “pleased” (1 Kings 3:10).

This passage about God’s compassion contains a remarkable statement: “In all their distress he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63:9, NIV). A form of the same word is used to describe both Israel’s distress and His own. Yes, our distress can involve feelings God doesn’t have, such as helplessness or uncertainty. But clearly God intends us to see a similarity between our emotional distress and His. If God experiences the full range of non-sinful human emotion, as indicated by Scripture, it stands to reason that He would feel happiness, too.

Spurgeon explained:

We have been educated to the idea that the Lord is above emotions, either of sorrow or pleasure. That He cannot suffer, for instance, is always laid down as a self-evident postulate. . . . For my part, I rejoice to worship the living God, who, because He is living, does grieve and rejoice! . . . To look upon Him as utterly impassive and incapable of anything like emotion does not, to my mind, exalt the Lord, but rather brings Him down to be comparable to the gods of stone or wood which cannot sympathize with their worshippers.

Ellen Charry writes, “If the doctrine of God cannot countenance God’s emotional life, there is something wrong with the doctrine—it is not fully responsive to the fullness of the biblical witness.”

God feels love, compassion, anger, and happiness. He’s never overwhelmed by unsettling emotions, nor is He subject to distresses imposed by others. But He does feel His children’s suffering deeply.

If your human father said he loved you but never showed it through his emotions, would you believe him? If we think God has no emotions, it’s impossible to believe He delights in us or to feel His love. That’s one reason believing in God’s happiness can be a breakthrough for people in their love for Him.

Doctrine and Theology

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