Untangle Your EmotionsSample

“Emotions: Not a Bug—a Feature”

How do you think God feels about your feelings? Is He judging them? Could it be that your feelings are sin?

It doesn’t take long in Genesis to see that they cannot be sin, because God feels like crazy! He feels happiness about everything He created and disappointment at His creation’s rebellion. He feels anger at their continued rebellion. He feels delight when Abraham and David and others follow Him and sadness when they go their own ways.

Time and again in Scripture, we see God express His compassion toward humanity as He gives them one more chance to obey His commands.

When Jesus walked the earth, story after story of His ministry confirmed how He cared about each person He came across. He cared about their mind. He cared about their body. He cared about their soul. He even cared about their emotions, which is something we don’t hear much about.

Emotions are simply another facet of what it means to be made in the image of God. Therefore, emotions are not bad, and emotions are not sin. Emotions aren’t even neutral. When we understand that God has a purpose and plan for them, emotions are actually good—and not just some of them, like peace and joy, but all of them.

Aren’t you blown away by this? A God who feels all the feelings and does not sin, He appropriates all those feelings rightly.

The author of Hebrews says of Jesus, “We have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Let this sink in: Emotions are not the sin; it’s what we do with them that is the sin.

Emotions have always been, and emotions always will be, though certainly in heaven our need for sadness and fear and anger will disappear, as Scripture promises.

How do you feel about your feelings? Have you been struggling with a sense that they might be sinful? Where does that come from?