Gentle and Lowly, Chapter 11 - “The Emotional Life of Christ”

There is a theological doctrine known as “divine impassibility.” The shortest way of describing this doctrine is that God does not suffer. Stated more broadly (and accurately, in my opinion), the doctrine of divine impassibility holds that the God cannot experience emotional change. His emotions are not like our emotions. We typically feel happy, sad, excited, scared, or angry in reactions to things that happen to us. We are sad when we grieve a loss. We are angry when we are offended by an insult. We are happy when something good happens to us. Our emotions are, in so many ways, tied to change. We experiences something different, something new, in response to something that has affected us. But God does not—cannot—change. He is perfect. So He cannot react emotionally to something that happens in the way that we do. Thus, He is impassible. And because Jesus Christ is indeed divine, to say that He can experience emotional change because He is also human is to deny part of His divine character. So, we cannot think of Christ experiencing emotion in exactly the same way we do.

But, as Dane Ortlund points out in this chapter, this does not mean that Jesus does not feel. The argument many make against impassibility is that it makes God, and thus Jesus, unfeeling. And, as we read, this is simply untrue. Instead, the doctrine of impassibility means that Jesus experiences emotion—a very real part of His humanity—in a perfect way. His emotions are not tainted by sin, they are not self-involved, and they—unlike ours—are not caught unaware and triggered by the things that happen to us. Instead, they flow out of the deepest heart of Christ, the very essence of who He is. He feels in a way that is fully consistent with who He always is.

As Ortlund points out, the two emotions we see repeatedly from Christ are His compassion and His anger. Jesus truly has the deepest wells of compassion for those who are hurting, those who need and know their need. And, in what I think is the coolest insight from the chapter, His anger actually flows from that same deep compassion. He shows His anger most notably when those in need are hurt or deprived from the objects of His wrath. He turns over the moneychanger’s tables not only because their actions sin against God, but also because they have taken away the Court of the Gentiles—the only place where non-Jews could come to worship Yahweh—for their own purposes. He declares woes to the Pharisees not only because their self-righteousness sins against God, but also because it has led them to place heavy burdens on those in need. His compassion and His anger are perfect “emotions” flowing from the perfect love of Christ.

So, our Lord Jesus Christ does feel, even if it is not like us. To God be the glory that He does not feel like us. Our emotions can be unreliable, come from a place of self-serving, and lead us to unhealthy and even sinful reactions. But Christ’s emotions—or, as some theologians of the past have put it, His “affections”—are always perfect, coming from His overwhelming love for His Father and His people.