Does God have feelings?

What the Bible says

The God of the Bible is not a cold principle but one who has a heart. Before the flood, Genesis says:

And the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.

Gen 6:6

God is grieved. In the New Testament Paul says the same of the Holy Spirit.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Eph 4:30

Nor is it only sorrow. Zephaniah says that God delights in his people.

The LORD your God is among you; He is mighty to save. He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing.

Zeph 3:17

Hosea lets us hear a conflict in God's heart:

How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I surrender you, O Israel? How could I make you like Admah? How could I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within Me; My compassion is stirred!

Hos 11:8

God's anger is portrayed too, but Scripture ties it to love rather than temper. God is "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness" (Exod 34:6).

Yet Scripture also says the other thing: God is not a man whose heart wavers.

God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind.

Num 23:19

"I, the LORD, do not change" (Mal 3:6), and with the Father of lights "there is no change or shifting shadow" (Jas 1:17). God is grieved and glad, yet does not regret or change. How to hold these together is the heart of the question.

The New Testament puts the question in a human face. At the tomb of Lazarus, when Jesus saw Mary and the others weeping, he "was deeply moved in spirit and troubled" (John 11:33).

Jesus wept.

John 11:35

He wept although he knew he was about to raise Lazarus.

The church's witness

The church has tried to keep both sets of texts. The classical doctrine is called impassibility. It does not say God is a stone without feeling. It says God is not subject to passions as we are: he is not overwhelmed by things from outside, his mood does not rise and fall, and he is not at the mercy of suffering. The Westminster Confession (2.1) and the Thirty-Nine Articles (Article 1) confess God as "without body, parts, or passions." Thomas Aquinas taught that God's love and joy are acts of his unchanging will, not passions, and that sorrow and anger are said of him by metaphor. Calvin took Scripture's talk of God's repenting as God's lowering himself to our capacity Calvin, Institutes 1.17.

Matthew Henry, on Genesis 6:6, says that God saw sin "as a tender father sees the folly and stubbornness of a rebellious and disobedient child." But he adds at once that the words are "used after the manner of men, and do not mean that God can change, or be unhappy" Matthew Henry. On John 11, Augustine says that "Christ was troubled, because it pleased Him to be troubled" Augustine. Alcuin says why he wept in his human nature: "Because He was the fountain of pity" Alcuin. The Definition of Chalcedon confesses two natures united in one person without confusion or division Definition of Chalcedon, so the church has understood the Son's weeping in his humanity as no contradiction of his deity.

This is still debated. In the twentieth century many theologians criticised the doctrine: it owed more to Greek philosophy than to Scripture, they said, and a God who cannot suffer cannot truly love. Jürgen Moltmann read the cross as God's own entry into suffering, and the Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel stressed the divine pathos of the prophets, God's deep concern for human affairs. Such writers hold that God suffers not from weakness but because he freely chooses to love. Defenders of the classical view reply that the doctrine comes from Scripture, not philosophy, and that a God governed by emotions creatures stir up would be no rock to rely on; his love is not less for not being a passion, but more certain, because it does not change. This essay does not choose between them; both sides confess that God loves and is not indifferent to us.

In the original languages

The Hebrew behind "regretted" in Genesis 6:6 is nacham (נָחַם), which can mean "to be sorry," "to relent," and even "to comfort." The phrase "grieved in His heart" comes from atsav (עָצַב), "to hurt." It is used of human pain, and the text puts God's grief in strong terms. Yet Numbers 23:19 denies the same kind of regret, so Scripture itself uses these words in a sense different from human fickleness.

The "grieve" of Ephesians 4:30 is lupeō (λυπέω), "to cause sorrow." That the Spirit can be grieved shows he is a person.

The "wept" of John 11:35 is dakruō (δακρύω), and the "deeply moved" of verse 33, embrimaomai (ἐμβριμάομαι), suggests, along with sorrow, a stern emotion in the face of death.

Common objections

"This is just human language painted on God. If he has feelings, he is wounded by us and tossed about, a weak God." The objection has force. If an eternal, almighty being were pushed around by the actions of creatures, it would be hard to call him God. It is also true that Scripture's expressions borrow human speech, as Calvin and Matthew Henry saw. But a figure of speech is not a fiction; Scripture uses these words to say that God knows us, responds to our lives, counts our sin as evil and rejoices when we return. If God has feelings, the church has understood them to come not from outside as ours do but from his own love, which does not waver.

"How can a God without feelings understand my pain? Doesn't the cross mean that God suffered?" This is a serious question, especially for someone who is hurting. The church gives different answers. The classical view says the Son truly suffered in his humanity, and that in this God took part in our suffering; the other view holds that God shares suffering in his divine nature too. On either side, some things stand firm: Jesus wept at Lazarus's tomb, and we have a high priest who is not "unable to sympathize with our weaknesses" (Heb 4:15). Matthew Henry writes of that scene, "In all the afflictions of believers he is afflicted" Matthew Henry. When it feels that God does not know your pain, the tears of Jesus show where God's heart is.

"It is a contradiction for a God of love to be angry." God's wrath in Scripture is not the temper or lashing out that we know. Paul says it is revealed against "the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth" (Rom 1:18). One unmoved when those he loves are being destroyed has less love, not more. In Isaiah God says, "In a surge of anger I hid My face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you" (Isa 54:8): anger for a moment, kindness forever. Wrath is love's way of meeting evil.

Going further

Beneath this question there is often another: does God care for me, and does my pain matter to him? Scripture's answer is plain. God loves his people and "will rejoice over you with gladness." He became man and wept. Whatever words we use to explain God's feelings, Scripture's center is that he is not indifferent to us.

You might ask yourself: Have I imagined God as a distant force, or as one who knows me and delights in me? Is there pain I am hiding from him? What does Jesus' weeping at Lazarus's tomb tell me about God?

To read further, see Who is God?, Does God change his mind? and Is Jesus God? Reading John 11 slowly is a good place to start.