The Lord Jesus Christ, though sinless, undoubtedly had emotions. Emotions are not in themselves sinful and Christ became truly a man. He took to himself ‘a true body and a reasonable soul’. He is called ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’ (Is. 53:3). This indicates, in itself, that he experienced deep emotion. Many will be aware that one of the few works on this subject is that of BB Warfield and it is tempting simply to give what Warfield has written. Certainly the quest for any kind of originality that goes beyond God’s Word must be kept strictly in check. It is a glorious subject, but the thought of misrepresenting the Son of Man is one which ought to fill us with horror. What follows is, to a large extent, a collection of thoughts on the subject which we have gathered from the Scriptures over the years, especially in relation to the place of Christ’s emotions in his sufferings.

The Location of Emotion in the One Person of Christ⤒🔗

Firstly, there is No Fluctuation of Feeling in the Godhead←↰⤒🔗

God does not react to anything in the sense of acquiring knowledge or awareness and responding to it as a thing previously unknown to him. God has eternally known all things and all that could possibly be known. God always has a complete and absolute knowledge of everything. We reject absolutely ‘Open Theism’ with its idea of God, as it were, learning things and responding to them. It is true that we find in Scripture that God is spoken of as if he comes to an awareness of things, for example, in Exodus 3:4, ‘And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush...’ When Scripture speaks of God ‘seeing’ or God himself saying, ‘I will come down now and see...’, or God ‘waxing hot’ or God ‘hearing’ etc., we must understand these anthropomorphically, or God being spoken of in human terms, because of our limited capacity. God accommodates himself to our finite and limited understanding. But God himself is blessed forever, always knowing all things and always knowing all of his eternally foreordained plan which encompasses everything that comes to pass. God is never surprised or agitated. He is always tranquil and perfectly blessed, serene and calm and there is no disturbance of the blessedness of God. He is the ever-blessed God.

RL Dabney, however, does give us some idea of what he regards as the parallel to emotion in God:

Our Confession says that God hath neither parts nor passions. That he has something analogous to what are called in man active principles, is manifest, for he wills and acts; therefore he must feel. But these active principles must not be conceived of as emotions, in the sense of ebbing and flowing accesses of feeling. In other words, they lack that agitation and rush, that change from cold to hot and hot to cold, which constitute the characteristics of passion in us. They are, in God, an ineffable, fixed, peaceful, unchangeable calm, although the springs of volition. That such principles may be, although incomprehensible to us, we may learn from this fact: That in the wisest and most sanctified creatures, the active principles have least of passion and agitation and yet they by no means become inefficacious as springs of action — e.g. moral indignation in the holy and wise parent or ruler. That the above conception of the calm immutability of God’s active principles is necessary appears from the following: The agitations of literal passions are incompatible with his blessedness. The objects of those feelings are as fully present to the Divine Mind at one time as another; so that there is nothing to cause ebb or flow. And that ebb would constitute a change in him. When therefore the Scriptures speak of God as becoming wroth, as repenting, as indulging his fury against his adversaries, in connection with some particular event occurring in time, we must understand them anthropopathically. What is meant is that the outward manifestations of his active principles were as though these feelings then arose.Lectures in Systematic Theology, p.153

Secondly, Emotion resides in the Human Nature of Christ←↰⤒🔗

If there is no fluctuation in God, it follows that Christ’s experiences of changeable feeling are to be found in his human nature. A human nature is finite, even when sinless. And human feelings are affected by events, by changes. All emotion, including sinless emotion, is a change of feeling in response to events. And in Christ these feelings and changes of feeling, all ebbing and flowing, must be located within his sinless human nature. Christ was a Divine Person, but he suffered in his human nature and his human nature experienced profound and sinless emotion.

Causes of Holy Emotion in Christ←⤒🔗

Causes of Joy←↰⤒🔗

God was his highest joy above all else. ‘To God my exceeding joy’, applied perfectly and supremely to Christ. He delighted and joyed in God. We are told that, while he was in this world, there was a ‘joy that was set before him’ (Heb. 12:2). He contemplated joy to come; the prospect of exaltation to the Father’s right hand. The Lord Jesus loved God: ‘But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do’ (John 14:31). There is of course that perfect love within the three Persons of the Godhead. But Christ also in his human nature had a sinless and perfect love to God.

Because he perfectly loved God, he was supremely the Man of prayer because he delighted in God. The Lord Jesus in his sinless humanity spent nights in prayer to the Father. And he delighted in the works of God.

In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight. Lk. 10:21

He rejoiced in spirit because he loved God and he loved the works of God. He loved the Word of God. The Lord Jesus supremely was the Man of the Word, the Man of the Scriptures. He lived by the words that proceeded out of the mouth of God. He loved the fellowship of God’s people. He was the supreme Man of fellowship: ‘And he said unto them, with desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer’ (Lk. 22:15). Whatever the other reasons, he desired to eat the Passover with them, to have fellowship with them, even though he was sinless and they were not, yet there was a fellowship between the perfect holiness of Christ and that measure of holiness which was to be found in his people. He delighted to obey the Father’s will: ‘Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart’ (Ps. 40:8). It was his meat to do the will of him that sent him. He had a delight, then, in all that was holy. He delighted in faith, because right faith glorifies God, as we shall see shortly. But he delighted in all that was holy.

Causes of Sorrow and of Anger←↰⤒🔗

Christ was angry at sin. He was sorrowful at the effects of sin: ‘And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts’ (Mk. 3:5). The Lord Jesus knew anger; holy, sinless, perfect, pure anger. Our righteous anger is imperfectly righteous. One of the struggles of the Christian life is that our holy indignation is mixed with unholiness and we struggle with that as Christians. But the Lord Jesus displayed his anger in the cleansing of the Temple when he overthrew the moneychangers’ tables. He made a whip of cords and drove them out of the Temple. It was not a rush of uncontrolled fury. It was the holy indignation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Lord Jesus did express displeasure even at his disciples when they rebuked those that brought the children to him, ‘But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me’ (Mk. 10:14). The Lord Jesus was moved with compassion when he saw the effects of sin. When we read in several places of his compassion toward the multitude, it entailed sorrow. He declares, ‘I have compassion on the multitude’. There should be no doubt also that his emotions were affected by physical pain. I think it is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of physical pain aside from emotion. Real pain affects the emotions. We do not feel pain when we are unconscious. The Lord Jesus did feel pain and the Lord Jesus deliberately stayed conscious when he was crucified. ‘They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink’ (Mt. 27:34). He declined the semi-stupefying potion because he had to face his sufferings and death alert and not in a semi-conscious state. And of course the greatest cause of sorrow to the Lord Jesus was the removal of the comforts of God. If God was his chiefest joy, then the removal of the comforts of God was his greatest sorrow.

There were particular occasions of the emotions of Christ being stirred that are recorded. Not that all of his emotional life is recorded in Scripture, of course, but some particular instances are and his emotions are stirred in response to that which comes about. It appears that his emotions were sinlessly affected by events in two main ways.

First there is the work of the Holy Spirit, the actings of the Holy Spirit upon the soul of Christ. He is said to been anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows (Ps. 45:7).We look more at this below.

But secondly, there are indications of the events around Christ stirring his emotions. Christ in his human nature learned things; information came to him. He observed, he saw, he took notice of events and happenings and this had an effect upon him. In his sinless humanity, the Lord Jesus was not omniscient though always having sufficient knowledge communicated to his human consciousness to make him infallible. In his deity he was omniscient but in his sinless humanity, this was not so. He declares his ignorance of the day of his second coming. ‘But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father’ (Mk. 13:32). How are we to understand this? We must bear in mind what our Westminster Confession says, ‘Christ in the work of mediation acteth according to both natures; by each nature doing that which is proper to itself. Yet by reason of the unity of the Person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the Person denominated by the other nature’ (8:7). This profound statement may not be easy to grasp at first. It is telling us that although Christ is one Person, sometimes something may be attributed to him which only relates to one nature, but the title used of Christ may be one which pertains to the other nature. The proof texts include Acts 20:28, the reference to the church of God being purchased with his own blood. Now God, as God, does not have blood. The title refers to the Divinity of Christ, but the thing spoken of refers to the humanity of Christ, namely the shedding of his blood. Another example is John 3:13, ‘And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven’. The title ‘the Son of man’, although a Messianic title from Daniel 7:13, also refers to his humanity. The text tells us that, on account of his Divine nature he is omnipresent and therefore ‘in Heaven’ even while his human form, his body, was standing on earth.

Returning to Mark 13:32, when Christ says, ‘of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, neither the Son’, the title, ‘the Son’ refers to his Divinity as the Son of the Father. But the ignorance that he professes pertains to his human consciousness. Here he uses a title that pertains to his Divinity, but the thing spoken of pertains to his human nature.

This also helps us to understand that, in his humanity, there was sinless development and also thought process.

And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers ... And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man. Luke 2:46 & 52

His faculties developed as he grew from infancy. And there was sinless thought process and acquisition of knowledge.

Christ in his human nature received knowledge by two means. First of all, he received knowledge directly from God,

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears; But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth. Is. 11:1-4

Christ’s knowledge in his human consciousness was always such as to render him absolutely unerring. John Owen is of the view that the Divine operations upon the human nature of Christ were consistently by the third Person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. We give a few extracts:

The only singular immediate act of the Person of the Son on the human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with himself.

The only necessary consequent of this assumption of the human nature, or the incarnation of the Son of God, is the personal union of Christ, or the inseparable subsistence of the assumed nature in the Person of the Son.

That all other actings of God in the Person of the Son towards the human nature were voluntary and did not necessarily ensue on the union mentioned; for there was no transfusion of the properties of one nature into the other, nor real physical communication of Divine essential excellencies unto the humanity.

The Holy Ghost is the immediate, peculiar, efficient cause of all external Divine operations, for God worketh by his Spirit, or in him immediately applies the power and efficacy of the Divine excellencies unto their operation; whence the same work is equally the work of each Person.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son no less than the Spirit of the Father. He proceedeth from the Son, as from the Father. He is the Spirit of the Son, Gal 4:6, and hence is he the immediate operator of all Divine acts of the Son himself, even on his own human nature. Whatever the Son of God wrought in, by or upon the human nature, he did it by the Holy Ghost, who is his Spirit as he is the Spirit of the Father.Owen: Works Vol.3 pp.160-162

Owen is not easily followed, but we can get the general idea of what he is saying: that any divine operation on the human nature, even on behalf of God the Son upon the human nature he took to himself, was by the Holy Spirit.

And this means that Christ received understanding, in his human nature, of the mind of God. And so as we mentioned earlier, ‘In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit’ because of the understanding in his human consciousness of the plan of God to reveal to babes and not to the wise and prudent. Or in Mark 14:33-34, ‘And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch’. This was on account of his knowledge in his human consciousness of that which lay before him and he had that knowledge by the Spirit.

So Christ had understanding because he was given the Spirit of knowledge and understanding. And then also he acquired knowledge through normal human reception. There was reception of information by observation and hearing and this affected his emotions.

Let me give you some examples. ‘But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd’ (Mt. 9:36). He saw the multitudes with his human eyes, he saw them and was moved with compassion. ‘And he marveled because of their unbelief’ (Mk. 6:6). When that unbelief became apparent, his response was that he marveled. Of the rich young ruler we read, ‘Then Jesus beholding him loved him’ (Mark 10:21). It is clear that there was a reaction in his human emotions when he beheld this young man. ‘When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turned him about, and said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel’ (Lk. 7:9). It is worth mentioning, that Christ is said to marvel at faith and unbelief. These are not anthromorphisms (i.e. God being spoken of in human terms). These are the reactions of Christ in his human nature and his human consciousness.

‘And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, weep not’ (Lk. 7:13). ‘And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes’ (Lk. 19:41-2). He wept in response to what he saw.

‘And when Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God’ (Jn. 11:4). Then in verses 14 & 15, ‘Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad (an emotion) for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe’. Then later on in the chapter we have those most moving words in verses 33-35: ‘When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord come and see. Jesus wept’. The Son of God incarnate wept! And then in verse 38, ‘Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave’. He groaned and he wept. So we are told of these reactions in the emotions of Christ in these situations in response to that which comes to him, so that he was sore amazed, he was very heavy, he began to be very sorrowful.

So Christ was truly a man, though he never ceased to be God. One Person, two distinct natures, no mixing, no merging; complete Deity, complete humanity, one Person, one Christ.

The Sufferings of Christ Considered in Terms of His Holy Emotions←⤒🔗

All Christ’s sufferings should be considered atoning. Why else could a sinless Son of Man suffer but in satisfying the justice of God as a substitute since God is just by nature and practice?

1. The Whole of Christ’s Life←↰⤒🔗

The whole of his life was a life of suffering, even as a boy. Christ was without sin. None of the other boys were without sin. They were all sinners, all the other children, all the adults, everybody around him.

We can compare Christ to Lot. We are told of Lot that his righteous soul was vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked (2 Pet. 2:7-8). Lot was a very imperfect child of God and obviously so. Even so, his righteous soul was vexed. What then must it have been for the sinless Son of Man from his youth up to be surrounded by sinners? Christ’s whole life must have entailed vexation of soul. Christ suffered ‘the miseries of this life’. He did not have a fallen nature. He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh but he was without sin, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. But he knew the frailty, the physical frailty, that God’s curse upon man for his sin entailed, though he had no sin of his own.

Thus we read that he was wearied and sat down on the well before he went on to speak to the woman of Samaria (Jn.4:6). He was not just pretending to be weary — he was weary. The next time you are weary, remember, the Lord Jesus, the Son of God manifest in the flesh, was weary. This entailed an effect upon his feelings. Suffering presupposes feelings.

2. The Unbelief of His Brethren←↰⤒🔗

‘Neither did his brethren believe on him’ — those most close to him, they did not believe. Was that not an occasion of great grief to the Lord Jesus?

3. The Hatred and Unbelief of the Jews←↰⤒🔗

It was a cause of both indignation and compassion. It provoked in him a holy anger and yet when he saw the city he wept over it. Of course, he was not deceived by the early superficial enthusiasm of those who thought he was going to fulfil their wrong, self-righteous idea of the Messiah, that he would come and deliver Israel from their enemies and show the world that Israel was righteous. He was not deceived by their early ignorant zeal due to their entertaining a completely wrong idea of the kind of Christ he was. He knew what was in man and did not commit himself to them. When they wanted to make him a King, he passed from amongst them. But as they began to see the kind of Christ that he really was, as they began to realise that he wasn’t going to fulfil their completely wrong ideas, the malice of the unrenewed heart boiled up and that surely was an affliction to the emotions of the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. Judas’ Betrayal←↰⤒🔗

Though Christ knew who would betray him, it was still a cause of distress. Part of Psalm 41:9 was fulfilled, ‘Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me’. When this verse is quoted in John 13:18, the words ‘in whom I trusted’, are not included because, although David was deceived by Ahithophel, Christ was not deceived by Judas. But it is a great mistake to think that this rendered the betrayal painless. The betrayal was still an affliction to the emotions of Christ.

5. The Unbelief of His Disciples←↰⤒🔗

This caused pain. They were slow of heart to believe. Their sinful self-confidence left them squabbling over who would be the greatest in the kingdom. Peter, with all his superficial bravado, failed. They could not watch with him one hour in the garden. ‘Then all the disciples forsook him and fled’ (Mt. 26:56). Peter denied him. Christ was isolated. He looked for comforters but there were none.

6. The Agony in Gethsemane←↰⤒🔗

But how do we understand Christ’s great expression of feeling, his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane? He was going to drink the cup which the Father was giving him. But yet the anticipated sufferings that caused this agony and the sweating, as it were, great drops of blood, are not explicable in terms simply of his physical suffering. His physical sufferings were great and were part of the atonement. But that doesn’t explain the greatness of Christ’s agony.

Mere sinful men have faced great physical suffering without agonising and sweating in this way. The martyrs particularly did not agonise like this. Some struggled but others did not. Why did Christ agonise in the garden when some of his servants have not agonised in such a way? The answer is because his sufferings were not simply physical, great though those physical sufferings were. The suffering which he anticipated was the bearing of the wrath of God in his soul as well as the body. God’s wrath reaches both; for unforgiven sinners, he will cast ‘soul and body’ into Hell (Mt. 10:28). Christ was to lose the comforts of the Spirit. He was to be forsaken and it was this that accounts for the intensity of his agony. It was this too that accounts for the angel of God appearing strengthening him (Lk. 22:43); strengthening, that is, his physical body so that he should not die until he had borne the wrath of God on the cross of Calvary in its full measure. (This is within the scope of the role of angels. They sometimes brought messages from God, but otherwise, though not physical beings themselves, they ministered in the physical realm (Mt. 4:11), direct access to men’s souls not being within their appointed role as ‘ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation’ [Heb1:14]).

We now begin to get a glimpse of what lay behind his being ‘sore amazed’ and ‘exceeding sorrowful’. Nothing but his bearing the full wages of sin in soul and body begins to explain it. We more easily understand his physical sufferings and no doubt this explains their prominence in Scripture, but the greater part of his sufferings were unseen.

We must grasp that the liberal churchmen, in their denial of the reality of God’s wrath, do not understand the love of God. They see themselves as the custodians of the doctrine of Divine love compared to evangelicals who believe in Hell. And we are far too prone to speak of it as a matter of balance, as if to say, ‘we believe in the love of God also but we believe in the justice of God too’. This concedes too much. The matter is even more serious than that. The liberal does not even understand the love of God of which he talks so much. ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins’ (1 Jn. 4:10). A propitiation, that is a bearing of wrath! If there is no wrath, then where is the Divine love in its greatness and its grandeur? The denial of the reality of damnation renders any real understanding of God’s love impossible. God ‘sparing not’ his own Son is reduced to a mere gesture.

Christ’s Trial and Crucifixion←⤒🔗

What did it do to the emotions of Christ? Keep in mind that Christ was perfectly sin-sensitive. We are not. We can see sin and it doesn’t affect us as it ought. We aren’t vexed as we ought to be. We get complacent and we get used to sin, including even visible sin. Some new form of public sin appears and, at first, we are aghast. A few months later and it doesn’t bother us so much.

There was no such compromise with sin in Christ. His holy soul never got used to sin in that way. His was a perfectly sin-sensitive soul. The contradiction of sinners entailed the contradiction of all that he was, of all his offices. There was nothing of Christ’s offices that was not contradicted. He is our Prophet, Priest and King. They blindfolded him and they smote him on the face. ‘Prophesy unto us! Who is it that smote thee, if thou be the Christ?’ They ridiculed his prophetic office.

His priestly office was ignored. Why was Christ on the cross? Because as our great High Priest he was offering himself a ransom for many.

I lay down my life for the sheep ... Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. Jn. 10:15-18

But what did his enemies say?

If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. Mt. 27:42-43

They mocked and his priestly work was not in all their thoughts. Even the sympathy of the women of Jerusalem who lamented was a sympathy of unbelief. They were treating him as simply a man suffering and their feelings were stirred. But it was an unbelieving sympathy and he said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children’ (Lk. 23:28).

Above all, perhaps, his kingly office was derided. Herod’s men of war, Pilate’s soldiers, the reed as a mock sceptre, the crown of thorns, the robe, the theatrical bowing, Jew and Gentile joined together in despising Christ’s kingship. What did Pilate do with Christ’s kingship? He shrugged his shoulders, so to speak, and ignored it in favour of preferred ignorance, taking refuge in the pretence that absolute truth is unobtainable; ‘What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again...’ (Jn. 18:38).Then he abused Christ’s kingship to show his contempt for the Jews. They hated Christ. Pilate despised them and so he takes the opportunity to ridicule them. When the Jews suddenly became enthusiasts for Caesar’s kingship, if that’s what it took to get Pilate to crucify our Lord Jesus, he declares to the Jews, ‘Behold your king!’ ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ (Jn. 19:14-15).

Pilate was confronted by the Jews about his superscription. ‘Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written’ (Jn. 19:21-22). Pilate was using our Lord Jesus to show his contempt for the Jews and that’s why he wouldn’t change it. We also agree with those writers who believe that the two thieves on either side were mock attendants. It was part of Pilate’s sarcasm. And Christ, who was perfectly sin-sensitive, perfectly susceptible to holy vexation by sin, was surrounded by all of this.

There was the darkness. Light was created on the first day of creation, the oldest of gifts in time. Darkness was showing that God was judging. They took away his clothes, that earliest of gifts after the Fall — the shame inflicted on Christ! He was being treated as in possession of no rights whatever. But above all Christ cried, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ This is the climax of Christ’s sufferings in his emotions. He cries, ‘My God, my God’, as the conscious keeper of the Covenant of Life. ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’ — because he was the Mediator of the ‘Covenant of Grace’. And God was saying to the Substitute, ‘Lo-ammi, not my people!’ (Hos. 1:9). He was pouring out his wrath and yet Christ still perfectly loved God.

He still sinlessly, completely loved God with his whole heart and soul and mind and strength. And yet he was denied utterly the light of his countenance. We love God feebly as the God of our salvation. We experience his hiding of his face by way of chastening. Christ perfectly loved the God of his damnation and he who was his chiefest joy was judicially thrusting him away.

Never was there such a pure desire so utterly denied. The One who had said at the grave of Lazarus, ‘I knew that thou hearest me always’, now says, ‘I cry unto thee and thou answerest not’. There never was in this world sorrow as his sorrow. People foolishly talk about someone suffering ‘Hell on earth’. Nonsense! The only One who has ever suffered Hell on earth was Christ. Others will suffer Hell in Hell, but only the foretaste on earth. But Christ suffered Hell, the full wages of sin, on this side of the grave. We may say, he suffered the second death before the first, and only Christ has ever done that. There was never anything like this. There never will be.

Some Lessons←⤒🔗

The Completeness of Christ’s Humanity must not be Neglected←↰⤒🔗

Liberals have attacked his Deity continually and we have had to defend that. We all feel the compulsion to rise up with indignation against these ungodly men who deny that the Lord Jesus is Jehovah. But do not neglect his complete humanity, including his emotions.

There are several reasons. One is, a less than fully human Christ cannot be a substitute for men. His Divinity means that his sufferings are of infinite value, but he is a substitute of men and he must be fully a man in body and soul. That’s why the common idea that he had divine blood is a grave error. He had human blood because he was fully a man without ceasing to be God.

‘For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham’ (Heb. 2:16). Why didn’t he become an angel? Because he didn’t come as the Saviour of fallen angels. He came as the Saviour of fallen men. That’s why he was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death and he is now crowned with glory and honour. A Saviour who became less than fully a man, even though remaining God, could not save us. Only a Divine Saviour who became fully a man could deliver us. An emotionless Christ could not suffer nor save.

We must bring Christ near to sinners in our Preaching←↰⤒🔗

We must show Christ in his divine glory, but in his humanity too, including his feeling, his emotions. We must not be afraid to do this. He must be evidently set forth, crucified amongst us, as the object of faith for sinners. If we have indistinct views of Christ, it will show. We will be afraid to bring him near because we are not sure of what we are saying. We need to be clear on these things.

The Suitability of the Psalms for New Testament Worship is shown←↰⤒🔗

The inner sufferings of Christ are set forth in the Psalms as nowhere else in Scripture. The reproach that broke his heart and the billows of divine wrath going over his soul are described in the Psalms as nowhere else because God who knows the end from the beginning, who has foreordained all things, was able to give a Book of Praise in the Old Testament that was suitable to sing of the sufferings of the Redeemer even after the event. Only God can do that.

Christ’s Continuing Sympathy←↰⤒🔗

We are told that Christ ‘learned obedience by the things which he suffered’ (Heb. 5:8). Not that he learned to obey for he never disobeyed; he was always sinless. But he learned the experience of obedience and for him it meant what it will never mean for us — bearing damnation. For no-one else will obedience to God mean being damned. The wicked don’t obey God. They will be damned. But conscious and loving obedience leading to damnation is unique to Christ.

And God made the captain of our salvation ‘perfect through sufferings’ (Heb. 2:10). Perfect, that is, not in the sense of morally perfect, which he always was, but fully qualified, complete and so a sympathetic High Priest, ‘able to succour them that are tempted’ (Heb. 2:18).

The glorified Christ is sympathetic in his human nature in Heaven and yet there is complete blessedness. There are things that seem to be able to coexist in Heaven that cannot do so on earth. For example, the redeemed in Heaven are aware that they are redeemed and that they have been redeemed from sin, their own sins. And there must be a holy abhorrence of the sins from which they have been redeemed and yet it must be painless, because they are blessed and satisfied.

In similar manner, Christ, in his glorified humanity is exalted and free from all suffering. And yet the Scriptures teach us that he is a sympathetic High Priest. Sympathy on earth involves sorrow but there is, surely, no sorrow in Heaven. But understand it or not, the Scriptures teach it and we are not to be robbed of the comfort because we cannot understand how everything fits together.

Christ’s atonement was the only time that sinlessness and sorrow co-existed in one person. That atonement is now complete but Christ is still a sympathetic High Priest in Heaven, whether we understand all the aspects of that or not. There may be something in the heavenly state that makes the compassion of his human nature consistent with complete blessedness.

It is that same Jesus who is made both Lord and Christ. And he is still a man. His becoming a man, as such, was condescension. His being born and that in a low condition was humiliation. The humiliation has finished. But the condescension of being God become Man, continues. He still has two natures in the one Person forever. And he’s the same Saviour.

Samuel Rutherford has this:

If Christ pities blind eyes, he also pities a blind heart and all the corruptions of our nature, and his mercy is the more tender that he sees us wrestling with unbelief and burdened, pained and overwhelmed in spirit with a hard heart’. Could we lay our spiritual wounds before Christ, he that touched the blind eyes out of tender compassion, can touch a blind heart and loose an obdured soul out of its fetters. That thou mayest say to the prisoners, ‘Go forth’, Isaiah 49:9. But is that enough to say? Yes it is. His word can break through iron chains and if this were not enough he is anointed to preach glad tidings to the meek and there is more than words. ‘He hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted’. This is an alms-deed and not a word only. But we do not employ him. We might be afraid if we thought Christ to be changed and that he were not the old Saviour. But he has the same heart and infinite compassion in Heaven, that he had in the days of his flesh.

He is the old Saviour, the sympathetic Saviour, the compassionate Saviour!

The Place of Emotion in the Christian Life←↰⤒🔗

It is an insult to the Saviour to call in question the place of godly emotion in the Christian life. The difference between mysticism and godly emotion is that mysticism makes our feelings determine truth; it makes our feelings equivalent to revelation. Godly emotion is truth-governed or truth-led emotion. Truth itself is derived from Scripture properly handled.

The Christian has distinctive joys and sorrows, both of which the world knows nothing of. ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy’ (Jn. 16:20). There are distinctive godly sorrows for the Christian; sorrow for his own sins, sorrow for the cause of Truth, sorrow for the dishonour done to God, sorrow when we consider the terrible condition and danger of sinners in this world. There are distinctive joys — joy and peace in believing; joy in God. These sorrows and joys are believing responses to revealed truth. Of course emotion has a place in biblical Christianity!

Conformity to Christ’s Compassion←↰⤒🔗

That aspect of Christ’s emotions on earth which is most frequently referred to in the Gospels is his compassion; his being moved with compassion, his having pity upon men and women.

Reformed Christians should be like Christ. Reformed Christians should be Christ-like in their compassion. Reformed people should be known, yes, as people of strict biblical principle. But they should not be known as hard men and women. And we have not rightly grasped the truth if we are. There is nothing reformed about being unfeeling. Ministers particularly should be compassionate.

And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things. Mark 6:34

On this occasion, it doesn’t talk about his healing miracles, though that was an expression of his compassion. He does not feed them — that was an expression of his compassion. But he taught them many things. That means that a Christ-like minister is to teach many things out of compassion for his fellow-sinners. ‘Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God’ (2 Cor. 5:20). Zeal for God’s glory and compassion to men go together as a holy motive for preaching the truth.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

The Lord Jesus cried, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ And it was in order that he should say as he said to Mary, ‘Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God’ (Jn. 20:17). Christ cried out, ‘My God, my God’, in order that we his people should have his God as our God; that we should be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, so that we should be able to sing in truth, ‘Yea mine own God is he’ (Met Ps. 42:11). The promise to Abraham ‘to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee’ (Gen. 17:7) is fulfilled to the elect seed, both of the natural branches and the wild (Rom. 11:24), through the One Seed, Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:16). He is the ‘God of the living’ (Mt. 22:32) and of both the Jews and the Gentiles also (Rom. 3:29) through Christ the mediator. He is the firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8:29) and is not ashamed to call us brethren (Heb. 2:11) and God is not ashamed to be called our God (Heb. 11:16). This covenant bond will reach its perfection: ‘Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name’ (Rev. 3:12). ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God ... and I will be his God, and he shall be my son’ (Rev. 21:3&7). That is why the Son of God became a man, and suffered so much in his human emotions, the intensity of sorrow and anguish and he cried out, ‘My God, my God’; it was in order that we should be able to call God ‘our God’ through him. This is our Beloved and this is our Friend.