God’s Emotional Love
The love of Christ that surpasses knowledge - Ephesians 3:19
I grew up in an environment where undo emotion was frowned upon (that’s an understatement). After all, emotion can move us in the wrong direction or interferes with good decision-making. It’s often a key component in being manipulated. We minimized the emotion of love; it became what you did and not what you felt.
One problem in this approach is that it becomes easy to think of God as almost emotionless (except for his hatred of sin of course). It’s easy to be left with God loving his children but not really liking them. He becomes the grumpy, stoic old man who does the right thing but is not relatable.
This IS NOT, however, the biblical picture of how God feels toward his children. He has real and massive love-filled emotions toward his children:
God will rejoice over you with gladness; he will exult over you with loud singing (Zeph 3:17); The Lord delights in us (Num 14:8); The Lord takes delight in prospering you (Deut 30:9); The Lord takes pleasure in his people (Psalm 149:4); You shall be called My Delight (Isaiah 62:4); I will rejoice in doing them good (Jeremiah 32:41).
Maybe one of the reasons this is mind-blowing to me is because I don’t see myself as loveable - I’m quite the sinner. How could God really take pleasure in me? To be sure, God does not love my sin, but we can know that he passionately loves his children. Just read for the emotion of the Father in the prodigal son parable (Luke 15:11-32).
Can you even imagine how big the emotions of the infinite God are?
God, your affections for your children are beyond my understanding. I’m sorry for minimizing your love and limiting your feelings toward me. Even though I struggle to understand, I know that your passionate love showed itself at the cross – thank you. Please cause me to see you better.
Song: How He Loves