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What the Bible says about Emotions
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Luke 10:33-35

The Samaritans were a Gentile people mostly living in Samaria, and Jews thought of them as inferior and hated them. It probably shocked the lawyer to hear Jesus speak well of the Samaritan as the only one who acted compassionately toward the beaten traveler (Proverbs 25:21; Matthew 18:33; Luke 6:27-31; Galatians 5:13-14; I Peter 3:8-9).

"Compassion" in Luke 10:33 comes from the Greek splagchnizomai meaning "to be moved as to one's innards." A person's innards represent the seat of the warm, tender emotions or feelings. It specifically symbolizes the higher viscera: the heart, lungs, and liver, signifying compassion out of the depth of one's character. The Samaritan not only intervenes on behalf of the beaten traveler, he goes beyond the call of duty to ensure the man receives care until he has recovered. He does not contemplate his action but reacts from the pre-shaped compassion of his true character.

Martin G. Collins
Parable of the Good Samaritan

Galatians 6:9

"Hope deferred," the proverb says, "makes the heart sick." Devotion to Christianity is not easy in this world because the pull to just slide is constantly present, and the Galatians were losing their attentiveness. A synonym for devotion is "attentiveness," and these people were becoming inattentive in their devotion to Christ.

They had lost sight of the real goal and entirely neglected what Christ was doing for them on a daily basis. He had not lost His attentiveness to them. Because they had allowed themselves to drift, they were not aware what Christ was doing for them out of His love for them.

If we can think of this in a human sense, it was as if He were being spurned, where one of the two parties involved in a loving relationship is doing all the good things and the other is passive. So, there was Christ, making the effort through His apostles—through the church and His ministry by means of the Spirit—to stir them up, but they were not paying a great deal of attention.

How quickly they forgot that without Him we can do nothing (John 15:5)! If they were going to have any spiritual growth and reward, it would be through their relationship with Christ. Yet, they were forgetting that their supply of the Spirit, as it were, was coming from Him. He is the main trunk of the tree—He is the vine, we are the branches—and so the relationship is all-important.

Daily, He prepares us for the Kingdom. "I go and prepare a place for you," He says in John 14:2. He is working with us on a daily basis, forgiving us, leading us, being patient with us, and providing for us. However, the Galatians were instead looking longingly at the world for gratification and relief.

If a person feels that his affections are abused by the one he loves, it impairs his power to grow because people tend to follow the lead of their emotions. Human beings are very emotional creatures. These Galatians felt that, because He had not returned according to their expectations, and because Christ and the Father had allowed them to go through persecutions—both economic and social—they were being neglected. They were feeling as though their affections for Christ were being abused. They thus allowed themselves to follow the lead of their emotions.

It is a principle that what we like to do, we gradually become. We then set our wills to do what we like to do. We must be very careful about what we set our emotions upon.

John W. Ritenbaugh
How to Know We Love Christ

Ephesians 4:26-27

Has Paul not said, "Do not give Satan an opportunity to get a bridgehead, a toehold, to induce us into sin"? Sin brings death, and that is Satan's aim—to bring about death.

In this context, not giving place to the Devil is directly tied to a feeling—anger. Anger of and by itself is not sin. There is an anger that is godly, which we call "righteous indignation." But nursing an anger for the wrong reason—the selfish fulfillment of a desire—gives Satan the toehold that he needs. He can easily turn it into bitterness or a sinful conduct.

Having a desire is not ungodly or a sin in itself. God gave us feelings, even ones we might consider to be somewhat negative. Even something like anger is not by itself sin. Life would be terrible and bland without feelings. What we have to understand is that these are areas that Satan, if we are not alert, vigilant, and on guard, can turn what is a blessing from God into a toehold or bridgehead to sin. We must be careful of this. When the emotions get worked up (even positive ones), we can be pushed in the wrong direction.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Satan (Part 5)

1 Peter 4:1-2

Looking at these scriptures in the light of I Peter 5:6-8, and understanding that Peter is writing with his thoughts on Satan in the background, our feelings are especially vulnerable because it is natural for us to feel that we are being taken advantage of or not being treated as we should be, and our emotions begin to run wild. Such a situation is tailor-made for Satan. He himself fell prey to such a circumstance. Either he will try to move us in that direction, or if it begins to happen even without him, then he will take advantage of it and move to affect our emotions even more.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Satan (Part 4)


 




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