Human Emotions Sermon

God has created human persons with emotions, feelings, and affections, which are important for their lives and their relationships with God.

Emotions are an essential part of human life that, though broken by sin, are redeemed and restored by Christ. Human beings experience emotions passively. We suffer negative emotions, and even in positive emotions, we are to some degree subject to our circumstances. In this way, emotions reveal the dependency and finitude of human life. (This is also the reason that the emotions, or passions, have been traditionally denied of God, in the doctrine of God’s impassibility.)

Many emotions are associated with the suffering of humankind that points towards death. Sorrow can be deep, even for those who obey God. Fear, ultimately of death, controls much of human life. Shame and guilt follow the fall, as human beings are shown to be not “like God” but naked like the animals. It is by way of the emotions that humans experience the misery that is the consequence of sin.

The emotions do not only reveal finitude and misery but also sin. Human anger does not produce the righteousness of God but rather evil (Jas 1:20). Hatred is tantamount to murder because it is the origin of murder (Matt 5:21–26)

Greed story of Cain and Abel