Should We Repent of Our Emotions?

People have never read the Bible and tried to ask this question of it as part of what's happening. So then, think about this, we're told to rejoice with those who rejoice.

Emotions, Sin, and the Biblical Case for Repentance

And weep with those who weep,.

And that should mess with your head.

All right, Tim, the question for today's episode is should we repent of our emotions?

Yeah, this is one of those things that sounds so crazy to people, but then really there's just an overwhelming biblical case to say that we should. I did a Twitter poll on this and I think only 5 of maybe five people voted yes, we should repent of our emotions out of a hundred or something like that.

Oh, wow.

Man, it's harsh. But no, it sounds so crazy to people, like it sounds so crazy, but then it's just something that we really haven't thought about, like we should, like we really haven't thought about what the Bible is teaching at this point.

And for the vast majority of people, I think most people are coming kind of out of an Arminian framework. And so in an Arminian framework, essentially sin is simply just an act, like a volitional act of the will, that's it, right?

And so everything's about that libertarian freedom. And so then the issue then is that most people can only conceive of sin being about the behaviors. And then if they wanna get really deep, they push it into the thoughts, right?

So your standard Arminian is all about behaviors, behaviors, behaviors, bad behaviors. That's what sin is. Behaviors, mostly it's like things you do wrong. It's not so much the sense of omission, right?

So the standard state of affairs is just only sins of commission, not sins of omission. And then if you read the Sermon on the Mount one time, you may think, oh man, it's more complicated than that. It's also about my thoughts, right?

Yeah, the super Arminians.

Yeah, the super ones. But then the problem is that like that's, like sin is like much deeper than that in the Bible. So there's so

Oh yeah, like way deeper than that.

It's way deeper than just the thoughts and the emotions, or it's way deeper than the behaviors and the thoughts. It extends to the entirety of our being. So, you know, like for instance, like in the poll I did, I said, you know, is how early should we repent?

You know, should we repent when sin affects our behaviors,.

When it affects our thoughts,.

When it affects our desires or our emotions? The thing is, there's so many passages in the Bible about like your desires, right? So you're told to love the evil and to hate the good, right? That's desire language.

Good man out of the good treasure of a good heart brings forth good. Evil man out of the evil treasure of an evil heart brings forth evil. That's desire level. Like that's about like what you treasure is what you value, what you desire.

Colossians 3 .5 talks about put to death what is earthly in you. Evil desires is listed on the list of things that you're to put to death. Covetousness is essentially like a desire. So we're told not to covet our neighbor's wife or property or anything belonging to a neighbor.

Don't desire, like text says, don't desire it in your heart, right? So sin extends down from like the thoughts, like it's deeper than thoughts. It's deeper than behaviors, it's deeper than thoughts, it's deeper even than the desires.

And that's where like with this idea of emotions, people just like, the thing is, people have never read the Bible and tried to ask this question of it as part of what's happening. So then, so like think about this, like we're told to rejoice with those who rejoice.

And weep with those who weep.

And that shouldn't mess with your head. Like if you think sin is only at the behaviors and sin is only at the thoughts, how do you rejoice with those who rejoice?

And weep with those who weep, right?

Do you understand what I'm saying? Like joy is an emotion, like weeping is an emotion. God is commanding you to feel sad at the appropriate times and to feel joy at the appropriate times, right? So a lot of people will say, well, no, joy is just Thanksgiving and you can't help how you feel.

And that's the common thing that people always say about emotions. Well, you can't help how you feel and we help how you think and help how you behave. And it's like, yeah, I know that you can't just turn your emotions on like a faucet or something like that, right?

But the problem is that the Bible commands certain emotions. That's the problem. So you can't just turn them off and on. But we intuitively know, even without the Bible, there's something wrong with the kind of guy who has like the prisoner he's taken that he's duct taped to the chair and he's stabbing them with a knife with a sadistic grin on his face, right?

Like, you know, there's something wrong with that, right? You know that that could, you know, you know that like, if he's sitting there, you know, stabbing him and smiling at it with a sadistic grin. Like the problem is that his emotions are not neutral and we know it, right?

That what the emotions are doing is they're revealing what's in his heart. What's in his heart is wickedness and evil and the emotions are revealing that very thing, right? So like if someone dies around you and you know, you don't feel any sadness for the people involved, you know, you can smugly look at yourself and say, hey, yeah, I can't help the way I feel, you know, just get over it, right?

It's like, but no, like the Bible says,.

Weep with those that weep.

Like you're, like what's happening right now is your emotions, like that lack of any kind of sadness is revealing that you don't have enough other centered love in your heart for these people. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah.

And so what you should do is like in those moments is you should say, Lord, you know, forgive me. I'm callous, right? When a soldier is like crippled with fear on the battle, like we used to have a call that, think about that in moral terms, that's cowardice, right?

Like that's cowardice. And so like what's happening is like, you're being gripped by this pervasive fear and you need to say, Lord, forgive me for my cowardice. Help me, you know, to do the right thing here.

But then, you know, not only that, you have categories of worry, you have categories of anxiety, you have categories of fear in the Bible in general, right? One of the most frequent things, like commands in the Bible is do not fear, do not be afraid, do not fear anything that's frightening.

These are all emotions like that you're commanded to have, like don't fear anything that's frightening, do not be afraid, right? Like we're not those who grieve as those who have no hope. There's godly sorrow, there's worldly sorrow, there's anxiety, right?

Like there's all these categories that touch the emotions and like if you just think about it for a few minutes, one of the things you'll realize is that, man, like sin not only affects our behavior, it affects our thoughts, it affects our desires, it also affects our emotions.

And anytime our emotions are not triggering in the right way that they should, that's appropriate to the moment, we should confess that and ask forgiveness for that and ask God to help changes in that.

And that's the path to help our emotions trigger rightly.

Human Responsibility, Total Depravity, and the Heart

So how, earlier you mentioned, obviously we can't turn our emotions off, right? It's not like a switch that you can just flip. So if that's the case, then how can we be held accountable for our emotions if we can't necessarily like control them immediately all the time?

Well, the thing is,.

You can't actually control your behavior either.

Okay, what do you mean?

Well, I mean, can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard change his spots? So also cannot you who are accustomed to do evil learn to do good? You know, all those who commit sin are a slave to sin, right?

If the sun sets you free, you'll be free indeed. So the issue is you can't control any of it. And that's what I mean, like this kind of comes out of like an Arminian framework.

Yeah.

Like it comes out of Arminian framework because in an Arminian framework, your libertarian free will is just like, you have the power of contrary choice. You can choose between A and not A at any given time.

There's nothing that's constraining your will one way or the other, right? So, but then the problem is that biblically speaking, like your will is constrained to sin.

Right.

And God holds you accountable for your will being constrained to him. So you can't learn to do good apart from God's help. You can't learn to think right thoughts, like to renew your mind apart from God's thoughts.

You can't learn to desire, like you're told to hate the evil and desire the good. You can't do that apart from God's thoughts and you can't have the right emotions apart from God's help. So like the issue is, whatever you're talking about, you can't do any of it without God's help.

We're so in love with our sin that all we ever do is sin apart from God.

I mean, it's like everything is corrupted by sin. It's all tainted by sin. And what like every part of you, you know, and that's what our doctrine of total depravity says is, it says that every human faculty is corrupted by sin.

Your mind, your will, your emotions, it's all affected by sin. And what you need to do is you need to have like a biblical doctrine of the heart, right? So biblical doctrine of the heart, like the heart is the inner man.

That means my mind is affected by sin. My will is affected by sin. My emotions are affected by sin. My desires are affected by sin. And what I need is I need heart change. And so anytime, you know, my emotions are not triggering in the right way, that's an indication that my heart is not right before God.

And that's an occasion to say, Lord, give me a clean hands and give me a pure heart, right?

And isn't that, I mean,.

Renew within me a right spirit, right? What does that mean?

Right, yeah.

And restore to me the joy of my salvation, emotions, right?

The Psalms, Lament, and Godly Sorrow

I think a lot of people to try and push back against what you're saying, they would point to the Psalms, right? They would point to people like David, you know, who talks about eating his tears, right, as a meal because he's crying so much because he's so sad.

And they would point to those types of passages and say, see, it looked like our emotions are just neutral, right? But then I think the problem with that is if that is your interpretation of those Psalms, then it's very clear that you're not actually reading all the way through the entire Psalm, right?

Whatever individual Psalm you're citing, because every single time in any sort of, you know, there's several different types of Psalms within, you know, book of Psalms. One of those is the lament, right?

So it's supposed to be sad, right? It's acknowledging that we as humans do feel sadness, but then the response at the end of all of those laments is to say, you know, something along the lines of, but God, right?

Why are you cast down on my soul? Hope in the Lord, right?

Right, right.

Pointing myself in spite of my sadness back to God and His goodness, right? And His faithfulness and, you know, His strength, whatever it is, there's a lot of different responses there. But then the general idea is basically like, they're not just wallowing in their sadness without end, right?

Yeah, so go ahead.

Yeah, I think part of it is that what you're saying is right. Immediately, when you say, hey, you're responsible for your emotions, what people immediately think is, like, happy is the good emotion, sad is the bad emotion, right?

And so then they'll point to passages like the ones in Psalms where godly people are experiencing the bad emotions, right?

Right.

And then they'll say, well, you know, so you're trying to say that they're doing something wrong. It's like, no, no. Here's the issue. Like, happiness is not the good emotion and sadness is not the bad emotion.

The issue is we need emotions that are appropriate to our circumstance. That's what we need. So we need emotions that are doing what they're designed to do, not what they're not designed to do. So, like, the issue is like that man torturing the person with the knife with the sadistic grin on his face.

He has the happy emotion at the wrong time.

Right.

Right?

Yeah.

The person who feels nothing when the person around them dies, he has no emotions when he should have some emotions.

Right.

Now, the person who has worldly sorrow, they have sadness that's happening over the wrong reasons.

Right?

So sadness for the wrong reasons that's out of proportion at times and hopeless and despair. So you have godly sorrow, you have worldly sorrow. So what you want is like, God tells us like when we sin to lament like a virgin covered in sackcloth for the bridegroom of our youth.

Well, the problem is that we're not even sorry over a sin.

Right.

So God's commanding us to have sorrow and we don't have it. That's an evidence that our heart's not right.

Do you get what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So there are times where like we, we're missing sorrow that we need. And then there's times where our sorrow is excessive and out of proportion and attached to all the wrong things.

Right.

So like if you're Ahab, who is weeping tears over the fact that Naboth won't sell you his vineyard.

Right.

Like the issue is like your sadness is attached to covetousness and that sadness is not neutral. That sadness is wrong.

Right.

Do you get what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Right.

So what you want is you want emotions that are properly triggering at the right times and the right proportion.

Okay.

And so like they're not, the whole category though is that they're just not neutral. So like if a person never has any happiness in their life whatsoever and they're just moving on, man, you know, like there's something wrong.

They're missing some sort of component of joy that they need.

Right.

Yeah.

So, you know, if a person is just like overwhelmed all the time with sorrow and despair, not because of sin in the world, but because their idols are frustrated and they've given themselves over to depression, like they have an emotion problem as much as they have a behavior problem, as much as they have a thought process problem.

Do you get what I'm saying?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And so what you need to do is you need to confess all of it. Like when you see that your emotions are not triggering the way that honors the Lord, like that's an occasion to say, my heart's not right.

Please clean it up and help me to respond the way I should. And you know, the more that you renew your mind, the more that you change your behavior, the more that your emotions will change too and God will change it all.

So like the issue though is just those emotions are not neutral. Like all you have to do to show that emotions are not neutral is just to come up with one example in the Bible where someone is told to have certain emotions they don't have or stop having certain emotions that they do have.

Right.

So, and I mean, it's so easy to do, you know, God says to Jonah, you know, is it good for you to be angry?

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's not. Now the Hebrew word for anger there is his nose became hot, right? And like, that's the Hebrew idiom for anger, anger and like nose became hot. That's a cartoon bull on the TV show with the steam coming out of it.

Like, so God's saying, you know, is it good for your nose to become hot? Is that emotion good? And the answer is no. You know, when Cain is angry and his face falls, you know, God says, is it good for you to be angry?

If you do well, will your sacrifice not be accepted essentially? So like the issue is you just need one example of someone rebuking an emotion, anxiety, fear, you know, anger. There's plenty of man, joy, sorrow, like it's all there, you know?

So, but all you need is one case to say, Hey, maybe this is, this is deeper than what I thought.

Accountability, Repentance, and Hope in Christ

Right.

And I think some people sort of have a response to what you're saying that basically leads them to a like, well, you know, this can't be true because then, you know, my sin is like essentially uncontrollable in a certain, you know, in a certain, like when you think about like, Hey, can I control my emotions all the time?

Right.

I mean, none of us do. None of us do all the time. None of us do. And so I think people recognize, well, then like, I mean, there's just no hope. Like I'm just going to sin.

Right.

But then I think that's the, that's the point that the Bible is making that outside of Christ, like, like, you don't under, you don't understand how sinful you are. Like the Bible, the Bible tries to tell us, but then we, so often we just assume because we relate sin so much to actions and sometimes thoughts, right?

If you, if you dwell on them long enough and no one's ever brave enough to define how long is long enough.

Right.

When the Bible is telling us that it's so much more than that, that it's even down to our desires.

Right.

And, and people, and people, but people argue, well, I can't control my desires.

Right.

And, and that's the point.

Like, yeah, you can't control your behavior either. And you can't control your thoughts either.

Right.

Like you can't control any of it. Like apart from God's help.

Like the Bible tells, the Bible tells us this, and that is how sinful each and every one of us is. And that is how much forgiveness God shows to us in spite of ourselves.

Right.

Remember the flood. I mean, like man, like God sends a flood because every thought and intention of their hearts were only evil continually.

Right.

So that's not even their behavior. That's their thoughts and that's their intentions.

Okay.

Like, so, I mean, like the thing is, it's overwhelming as you read the Bible. Like we're told to love the Lord, our God, with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. Like, do you do that?

Okay.

And you can't just read that as love your Lord, your God with all your behavior.

Right.

You can't read love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength as love the Lord, your God, with all your behavior and all your thoughts. Because that's not what it's saying. It's saying the entirety of everything about you.

Right.

Needs to love the Lord. Like your thoughts, your desires, your behaviors, your intentions, your motives, your emotions. Like all of it needs to match. Like you need to have, like, you need to have the, not only the right behavior at the right time, the right thoughts at the right time, the right desires at the right time, the right intentions at the right time, but you need to have the right emotions at the right time.

And we know, I mean, we know this. You know this when you think about that example that I gave, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, I mean, you imagine like the pedophile guy going to jail and he's sitting there crying over the fact that he can never, you know, act out again. You know that sadness is wrong.

Right.

That sadness is wrong. There's something wrong with it.

Right.

That's not pure. And he needs to repent of all of it.

Right.

All of it. He needs to cleanse it. Like his heart's not right. And what's happening is his emotions are revealing what's in his heart. His emotions are revealing that they're like, that there's some problems there.

And so they reveal what the state of your heart is. And like that, like you need to be repenting when, like when they're misfiring like that, you need to be repenting. Cause that means your heart's wrong.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

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