The Big Idea 

Some Christians have always sought to minimize and spiritualize Jesus’s emotions. However, the Bible testifies to the intensity of Jesus’s full range of human emotions. Here are 10 emotional life principles drawn from Jesus’s emotional life.

Jesus’s Emotions and Our Emotions 

I’ve been studying the Bible’s teaching on emotions, especially the emotions of fear and anxiety. As part of that study, I’ve been reading B. B. Warfield’s book, The Emotional Life of Our Lord.

In Warfield’s day, as in ours, some Christians were attempting to minimize the intensity of Jesus’s emotions by spiritualizing them, claiming that Jesus a fear of God, but no other normal, human emotions like sinless fear and sinless anxiety. Thus, the first words of Warfield’s book,

“It belongs to the truth of our Lord’s humanity, that he was subject to all sinless human emotions” (27).

Warfield quotes Calvin stating that to deny the full range of human emotions in Christ is to deny the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ.

“Certainly,” remarks Calvin (Commentarius in Harmoniam Evangelicarum, Mt. xxvi. 37), “those who imagine that the Son of God was exempt from human passions, do not truly and seriously acknowledge him to be a man” (27).

Warfield explains the tendency in church history to falsely follow the secular philosophy of Stoicism which taught that the ideal moral perfection of emotions was apatheia—freedom from troubling emotions and passions. This tendency, says Warfield, is “still operative in men’s thoughts of Jesus..” (28).

Warfield’s understanding of Jesus’s emotional life should give great comfort to all of us. Jesus, the perfect God-man felt deeply—including experiencing deeply distressing and troubling emotions. This truth can rescue us from the false guilt, shame, and condemnation that we sometime experience because of the lie that faith eradicates troubling emotions.

Even more, the emotional life of Christ—His inner emotional turmoil, helps us to more richly apply the truth of Hebrews 4:15-16.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Warfield insisted that we apply Christ’s emotional life to our emotional life by rejecting the Stoic approach to emotions—attempting to eradicate our feelings. Speaking of Calvin, Warfield writes,

“He is only solicitous that, as Christ did not disdain to stoop to the feeling of our infirmities, we should be eager, not indeed to eradicate our affections, seeking after that inhuman apatheia commended by the Stoics” (102-105).

Warfield addresses Christ’s anger, his compassion, his love, his grief, his joy, and more. Then Warfield spends the bulk of his time examining Jesus’s Gethsemane emotions, in particular Jesus’s experience of sinless dread, fear, and anxiety.

Jesus’s Anticipatory Anguish, Inner Dread, and Angst: Luke 12:50 

Commenting on Luke 12:50, Warfield describes Jesus’s lifelong anticipatory anguish and angst.

“The term rendered ‘straitened’ imports oppression and affliction, and bears witness to the burden of anticipated anguish which our Lord bore throughout life” (84).

Quoting Hann, Warfield agrees with the assessment that Jesus experienced “inner dread (angst).”

“Hahn in loc.: ‘We see from this verse that Jesus had a distinct foreknowledge of his passion, as indeed he bears witness already in ix. 22, 44. There meets us here, however, the first intimation that he looked forward to it with inner dread (Angst), though there are repeated testimonies to this later (Cf. xxii. 42; Jno. xii. 2; Mt. xxvi. 37)’” (84).

Warfield identifies Jesus’s emotional distress (synechō) as anticipatory anxiety. “The prospect of his sufferings was a perpetual Gethsemane: cf. Jno. xii. 27” (84-86).

Warfield then approvingly quotes Weiss explaining that this was “human anxiety.”

“And how I am afflicted until it be accomplished! Expression of human anxiety in prospect of the sufferings which were to come, as in Gethsemane and Jno. xii. 27” (84-86).

Our Emotional Life, Principle #1: Anguish, dread, anxiety, profound agitation, disquiet, angst… Jesus sinlessly experienced all of these troubling human emotions before Gethsemane. Jesus, as our sympathetic High Priest understands our feelings of impending dread.

Jesus’s Troubled Emotions

Speaking of John 12:27, and Jesus’s words that “now my soul is troubled,” Warfield describes the Greek word for “troubled” (tarassō) as “agitation, disquietude, perplexity.”

“The state of mind in which this sharp conflict went on is described by a term the fundamental implication of which is agitation, disquietude, perplexity. This perturbation of soul is three times attributed by John to Jesus (xi. 33, xii. 27, xiii. 21), and always as expressing the emotions which conflict with death stirred in him” (84-86).

Warfield explains that,

“The anticipation of his own betrayal to death (xiii. 21); the clearly realized approach of his death (xii. 27); threw him inwardly into profound agitation.” This anticipation “had the power to disquiet him,” describing Jesus as experiencing “deep agitation” (84-86).

Some, in that spirit of minimizing and spiritualizing Jesus’s emotions, might claim that Jesus’s troubled heart was only the fear of God—godly fear of the impending wrath of God on Calvary. However, this same word, tarassō, is used in John 13:21 for Jesus being “troubled in Spirit” because one of his beloved followers would betray him. Jesus experienced the normal human troubled heart over human relational betrayal.

Our Emotional Life, Principle #2: Interestingly, the One who told his disciples, “do not let your hearts be troubled” (tarassō) (John 14:1), and “do not let your hearts be troubled (tarassō) and do not be afraid” (John 14:27), was Himself troubled and afraid. His words to us are not words of confrontation of sin, but words of comfort in troubling emotions.

Jesus’s Fear and Anxiety 

Quoting Calvin, Warfield speaks of Christ’s (sinless) “anxiety and fear” and being “tormented grievously with fear and anguish.”

“Cf. Calvin Com. in Harm. Evang., on Mt. xxvi. 37: ‘And whence came to him both sorrow and anxiety and fear, except because he felt in death something sadder and more horrible than the separation of the soul and body? And certainly he underwent death, not merely that he might move from earth to heaven, but rather that he might take on himself the curse to which we were liable, and deliver us from it. His horror was not, then, at death simpliciter, as a passage out of the world, but because he had before his eyes the dreadful tribunal of God, and the Judge Himself armed with inconceivable vengeance; it was our sins, the burden of which he had assumed, that pressed him down with their enormous mass. It is, then, not at all strange if the dreadful abyss of destruction tormented him grievously with fear and anguish” (85-86).

Our Emotional Life, Principle #3: Clearly, fear is not, in and of itself, sin. Clearly, anxiety is not, in and of itself, sin. The emotional responses of anxiety and fear are God-given capacities to anticipate and feel the dangers of our fallen world (Proverbs 14:16; 22:3; 27:12).

Jesus’s Gethsemane Anguish, Agony,  Anxiety, and Fear 

Warfield transitions from pre-Gethsemane to Gethsemane with these words.

“If the distant prospect of his sufferings was a perpetual Gethsemane to him, the immediate imminence of them in the actual Gethsemane could not fail to bring with it that “awful and dreadful torture” which Calvin does not scruple to call the “exordium” of the pains of hell themselves. Matthew and Mark almost exhaust the resources of language to convey to us some conception of our Lord’s ‘agony’” (86-87).

Warfield connects Luke 22:44 and Christ’s “agony” (“being in anguish”) with Matthew’s account: “He began to be distressed and despondent” (Mt. xxvi. 37).” (87) Warfield develops the meaning of agonia, including word meanings like “quaking, agitation, and anxiety,” along with “fear” and “an agony of fear” (86).

’Agonia: see G. Heine, Synonymik etc., 1898, p. 189: ‘Contest, quaking, agitation (and anxiety) Lk. xxii. 44; Luther, ‘he grappled with death,’ Weizsacker, ‘he struggled,’ Bengel; ‘supreme grief and anguish. It properly denotes the anguish and passion of the mind, when it enters upon a conflict and arduous labor, even when there is no doubt of a good issue:” Plummer in loc.: “Field contends that fear is the radical notion of the word. The passages in which it occurs in LXX confirm this view. . . . It is therefore an agony of fear that is apparently to be understood” (86).

Our Emotional Life, Principle #4: Fear, in and of itself, is not sin. Jesus experienced “an agony of fear” the impacted him body, soul, mind, and emotions. 

Jesus’s Emotional Distress 

Warfield then develops the meaning of “distressed” (or “troubled”) (Adamoneo), including words like “loathing, discontent, confused, discouragement, shame, seized with despondency.”

“Adamoneo: Cf. Lightfoot, on Phil. ii. 26: ‘The primary idea of the word will be loathing and discontent.’ ‘It describes the confused, restless, half-distracted state, which is produced by physical discouragement, or by mental distress, or grief, shame, disappointment, etc.’ Lagrange on Mk. xviii. 33: ‘seized with despondency.’ Thomas Goodwin (Works. v. 278): ‘so that we see Christ’s soul was sick and fainted,’ ‘his heart failed him’” (86). 

Shifting from Matthew to Mark’s account, Warfield describes Christ as having “distress of mind,” “consternation,” “alarmed dismay,” and “despondent.”

“Instead of this wide word for distress of mind, Mark employs a term which more narrowly defines the distress as consternation,—if not exactly dread, yet alarmed dismay: ‘He began to be appalled and despondent’ (Mk. xiv. 33)” (87-88).

Warfield develops this lexical interpretation from various studies of the word ’ekthambeomai, which includes being “horror-stuck” by something that “injects fear.”

“Ekthambeomai: see Hastings’ DCG. i. p. 48, article ‘Amazement’; G. Heine, Synonymik etc., p. 149: It ‘is used of those whose minds are horror-struck by the sight or thought of something great or atrocious, not merely because it injects fear, but because the mind scarcely takes in its magnitude.’ Thomas Goodwin (Works, v. p. 275): ‘It signifies ‘to be in horror’” (87).

Our Emotional Life, Principle #5: If Jesus can feel confused, restless, half-distracted, loathing, discontent, physical discouragement, mental distress, grief, shame, disappointment, despondency, a soul that was sick and fainted, a heart that failed him, distress of mind, consternation, alarmed dismay, appalled, horror-struck, and to be in horror, then perhaps our emotional life is more Christlike than we might have ever imagined! 

Jesus’s Exceeding Sorrow

Next, Warfield connects Matthew and Mark’s accounts, focusing on Jesus’s words, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even undeath death.” Warfield explains that these words to convey, “to express a sorrow, or perhaps we would better say, a mental pain, a distress, which hems in on every side, from which there is therefore no escape” (88).

“Exceedingly sorrowful is perilupos. Warfield collates several studies of this word.

“J. A. Alexander: ‘Grieved all round, encompassed, shut in by distress on every side.’ Morrison: ‘The idea is, My soul is sorrowful all round and round.’ Swete’s ‘a sorrow which well-nigh kills’ is too weak: the meaning is, it is a sorrow that kills. Thomas Goodwin (Works. v. p. 272) distinguishes thus: ‘A heaviness unto death, not extensive, so as to die, but intensive, that if he had died, he could not have suffered more’” (88). 

According to Warfield, the extremity of this agony was so great that “he was strengthened for the conflict by an angelic visitor, and we may well suppose that had it not been for some supernatural strengthening mercifully vouchsafed (cf. Jno. xii. 27f.), the end would then have come” (88).

Our Emotional Life, Principle #6: Has sorrow ever overwhelmed you to the point that you felt you were beyond your ability to endure? Paul understands that. “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). Jesus understands “a sorrow that kills.” 

Jesus Experienced the Full Range of Human Emotion 

Summarizing his study thus far, Warfield explains that Christ’s emotions ranged from consternation, to appalled dismay, to despondency, to near despair.

“In these supreme moments our Lord sounded the ultimate depths of human anguish, and vindicated on the score of the intensity of his mental sufferings the right to the title of Man of Sorrows. The scope of these sufferings was also very broad, embracing that whole series of painful emotions which runs from a consternation that is appalled dismay, through a despondency which is almost despair, to a sense of well-nigh complete desolation” (89-91).

Warfield continues to describe Christ’s emotional anguish and mental suffering.

“In the presence of this mental anguish the physical tortures of the crucifixion retire into the background, and we may well believe that our Lord, though he died on the cross, yet died not of the cross, but, as we commonly say, of a broken heart, that is to say, of the strain of his mental suffering. The sensitiveness of his soul to affectional movements, and the depths of the currents of feeling which flowed through his being, are thus thrown up into a very clear light” (89-91).

Regardless of the nature or of the intensity of Christ’s horribly, terribly unpleasant emotions, He never sinned. Instead, He lamented His feelings and surrendered His will to His Father.

“If he cried out in his agony for deliverance, it was always the cry of a child to a Father whom he trusts with all and always, and with the explicit condition, Howbeit, not what I will but what Thou wilt. If the sense of desolation invades his soul, he yet confidingly commends his departing spirit into his Father’s hands (Lk. xxiii. 46)” (89-91).

Our Emotional Life, Principle #7: Jesus experienced the full range of normal, troubling human emotions from consternation, to appalled dismay, to despondency, to a sense of well-nigh complete desolation.” Do not let anyone tell you that dread, dismay, depression, despondency, despair, and desolation are automatically signs of personal sin. They are often signs of having a healthy emotional capacity to experience the horrors and evils of our fallen, sinful world. 

Jesus’s Faith and Troubled Feelings: The Co-existence of Natural Feelings and Supernatural Faith 

Quoting Calvin, Warfield insists that these feelings of fear, anxiety, angst, dread, and desolation can co-exist with faith.

“Calvin, Institutes ii. xv. 12 does not fail to remind us that even in our Lord’s cry of desolation, he still addresses God as ‘My God’: ‘although he suffered agony beyond measure, yet he does not cease to call God his God, even when he cries out that he is forsaken by him’” (89-91).

Continuing to quote Calvin…

“Then at large in the Comm. in Harm. Evang., on Mt. xxvii. 48: ‘We have already pointed out the difference between natural feeling and the knowledge of faith. There was nothing to prevent Christ from mentally conceiving that God had deserted him, according to the dictation of his natural feeling, and at the same time retaining his faith that God was well-disposed to him. And this appears with sufficient clearness from the two clauses of the complaint. For before he gives expression to his trial, he begins by saying that he flees to God as his God and so he bravely repels by this shield of faith that appearance of dereliction which presented itself in opposition. In short, in this dire anguish his faith was unimpaired, so that in act of deploring that he was forsaken, he still trusted in the present help of God’” (89-91).

Our Emotional Life, Principle #8: Yes, you can have deep spiritual faith in your heavenly Father, and experience deeply troubling emotions. 

Jesus’s Embodied-Soul Emotions 

Warfield aptly explains the body-soul aspect of Christ’s emotions.

“Perhaps it may be well explicitly to note that our Lord’s emotions fulfilled themselves, as ours do, in physical reactions. He who hungered (Mt. iv. 2), thirsted (Jno. xix. 20), was weary (Jno. iv. 6), who knew both physical pain and pleasure, expressed also in bodily affections the emotions that stirred his soul. That he did so is sufficiently evinced by the simple circumstance that these emotions were observed and recorded. But the bodily expression of the emotions is also frequently expressly attested. Not only do we read that he wept (Jno. xi. 35) and wailed (Lk. xix. 41), sighed (Mk. vii. 34) and groaned (Mk. viii. 12) ; but we read also of his angry glare (Mk. iii. 5), his annoyed speech (Mk. x. 14), his chiding words (e. g. Mk. iii. 12), the outbreaking ebullition of his rage (e.g. Jno. xi. 33, 38) ; of the agitation of his bearing when under strong feeling (Jno. xi. 35), the open exultation of his joy (Lk. x. 21), the unrest of his movements in the face of anticipated evils (Mt. xxvii. 37), the loud cry which was wrung from him in his moment of desolation (Mt. xxvii. 46). Nothing is lacking to make the impression strong that we have before us in Jesus a human being like ourselves” (96-97).

Our Emotional Life, Principle #9: We are embodied-souls. Our brain impacts our emotions. Our emotions impact our body. There is no shame in experiencing a bodily reaction to fear, dread, or anxiety. Addressing our emotional experiences involves our whole person: relationally, spiritually, socially, rationally, volitionally, emotionally, and physically.

The Complex Interaction of Jesus’s Intense Emotional Life 

Warfield is careful to explain the complexity of Jesus’s emotional life, the reality that multiple emotions simultaneously co-existed and interacted in His soul, and the utmost intensity of His emotions.

“The series of emotions attributed to our Lord in the Evangelical narrative, in their variety and their complex but harmonious interaction, illustrate, though, of course, they cannot of themselves demonstrate, this balanced comprehensiveness of his individuality. Various as they are, they do not inhibit one another; compassion and indignation rise together in his soul; joy and sorrow meet in his heart and kiss each other. Strong as they are — not mere joy but exhultation, not mere irritated annoyance but raging indignation, not mere passing pity but the deepest movements of compassion and love, not mere surface distress but an exceeding sorrow even unto death, — they never overmaster him” (102-105).

Aligning with Calvin, Warfield explains that neither he nor Calvin have any “intention of suggesting doubt of either the reality or the strength of our Lord’s emotional reactions” (102-105).

In Calvin’s words, “the Son of God having clothed himself with our flesh, of his own accord clothed himself also with human feelings, so that he did not differ at all from his brethren, sin only excepted” (102-105).

In continued support of the emotional intensity and complexity of Christ’s emotions, Warfield quotes Kilpatrick and Hastings.

“T. B. Kilpatrick, Hastings’ DCG, I. pp. 294b-295a: ‘Yet we are not to impute to him any unemotional callousness. He never lost his calmness; but he was not always calm. He repelled temptation with deep indignation (Mk. viii. 33). Hypocrisy aroused him to a flame of judgment (Mk. iii. 5, xi. 15-17; Mt. xxiii. 1-36). Treachery shook him to the center of his being (Jno. xiii. 21). The waves of human sorrow broke over him with a greater grief than wrung the bereaved sisters (Jno. xi. 33-35). There were times when he bore an unknown agony’” (102-105).

Christlike emotions are intense and complex. Christlike emotions like fear can co-exist with faith. Christlike emotionality laments our feelings to the Father and surrenders our will to His will.

Our Emotional Life, Principle #10: In your time of emotional need, you can find mercy and receive grace to help from your sympathetic High Priest. 

Addendum #1: The Scriptures Never Say That Jesus “Feared God” 

Interestingly, having talked about Christ’s trust of His Father, Warfield pauses now for an extended excursus on the fact that “trust” in God, “faith” in God, and “the fear of God” are never mentioned of Christ! Warfield notes that while these spiritual attributes “find endless illustration in the narratives of the Evangelists, trust is never, however, explicitly attributed to Jesus in so many words.

“The term ‘trust’ is never so much as mentioned in connection with his relations with God. Nor is the term ‘faith.’ Nor indeed are many of what we may call the fundamental religious affections directly attributed to him, although he is depicted as literally living, moving and having his being in God. His profound feeling of dependence on God, for example, is illustrated in every conceivable way, not least strikingly in the constant habit of prayer which the Evangelists ascribe to him. But we are never directly told that he felt this dependence on God or ‘feared God’ or felt the emotions of reverence and awe in the divine presence” (92-94).

Addendum #2: Further Resources

See also:

Jesus Empathizes with Your Traumatic Suffering

The Chronic Suffering of Jesus: Your Sympathetic High Priest

Jesus: The Man of Suffering and the Soul Physician of the Suffering

Jesus: Soul Physician of Embodied-Souls

48 Gospel Passages about Jesus and Embodied-Soul Renewal