The God of the Bible is full of emotions. Many people see an angry God as they read the Old Testament. On the other hand, many observe a loving and compassionate God in the New Testament. In between those two emotions, we may notice a God that gets irritated and frustrated by people’s lack of faith, a God that delights and finds pleasure with those who seek after Him, and a God who confesses that He is a jealous God. There are other emotions that God shows, but the one that really amazes me is that He is a God that experiences pain.
If I understand some people correctly, they’ve said that God did not understand the suffering of man until He took on flesh and became human. This does not compute with me. It doesn’t make sense that the God who made everything and knows everything could not understand suffering without a body. It also seems to me that Scripture is filled with references of God’s anguish. Here are a few:
In the days of Noah, as God looked upon the wickedness of man, one translation says that God grieved that He made man. I cannot imagine or understand grieving apart from pain and suffering.
As I read the book of Hosea, it was obvious to me that God’s heart was broken by the Israelite’s pursuit of other gods.
When the Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians, God appeared to Moses in a burning bush and said to him, “I have seen the misery of the Israelites . . . I have heard their cries . . . and I know their suffering . . .” The word, “know” comes from the same word that is used in Genesis when the Bible tells us that Adam “knew” his wife Eve.
It seems to me that the word “know” means much more than a collection of data, facts, and information. The word “know” seems to carry with it a sense of experience and intimacy.
This is what I see on the cross—a God who is acquainted with sorrow and familiar with grief. And in the face of Jesus, I also see the reflection of a Father’s heart who suffers as He watches His one and only Son being sacrificed because of and for all humanity. What this says to me is that God loves us as much as He loves Himself. No wonder the Apostle Paul could preach,
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ . . . I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:35, 38-39).
Let all who hear this shout “Amen!”
