One of Scripture’s most arresting incidents occurs in the book of Numbers. Numbers records Israel’s wilderness wanderings. In chapter 25, Israel was encamped at Shittim getting ready to cross over the river Jordan into Canaan. But even there, on the verge of entering the Promised Land, Israelite men began to indulge in sexual immorality and Baal worship with foreign women. God reacted fiercely to this and commanded Moses to execute the guilty Israelites. Yet even as this was happening, Zimri, the son of one of the Simeonite leaders, brought a Midianite woman, Cozbi, into the Israelite camp in front of everyone. Here the text becomes a bit unclear, but it seems that Zimri and Cozbi went into his tent to have sex. In any case, when Phinehas, a grandson of Aaron, saw what was happening, he grabbed a spear and killed Zimri and Cozbi with a single thrust. God then declared to Moses, “Phinehas . . . has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel because he was jealous with my jealousy.” God praised Phinehas’s act because it arose from godly jealousy; and because of Phinehas’s jealousy, God made a special covenant of peace and perpetual priesthood with him and his descendants forever.
Jealousy is an emotion-a particularly intense emotion, as Scripture sees it (see Prov. 27:4), and a negative one at that (see Deut. 29:20; Rom. 10:19). It arises when we believe that our right to someone’s exclusive attachment or loyalty is being threatened or when we resent someone else’s advantages or success. Usually, we think that jealousy is a bad thing and something to be avoided, as it often is (see Acts 5:12-18; Rom. 13:13; James 3:13-16). Yet sometimes jealousy is a good thing (see 2 Cor. 11:2-3; Ezek. 36:1-7; Zech. 8:1-8). If I am not jealous of my wife’s affections, then I don’t love her as I should. And if God were not jealous for the exclusive affection of his people, then he would not be serious about his covenant with them (see Ex. 20:1-6; Deut. 4:23-24; Ezek. 16:35-43).
It is striking how often Scripture characterizes God as a jealous God (see Ex. 34:14; Deut. 6:13-15; Nah. 1:2). But this is just part of Scripture’s more general ascription of strong negative emotions to God. For instance, Scripture often asserts that God in his holiness hates idolatry and wickedness (see Prov. 6:16-19; Jer. 44:2-4; Isa. 61:8). Flying in the face of the popular Christian assumption that God hates sin but loves sinners, it avows that God hates not only evil but also evildoers (see Ps. 5:5; 11:5). And its references to God’s anger and wrath are too frequent to be easily counted (see Ex. 4:14; Josh. 7:1; Ezra 8:22; Ps. 78:49; John 3:36; Rom. 1:18; Rev. 14:9-11).
As Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defines these terms, hatred involves “intense hostility and aversion.” Anger is an “emotional reaction of extreme displeasure”; whereas wrath suggests an even stronger emotional reaction that includes “a desire or intent to avenge or punish.” If we take Scripture seriously, then we must be sobered by its ascription of such strong negative emotions to God.
Scripture also ascribes these emotions to God’s holy people. The psalmist declares, “Let those who love the Lord hate evil” (97:10; cf. 119:104, 128; here and throughout, italics added for emphasis). In Proverbs, Wisdom says essentially the same thing: “To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech” (Prov. 8:13; see 13:5). God sought out David as someone after his own heart (see 1 Sam. 13:14 and Acts 13:22). We may, then, expect that David’s emotions will generally mirror God’s own feelings. And so we find David telling us not only that he hates the deeds of faithless men (see Ps. 101:3) but also that he hates idolatrous people (see Ps. 31:6; cf. 139:21-22; 119:113).
Moses, who is a type of Christ (see Deut. 18:18-19 with Acts 3:18-23), was often angry (see Ex. 11:8; 16:20; 32:19-20). Occasionally his anger was sinful (see Num. 20:2-13 with Ps. 106:32-33), but it usually arose out of a proper concern for God’s honor or for the welfare of God’s people. On at least one occasion, it anticipated God’s own anger (see Num. 16).
Strong Emotions Justified
Sometimes it is claimed that Scripture’s attitude to strong negative emotions such as jealousy, hatred, and anger are limited to the Old Testament. Claims like these, however, involve a superficial reading of the New Testament. It is not just that its authors actually repeat some of the council of the Old Testament (see Rom. 12:9), but also that the Gospel cannot be understood unless it is set against the backdrop of God’s wrath (see 1 Thess. 1:10; 1 John 4:10 [nasb]; Rom. 1:16-3:26 [rsv]-the “For” appearing at the beginning of 1:18 is crucial to explain why Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel). When Paul finds the purity of the Gospel being threatened, he reacts very negatively (see Gal. 1:6-9). And any adequate assessment of human anger in the New Testament must deal with what B. B. Warfield established in his article on “The Emotional Life of our Lord,” namely, that Jesus himself, as the sinless God/man, was often angry or upset (see Mark 3:5; 10:14; John 2:14-16).
In addition, Jonathan Edwards establishes, in Part I of his great Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, that it is not merely our Lord and the great heroes of the faith who have these strong negative emotions. He shows that all true religion consists, in great part, in having strong emotions. You and I, as ordinary Christian believers, should not think that we are right with God unless we are strongly moved-both positively and negatively-by whatever impacts our faith. If something brings God much glory, then we should be joyful; and if his standards are flouted, then we should feel sorrow or indignation. Consequently, we can test the health of our faith by determining whether we feel these strong negative emotions when we should. As Edwards puts it, Christians “are called upon to give evidence of their sincerity by this, ‘Ye that love the Lord, hate evil’.” As he says, Scripture witnesses so pervasively to the fact that all real believers will experience strong emotions that those who maintain otherwise must throw away their Bibles and find some other and nonbiblical standard for judging the nature of true religion.
Why is this? What is it about saving faith-or what Edwards calls “true religion”-that makes our experiencing these negative emotions inevitable? And why is it that, as we grow in true godliness, we will feel them more and more?
It all follows from the principle, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). Our hearts-which include our emotions-are tied to what we treasure-to what we love or are deeply committed to. Our concern for what we treasure prompts our emotions, both positive and negative. In fact, if we really treasure someone or something, then various emotions will inevitably arise in us as soon as we have specific thoughts or beliefs about that person or thing.
For instance, if I love my wife, then my love for her is bound to produce certain feelings as my beliefs about her change. If I have just learned that her co-workers have given her an award for the quality of her work, then I will feel joy that her efforts have been appreciated. If I hear that she has been in a car accident, I will feel anxiety until I know that she is okay. If I don’t rejoice in my wife’s award upon hearing of it, then I am probably not identifying with her as a husband should. And if you were to see me showing no signs of anxiety on hearing that she had been in a serious wreck, then you would have reason to think that I do not treasure her as I should.
There are two crucial points here. The first is that specific emotions inevitably arise in us under specific conditions. So if they don’t arise, then there is reason to conclude either that we lack specific thoughts and beliefs or that we do not really treasure what we claim to treasure. So whether I have appropriate feelings in particular circumstances really is a test of what I believe and treasure. The second crucial point is that if I treasure someone or something, then I am as susceptible to specific negative emotions as I am to specific positive ones. It is not possible, in this fallen world, to decide to have only positive emotions. For in this world bad things can threaten or overtake what we treasure. When they do, our awareness of these threats or disasters inevitably produces negative emotions. By allowing myself to love my wife, I open myself up to the possibility of great sorrow. And the greater my love for her, the stronger my negative emotions of grief or anxiety or anger or jealousy can be.
So emotional contraries such as love and hatred, hope and fear, joy and sorrow are actually linked in ways that makes feeling each of them, in the appropriate circumstances, a sign of true godliness: “Let those who love the Lord hate evil” (Ps. 97:10). “[T]he eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love” (Ps. 33:18; cf. 147:11). “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy” (Ps. 126:5; see Matt. 5:4; John 16:19-22). Indeed, words like “love” and “fear” often function more as synonyms than as antonyms in Scripture, since both loving and fearing the Lord produce the intense hostility and aversion that we call “hatred” of evil (compare Ps. 97:10 with Prov. 8:13).
The implications of these truths for how we ought to respond to the moral situation of our time should be obvious. Christians are those who have had their hearts changed by God’s Holy Spirit (see John 3:1-8; Titus 3:3-7; Ezek. 36:24-27, 31) so that they can begin to love God and the things of God as they should (see Rom. 8:2-4; Eph. 2:1-10; Gal. 5:16-25). Because God’s Spirit indwells us, we now possess the very mind of Christ (see 1 Cor. 2:10-16; Eph. 4:17-24). And Christ’s mind mirrors the mind of his father (see John 14:7-11; 2 Cor. 4:4-6; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3).
Reflecting God’s Emotions
It is then natural and right for our emotions to mirror God’s emotions. God, as perfectly righteous, is deeply concerned about justice and morality (see Gen. 18:16-25; 1 Kings 3:5-15; Isa. 1:10-17). In all of his dealings with us, he judges our moral condition and then reacts appropriately. Scripture also tells us that various sexual acts and practices are detestable (see Lev. 18:22; Deut. 22:5; Jer. 13:24-27), which means that God detests them (see 1 Kings 14:22-24 with Deut. 23:18) and so should we (see Deut. 7:26). In Moses and the prophets, these acts and practices are detestable partly because they were associated with pagan religious rituals (see Deut. 23:17-18; Jer. 5:7-9). To engage in them was to break covenant with Yahweh and make covenant with pagan deities deliberately and explicitly (see Num. 25:1-3 and 31:15-16 with Rev. 2:14). Yet even there, the emotional aversion that such acts and practices produce is never completely separate from the fact that they also fly in the face of the created order as God intended it (see, for instance, Deut. 24:1-4 with Gen. 2:24). This aspect of their immorality or perversity becomes more central to their detestability in the wisdom literature and in the New Testament (see Prov. 11:20; Rom. 1:24-27; 1 Cor. 6:18; 2 Pet. 2:4-16).
We, in God’s New Covenant times, are God’s new royal priesthood and holy nation (see 1 Pet. 2:9). We, like his Old Covenant people, are called to be holy because he is holy (see Lev. 20:7-24; 1 Pet. 1:15-16). This means that “there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity [among us], … because these are improper for God’s holy people” (Eph. 5:3; see 5:3-20; 1 Thess. 4:3-8). In the Beatitudes, Jesus stresses that the threshold for sexual immorality is much lower than the Jewish people had taken it to be (see Matt. 5:27-32). Paul is so averse to any sexual impurity that he rules even “foolish talk” and “coarse joking” as “out of place” (Eph. 5:4).
In our time, the floodgates of sexual immorality and moral perversity have been thrown open. One of the primary strategies of those who would erode Judeo-Christian sexual standards is for them to redescribe the various forms of sexual immorality and moral perversity in ways that make those acts and practices less likely to arouse emotional aversion. For instance, some segments of the homosexual community are working hard to destigmatize the sexual molestation of pre- and post-pubescent boys by homosexual adults. In 1998, an article appeared in the American Psychological Association’s prestigious Psychological Bulletin claiming that scientific evidence does not support the common belief that such sexual encounters invariably harm the boys involved. Consequently, it concluded, it is inappropriate to label all such encounters “sexual abuse.” Willing encounters “with positive reactions” should just be labeled “adult-child sex” (see Mary Eberstadt’s “‘Pedophilia Chic’ Reconsidered,” Weekly Standard, January 1/January 8, 2001). Similarly, Peter Singer of Princeton University’s Center for Human Values recently published a webzine essay that tries to normalize bestiality by highlighting some of the “science” in Midas Dekkers’s pro-bestiality book, Dearest Pet. In both cases, this strategy involves comparing these still generally abhorred practices with sexual practices that our culture no longer decries.
God Detests Immorality
It is clear that God detests practices like these (see Deut. 27:21; Lev. 18:22-30; 20:13, 15-16). Yet is it clear that we do? Do we feel emotional aversion in the face of sexual immorality and moral perversion? Are we willing to serve as mirrors of God’s character to our culture by expressing it? On any given evening, any number of us watch television programs that break the bounds of propriety that the Scriptures set. We may think that our belief in Scripture’s sexual standards is enough and that it does not really matter that we do not emotionally detest what we see, but Scripture tells us otherwise: “Let those who love the Lord hate evil.”
The psalmist declares that God’s wrath against human beings brings him praise and that by it its survivors are restrained (see 76:10 [niv]). It is part of our task, as God’s holy people, to manifest his holiness through our emotions. Moral perversion makes headway in our culture when we are not moved to decry the less-shocking forms of sexual immorality. How much better might the moral situation of our time be if many of us could say, “I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because your hand was on me and you had filled me with indignation” (Jer. 15:17)?
Phinehas’s decisive act, prompted by his godly jealousy, is credited with turning away God’s righteous anger against Israel (see Num. 25:10-11; Ps. 106:28-30). Phinehas responded appropriately to Israel’s sin. He did not gloss over it or just look the other way. And because he reacted so vigorously against such appalling sin, God stopped the plague that he had unleashed against his people, and they were spared to enter the Promised Land. Because Phinehas was jealous with God’s jealousy, God could be merciful without the risk that his mercy would thereby be taken as an excuse for sin.
In one of the New Testament’s last books, we, too, are urged to be conduits of God’s mercy even while retaining our fear and hatred of sin: “Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear-hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh” (Jude 22-23).
