Feel like??? Emotionally??? Here is the Doctrine on Emotions that may help. Enjoy! John
DOCTRINE OF EMOTIONS
EMOTIONS
A. Definition and Description.
1. Introduction.
a. In planning the creation of mankind, God said, "Let us make
mankind in our shadow-image according to our likeness," Gen 1:26. When God
said that, He could not have possibly been talking about emotion, since
there is no evidence for emotion in the essence of God. Emotion was added
by God to the essence of our soul as a free and gratuitous addition to the
shadow-image, but not a part of the shadow-image. God does not possess
emotion as a divine attribute; therefore, God is not emotional in His
relationship with rational creatures. Therefore, emotion is only used of
God as an anthropopathism to express a divine policy or attitude in human
language and viewpoint, which God does not have. Anthropopathism is
designed to explain to mankind in human language divine policy on the
sovereign decisions of God related to the integrity of God with emphasis on
His divine righteousness, His divine justice, and His divine love.
(1) Emotion is not a part of man's soul, but the result of
the function of the human soul. Emotion, like the sin nature, is not a part
of the soul. The function of the human soul can produce both good and bad
emotion. Emotion is an image reflection of good emotion from the stream of
consciousness or bad emotion from the sin nature. Bad emotion and the sin
nature are trying to conquer the soul. Neither the old sin nature nor
emotion are in the soul. Emotion is not the image of God, but the image of
mankind. Both emotion and the sin nature attack the soul. The sin nature
attacks the soul from the outside from the body, while bad emotion attacks
the soul from the inside the soul mirror reflection.
(a) Good emotion includes longsuffering toward someone,
the bearing of injustice or misfortune, handling provocatio or annoyance or
pain without complaint or loss of temper or irrationality; therefore,
composure under stress based on the application of advanced stages of the
spiritual life. Good emotion can only exist where cognition precedes it.
(b) Virtue-love is not swayed by emotion, 1 Cor 13:4.
(2) In the garden of Eden, perfect mankind functioned under
four shadow-image principles (self-consciousness I am, sel-perception I
think, volitional options I ought, and self-determination I will)
resulting in good emotion. Good emotion was added by God as an appreciator
of the things in the soul.
(3) Emotion is what is experienced as distinguished from
cognitive and volitional states of consciousness. Emotion is part of the
essence of the soul. The soul resides in the brain. Evidence of this is
given by the electrical impulses of the electroencephalogram. Emotion has
two functions in life as a part of the soul a normal and an abnormal
function. The emotions of the soul are designed to respond to what is in
the mentality of the soul.
(4) As a result of perception, metabolization, and
application of Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness
through the filling of the Holy Spirit, the believer responds in
appreciation to God. That is good emotion. Good emotion came in the Garden
of Eden before bad emotion, which came after the fall of man.
(5) Emotion is a result of cognition. Emotion is not a part
of the spiritual life. We are not spiritual because we feel spiritual. The
spiritual life is the cognition and function of the spiritual mechanics
revealed in the word of God, and it produces the purpose of the spiritual
life to reflect the integrity of God.
(a) There was good emotion in the Garden of Eden, but
it was not a part of the shadow©image of God. The man and the woman in the
garden of Eden with perfect, good emotion appreciated: their environment,
their perfect marriage and perfect sex in marriage, Bible doctrine taught by
Jesus Christ, the integrity of God. For example, Adam had perfect good
emotion when he saw the woman for the first time and had sex with her. What
God designed in mankind in the garden was to produce a shadow integrity that
would be similar to the holiness or integrity of God. Emotion was added to
appreciate that integrity.
(b) Bad emotion began at the original sin and has
continued throughout human history. Bad emotion was very much in evidence
in the original sin of man. Bad emotion came in the form of tremendous
guilt after the original sin. Bad emotion continued when Adam was afraid of
the Lord, when He came looking for Adam, Gen 3:10.
b. Emotion related to the person of Jesus Christ is confined to
His human nature in hypostatic union. There is no emotion in His divine
nature, only in His human nature. When Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus,
that was good emotion from His human nature. Because of the impeccability
of Jesus Christ, He experienced only good emotion. While there is no
emotion in the deity of Christ, there is perfect emotion in the humanity of
Christ.
c. Why do theologians have such a predilection for assigning
emotion to God? Because of failure to understand anthropopathic revelation
of God in the word of God and failure to understand divine love as a
characteristic of divine integrity.
d. The other parts of the soul include self-consciousness,
volition, and the mentality or self-perception of the two frontal lobes.
Emotion is the female part of the soul and responds to the right lobe, the
male part.
e. Category two love illustrates the relationship between the
emotion and the right lobe.
f. The right lobe possesses a frame of reference which is
designed for thought, the memory center, vocabulary and categorical storage,
the conscience, the momentum department, the wisdom department, and the
subconscious. The right lobe possesses what is really you. You are what
you think. The right lobe also contains the norms and standards. Inside
the right lobe of the soul is everything that should dominate emotion, so
that emotion can become what it was designed to be by God an appreciator
of things.
g. The heart contains all thought and standards. The emotion
contains nothing. KOILIA, the Greek word for the emotions, means something
that is empty, or hollow. Emotion is something empty and waiting to
respond. Emotion contains no doctrine, no thought, no common sense, and no
ability to reason. If emotion controls the soul you can't think or apply
doctrine to life.
h. The emotions are the appreciator of the soul. By function,
the emotions respond to the right lobe. The emotion is strictly a
responder. It contains feeling. It is like an empty bag lined with
sensitivity. It is sensitive to music, art, drama, the opposite sex, etc.
i. Emotion is not designed to assume authority over the soul, but
is designed to be dominated by the right lobe.
j. Emotion has no ability to love. Thus, emotional revolt
produces homosexuals and lesbians.
k. Capacity for life is related to the right lobe, thought, not
the emotions. You can enjoy life only by running your emotions with your
thought.
l. While certain portions of the anatomy double for parts of the
soul in the Bible, it is not difficult to distinguish the essence of the
soul from the physiological anatomy of the body. The Greek word KARDIA
means heart always refers to the area of thought in the soul. English words
used in the Bible to describe the emotions include: bowels, belly, reins.
m. Anatomy in the languages of the ancient world always doubled
for the functions of the soul, because they did not have in ancient
languages a psychological vocabulary.
n. As there are two kidneys, two fat pads, so there are two
emotions. This could break the right man right woman analogy, implying
two women for one man. However, the one woman, emotion, has two parts.
o. Both reins respond to the heart: the left rein is the
capacity for spiritual life and therefore responds to spiritual phenomena in
the right lobe; the right rein is the capacity for temporal life and
therefore responds to human or temporal phenomena in the right lobe.
p. Positive response to the heart produces the spectrum of
happiness, from tranquility to ecstatics, in the emotions. Happiness is
there because of doctrine. But how do you know it's there? Emotions tell
you, because of all the responses from the emotions, a whole spectrum of
responses.
q. Negative response to the heart produces the spectrum of
misery: the back-up of mental attitude sins, revolt of the emotions,
psychosis, instability of wide emotional swings, because the emotions take
over control, become the aggressor, and dictate to the right lobe. This
cuts off doctrine, because all usable doctrine is in the right lobe. After
awhile, the whole function of the soul is backed-up with mental attitude
sins and emotions controlling every area of the soul: self-consciousness,
mentality, volition, conscience. The spectrum of misery includes mental
attitude sins, lust patterns, and human good.
r. Since the emotions of the soul were never designed to dominate
the soul, wide emotional swings demonstrate the inability of the emotion to
dominate! Emotions can be feminine or "witchy." The garden was perfect
until the woman took over and dominated the man; then the Fall occurred.
However, you should neither suppress the woman nor your emotions.
s. Only in the right lobe exists frame of reference, memory
center, viewpoint, norms and standards, and doctrine. None of these exist
in the emotion, which is designed only to respond to these things.
2. Definition.
a. Emotion is defined as an affective state of consciousness in
which joy, sorrow, fear, hate is experienced as distinguished from cognitive
and a volitional state of the conciousness. Emotion is what is experienced
as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.
Emotions are a stimuli for action, and therefore must be regarded as a form
of human energy.
b. Emotional stress, for example, causes people to act on
impulse. The emotion of fear, also a sin, causes flight. The emotion of
disgust causes repulsion. The emotion of anger causes violence.
c. Instincts are reflex behavior based on emotion rather than on
thought. Emotions are affects or feeling functions. If how you feel
becomes the criterion for your life, you will never be able to execute God's
plan as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
d. Emotion is defined as a complex, biological, physiological
process, or function concerned with somatic expression or feeling.
e. Emotion appears when there is some bar to soothe and complete
execution or satisfaction of one's instincts, and this stimulates the
vegetative nervous system and feelings.
f. Emotion is the basis for the thymopathic behavior, or that
which is called in psychology "the disturbance of effects."
g. Many believers today have become neurotic and psychotic simply
because they have intruded into God's plan with a human form of energy
called emotion.
h. Emotion can be normal or abnormal. The purpose of normal
emotion is to respond to various things in our souls by way of norms and
standards.
i. There are two categorical functions of the emotions: the
conscious sensations of the emotions of the soul, and the effects of
emotions on the organic function of the body, especially the nervous system.
The first is a mechanism of emotions in the brain; the second is a
parasympathetic effect of the transmission of too many or too few motor
nerve impulses to the muscles of the body.
j. The prefrontal lobes, called the cortical areas of the brain,
are associated with thought, motives, and decisions. Normal emotions
respond to these thoughts in the prefrontal lobes. In cases where
prefrontal lobes have been removed, individuals are still capable of
emotional activity, and are very unstable. In other words, emotional
activity can occur without the presence of thought! The removal of the
cortex does not eliminate emotional reactions. Emotion without thought is a
tragic complication in life.
k. In other words, emotion can respond to thought, but emotion
can also function without thought. When emotion functions without thought,
that is abnormal emotional activity. This is called emotional instability.
It comes and goes with extreme rapidity.
l. Normal functions of the emotion include pleasure or
entertainment, excitement, appreciation. But these normal emotion functions
must not be correlated with the enabling ministry of God the Holy Spirit
inside the divine dynasphere when it comes to the spiritual life.
m. Emotion is related to human power and influence, but never to
divine power and the mystery doctrine of the Church Age, which is the basis
for fulfilling God's will, plan, and purpose.
n. Believers who make emotion the criterion for their spiritual
life generally have four basic problems.
(1) Such a believer makes a god out of his emotions, Phil
3:18f. When emotion becomes your god, you're ripe for the tongues movement.
(2) Such a believer's emotional pattern distracts him from
the execution of the protocol plan of God, Rom 16:17-18.
(3) Therefore, emotion hinders post-salvation
epistemological rehabilitation; i.e., the perception, metabolization, and
application of Bible doctrine, 2 Cor 6:11-12.
(4) Such a believer's unrestrained or uncontrolled emotional
pattern is the basis for criminality, violence, hatred, anger, total
involvement in the arrogance complex, which means bitterness,
vindictiveness, jealousy, implacability, self-pity, guilt reaction. So
there is a very close relationship between the arrogance complex and
emotional sin.
(5) Such a believer's unrestrained or uncontrolled emotional
pattern is related to the five great categorical problems of life,
especially number two: fear.
o. Under the protocol plan of God for the Church Age, emotions
are not adequate guides for motives, thoughts, decisions, and actions of the
believer.
p. Emotions are not tools of cognition nor criteria for life.
Therefore, emotions are not designed as problem solving devices.
q. Therefore, the Church Age believer must learn to distinguish
between post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation as the means of
executing God's plan, will, and purpose; and emotional experience, which can
be normal in appreciation response in response, or it can be abnormal and
not related at all to the Christian way of life.
r. Normal emotional experience results in subordinating the
emotion to the intellect. Abnormal emotional experience results in either
subordinating the intellect to the emotion, or the emotion bypassing the
norms and standards of God's plan for your life.
s. Abnormal emotional experience may express itself in the many
areas of pseudo©spirituality, or in ecstatic experience which has absolutely
nothing to do with the filling of the Spirit or the now defunct gift of
tongues.
t. Abnormal emotional experience may express itself in emotional
sins, like hatred, fear, worry, anxiety, and become the motivation for
violence, murder, gossiping, maligning, inordinate ambition, and the
inordinate competition of running down other people in order to promote
yourself.
u. The emotional activity of fear, worry, anxiety has no
cognitive self©confidence from Bible doctrine. Therefore, it has no
doctrinal conceptualism, which means the believer becomes a loser and
unstable. There is no function of problem©solving devices in the life of
such a believer.
v. The sinful activity of anger, hatred, fear, worry, anxiety
promotes arrogance, and undermines the momentum of God's plan, purpose, and
will for your life.
w. Momentum is related to the function of problem©solving
devices, such as rebound, the filling of the Spirit, the faith©rest drill,
grace orientation, doctrinal orientation, personal love for God (occupation
with Christ), impersonal love for all mankind, sharing the happiness of God
(+H), a personal sense of destiny, and occupation with the person of Christ.
3. Application.
a. There is no spiritual activity in emotion. It is a normal or
abnormal physiological or psychological activity, but how you feel has
nothing to do with your spiritual status. How you feel has nothing to do
with any factor in the spiritual life.
b. If you take your emotions and ecstatic experiences and try to
intrude them into God's plan, you have entered into a form of blasphemy.
c. Under some conditions, the use of doctrine in recall or
application often causes an emotional response. You are using your thinking
to recall, apply, and metabolize a doctrine, and your emotion so responds;
that is normal.
d. But when you become involved in that evil which makes emotion
the criterion for the spiritual life, as do the Pentecostals and holy
rollers, you are grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit. You are not
utilizing the power of God.
e. There is no divine power in emotion. The power is in thought,
and that thought must be Bible doctrine.
f. Certain kinds of emotions are sins, such as anger, rage, fear,
anxiety. Hate is an emotion, irrational, and a sin. These sinful emotions
are abnormal. Hatred, resentment, dejection, defeat are emotional
activities based on the function of the hypothalamic area, causing greater
parasympathetic and sympathetic activity.
g. Elation and ecstatics are not related to the filling of the
Spirit; they are psychological or physiological activities.
h. The application of nothing to something is nothing. You
cannot apply emotion or its results (anger, fear, worry, hatred, anxiety,
murder) to the problems of life and come up with solutions. All you have by
applying these emotional sins to the problems of life is nothing, or worse,
the manufacture of greater problems, such as murder.
4. Description.
a. The New Testament uses several Greek words for emotion.
(1) KOILIA is identified with the solar plexus, a part of
the central nervous system. It is often translated "stomach." It
originally meant some kind of hollow. Hypocrates, a physician, used this
word for both the stomach and womb, but he did not correctly identify it as
the solar plexus, which is often confused with the stomach.
(2) SPLAGNON represents the parasympathetic and sympathetic
effects of emotion. It is the word for intestines, often translated "guts"
or "entrails." But it means feelings and affections.
(3) The noun NEPHROS is translated "reins" in the King James
Version. It refers to kidneys or the fat pads of the kidneys. It's used to
designate emotions, because the fat pads of the kidneys are used to protect
the kidneys and the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands secrete many
hormones, including adrenalin or epinephrin, which is the emotional hormone
of "flight, fright, fight."
b. Intense elation accompanied by an attitude of grandeur often
shifts to irritability, indicating the instability of emotional activity
without the protection and the guidance of a greater power.
c. Ecstasy is an emotional mood often associated with
spirituality. But you can be either ecstatic or depressed but still be
spiritual. The filling of the Spirit is entirely separate from your
emotions and must be separated from them in your thinking.
d. From ecstasy there is also a tranquil sense of power which is
often associated or identified with the spiritual life; but it isn't.
Ecstasy represents maximum wish fulfillment, but it is not related in any
way to the spiritual life.
e. Depression and overconcern with personal problems is an
emotional function in which the believer is in the cosmic system, minus
doctrine and minus the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit.
f. Emotion never represents either spirituality or any function
related to divine omnipotence. Emotion has no spiritual connotation.
g. Tension is the function of emotion in both restlessness and
dissatisfaction. Anxiety is heightened or disrupted tension, an emotional
state minus any doctrine.
h. Fear and panic are emotional. Panic is not merely a high
degree of fear, but fear based on prolonged tension.
i. Insecurity from ignorance of doctrine is emotional, not
spiritual. Depersonalization is the emotion or feeling of unreality which
so many believers seem to have today.
j. Awareness of emotion is probably located in the thalamus, in
conjunction with the frontal lobes. Therefore, emotion is physiological,
but not spiritual.
k. Emotion is related to human power under certain conditions, or
human failure under certain conditions, but it is never a part of divine
power.
5. Problems and mechanics of emotions.
a. Neglect or rejection of Bible doctrine results in many sins
related to the emotional pattern of the soul. For example, fear is a
complex system of emotional sins with two modus operandi.
(1) Worry, anxiety, and guilt come from fear; they are the
manifestation of fear. Fear is lack of thinking under pressure. Fear is
the believer's failure to apply doctrine to the problems of life, of
suffering, of disaster, and of failure.
(a) The more things you surrender to fear, the greater
the expansion of your fear or the more things you come to fear.
(b) The extent to which you surrender to fear you
increase the power of fear in your life. The greater the power of fear in
your life, the greater the irrationality. The greater the irrationally the
sooner you get into mental illness.
(c) The more things that acquire the power of fear in
your life, the more vulnerable you become to all of the disastrous things
that result from being in the permissive will of God rather than the
directive will of God.
(2) Hatred, anger, violence, and murder also come from fear.
(3) Scriptures related to fear as an illustration of sin:
Ps 56:3; 2 Tim 1:7; 1 Jn 4:18.
(4) Fear causes you to run to other believers for counsel.
No believer can apply doctrine through the mind of another. No believer can
apply doctrine to his experience while in a state of fear.
(5) Emotion is irrational when it controls the soul.
b. Emotion is not a criterion for Christian experience. However,
there are two categories of emotion in the spiritual life.
(1) Normal emotion under the authority of the right lobe of
the soul responds to your thinking.
(2) Abnormal emotion, which is emotion controlling the right
lobe of the soul. This is what causes all of the problems of the believer
under the permissive will of God, i.e., the believer out of fellowship.
c. Emotion is the feeling reflex of the soul.
(1) Emotion is a responder to the content of the soul.
(2) Emotion was never designed by God to replace the
mentorship of God the Holy Spirit as our teacher.
(3) Emotion is neither the criterion for the spiritual life
or the reality of the spiritual life. You are never spiritual because you
are emotional.
(4) Therefore, since emotion is neither a tool for cognition
of Bible doctrine or the criterion for the spiritual life, it can never be
the reality of the spiritual life, and above all emotion is not a problem
solving device. Emotion produces sins such as guilt and fear.
(5) The believer must distinguish between normal function of
emotion as a good responder to the values of life and the sinful function of
emotion as a reaction to life. As a responder emotion enhances appreciation
for what is noble and honorable in life. But emotion as a reactor produces
sin, dead works, evil, the emotional revolt of the soul.
(6)
(6) As a system of response and feeling, emotion does not
contain the following.
(a) Emotion does not contain thought.
(b) Emotion does not contain the ability to reason.
(c) Emotion does not contain common sense.
(d) Emotion does not contain vocabulary as a tool for
mental function.
(e) Emotion has no doctrinal content.
d. Emotional arrogance includes the following blasphemies: you
are not saved unless you feel saved; you are not spiritual unless you feel
spiritual.
(1) This is a part of the irrationality of emotional revolt
of the soul.
(2) Emotional arrogance converts reality into illusion, and
unreality into even hallucination. Emotional arrogance results in the fear
pattern, which destroys the soul.
e. Emotion is related to human power and influence, but never to
divine power and influence.
f. Under the protocol plan of God for the Church Age, emotions
are not adequate guides for motivation, thinking, decisions, or actions.
g. The Church Age believer must learn to distinguish between
post-salvation epistemological rehabilitation as the means of executing the
protocol plan of God and the emotional experience, which can be normal or
abnormal.
(1) Normal emotions experience results in the subordination
of the emotions to the intellect. Abnormal emotional experience results in
either subordinating the intellect to the emotion or the emotion by-passing
the norms and standards you have developed from doctrine.
(2) Abnormal emotional experience may express itself in
pseudo-spirituality, ecstatic experience (which has nothing to do with the
filling of the Spirit), emotional sins.
B. The believer out of line with his emotions is described in the New
Testament.
1. Emotion become the god of the believer in emotional revolt of the
soul. Phil 3:18-19, "For many believers keep walking [in the cosmic
system], concerning whom I have communicated to you many times and now
communicate even though weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of
Christ, whose destiny is destruction [sin unto death], whose god is their
emotions, whose fame comes by means of their dishonor, who keep on thinking
about earthly things [propaganda of the cosmic system]."
2. Rom 16:17-18, "Now I urge you brethren, be alert for those who are
causing dissensions and apostasies contrary to the doctrine which you have
learned. For such believers do not obey our Lord Jesus Christ, but their
own emotions, serving themselves; and by their smooth and flattering speech
[human power] they deceive the right lobes of the stupid."
a. You cannot obey the Lord Jesus Christ and execute the protocol
plan of God through emotional activity.
b. We all have normal emotions, but it is not a part of our
spiritual life; it is a part of our natural life. The spiritual life
functions on divine power only.
3. Emotions are a hindrance to the perception of doctrine. 2 Cor
6:11-12, "O you Corinthians, our mouth has been opened face to face with you
because our right lobes have been enlarged [studying before teaching Bible
doctrine]; therefore, you have not been hindered by us, but you have been
hindered by your own emotions."
a. The Corinthians had received teaching from Paul, Apollos,
Timothy, and Titus.
b. They had been hindered in their spiritual growth, not by the
content of the messages, but because they had switched from divine power to
human power: their emotions. By so doing, they had negated everything
related to divine power.
C. Emotions are under divine scrutiny.œ
1. Rev 2:23, "Furthermore, I will execute her followers by means of
death, and so all the churches will know that I am He who investigates the
emotions and the right lobe, and I will administer punishment to each one
according to your activities."
a. Though not spiritual, emotions to be normal must relate to the
right lobe. The right lobe is the place of metabolized doctrine; both its
understanding and its application.
b. "Punishment according to your activities" refers to making
your emotions a criterion for the spiritual life; basing your spiritual life
on how you feel rather than what the Word of God says.
2. Ps 7:9, "For the righteous God tests the right lobes and the
emotions [reins]." If emotion responds to the right lobe you have a
normal soul. If emotion controls the soul you have an abnormal situation.
God tests to see if the soul is normal or not. Ps 26:2, "Test my emotions
and my right lobe." Jer 11:20, 17:10, 20:12; Rev 2:23.
3. Why does God test the emotions?
a. In every one of the above verses, there is in effect an
anthropomorphism; otherwise this would mean God doesn't really know what's
going on in your soul until he runs a check on you. God does not test your
soul and its emotions at some specific time. But His omniscience knew
billions of years ago the status of your soul at any point in your life.
But it's communicated to us through an anthropomorphism.
b. You cannot strap it on God. He read your tape billions of
years ago; you can never hide anything from Him. This should relax you.
c. The condition of your soul is known to God at all times, in
time, and in eternity past where there was no time.
d. Testing is used as an anthropomorphism to determine your
capacity for life. God wants you to have maximum capacity for life.
Therefore, to challenge you to capacity for life God says He tests your
reins and your heart.
e. Since capacity for life is based on the amount of doctrine in
your right lobe, testing your reins refers to testing the response of your
emotions to this information.
f. Frame of reference elicits bonified response in both reins, in
both spiritual and temporal life.
g. With doctrine, your norms and standards become compatible with
God's norms and standards. When situations occur that cause this
realization, you have an emotional response, in both spiritual and temporal
areas.
h. Doctrine produces divine viewpoint which stimulates both
reins.
D. Scriptural Words for Emotions.
1. The "bowels" are used to designate the emotions. Gen 43:30; 1 Kg
3:26; Jer 4:19, 31:20; Lam 1:20, 2:11; Phil 1:8; Phile 12,20.
a. The bowels are a portion of the anatomy that is empty but
filled with something. The bowels are filled with the waste of the body.
b. Gen 43:30, family love stirred his emotions to the point of
weeping. Weeping is an emotional response; it has no thought.
c. Jer 4:19, Jeremiah fills his right lobe with disturbing
thoughts and his emotions respond.
d. Lam 2:11, the liver is the emotion under normal conditions.
But it is turned inside out because he no longer has normal emotions,
because of the destruction of the nation.
e. In Phil 1:8, Paul recalls the Philippians and appreciates
their response to doctrine. This elicited a response in his emotions.
f. In Phile 20, Paul is saying that if he frees this runaway
slave, it will refresh his emotions.
2. The "belly" is designated as the emotion in Prov 13:25, 18:8,
26:22; Rom 16:17-18; Phil 3:19.
a. In Prov 18:18, the person who listens to gossip is emotionally
stimulated by listening to all the horrible things about someone of whom
they are jealous. They respond to gossip, but it produces wounds in the
soul like a peptic ulcer.
b. When you rejoice over the tragedies of someone, you are
jealous of them and only end up producing an ulcer in your own soul. This
emotional activity of gloating over someone you can't stand only destroys
you.
3. The "reins" are used to designate the emotions.
a. Reins is an old English word for the kidneys. The Hebrew word
KILJAH refers to the fat pads which cover the kidneys and adrenal glands.
The adrenal glands secrete the hormone epinephrine which is the fright,
flight, or fight hormone. It increases blood to the muscles, cardiac output
and glucose to the muscles. It is stimulated by the emotions. Ps 139:13;
Prov 23:16; Jer 12:12, 20:12
E. The advancing believer has a normal soul in which the right lobe
dominates, Jer 11:20, 17:10.œ
1. The emotions must be subordinate to doctrine in the right lobe.
2. Where the believer has no Bible doctrine in the soul, he becomes a
weak reversionist. Like a person with a tumor in the adrenal glands who
overproduces epinephrine, he destroys his own heart through the hypertension
that is produced. This is instability, which illustrates emotional revolt
of the soul.
F. Emotion and spirituality must be related to the correct dispensation.œ
1. In the Church Age, Christ is absent from the earth. Therefore,
this dispensation is characterized by no ecstatics connected with the
filling of the Holy Spirit.
2. In the Church Age, spirituality or the filling of the Holy Spirit
produces the character of Christ. But the filling of the Spirit has no
emotional connotation. Spirituality is minus emotion in the Church Age.
3. Therefore, the filling of the Holy Spirit produces the character
and glory of Christ, without emotion being an integral part of spirituality,
Gal 5:22-23, 4:19; Rom 5:5.
4. Emotion is never designed to produce character, but to respond to
character. That's why emotion cannot be a part of spirituality.
5. Appreciation of Jesus Christ comes through perception of doctrine
rather than emotional function. This does not eliminate emotion, but puts
emotion in its proper place.
6. Emotional function cannot produce integrity. It cannot fulfill the
royal family honor code. It cannot apply doctrine. Emotion is not a part
of the filling of the Holy Spirit.
7. In the Church Age, emotion is a responder to many things in the
right lobe, including doctrine, the laws of divine establishment, love, and
patriotism, but emotional response is never the filling of the Holy Spirit.
8. Just as grace glues the essence of God together, so emotion as a
responder is distilled grace. Emotion as an aggressor is distilled
legalism.
9. You can be depressed for physiological reasons and still be filled
with the Spirit. How you feel has nothing to do with your spiritual status
quo.
10. Emotion and ecstatics have no spiritual content in this
dispensation. Therefore, how you feel is never the index of your spiritual
life or experience.
11. Emotional activity or ecstatics is not indicative of spiritual
activity or advance in the Christian life.
12. The purpose of the filling of the Holy Spirit is perception of
doctrine, advance to maturity, production from your ambassadorship, but
never the manufacture of ecstatics.
13. Emotion is designed to respond to doctrine in the right lobe, but
is not characteristic of the filling of the Holy Spirit. Ecstatics belongs
to the human race; the filling of the Spirit belongs to the believer. The
emotions can respond or react to the filling of the Spirit, but emotions
cannot be the filling of the Holy Spirit.
14. Only in the Millennium when Christ is present on the earth and
ruling the world does emotion or ecstatics characterize the filling of the
Holy Spirit. Therefore, spirituality includes ecstatics.
15. While there is no spiritual content to emotion in the Church Age,
there is definite spiritual content to emotion in the Millennium.
16. In the Millennium, the filling of the Holy Spirit appreciates the
reigning Christ. Therefore, ecstatics will then be a legitimate spiritual
emotion.
17. Believers in the Millennium are universally indwelt with the Holy
Spirit, as in the Church Age, Ezek 36:27, 37:14; Jer 31:33.
18. Believers in the Millennium are also commanded to be filled with
the Holy Spirit and are filled with the Holy Spirit, Isa 29:19, 32:15, 44:3;
Ezek 39:29; Zech 12:10.
19. The filling of the Holy Spirit in the Millennium is characterized
by ecstatics and emotional appreciation, Joel 2:28-29.
G. Emotional Revolt of the Soul.œ
1. Emotion can be a hindrance to the plan of God and a distraction to
the perception of doctrine, as noted above in 2 Cor 6:11-12.
2. When people allow their emotions to rule their lives they are like
intestines filled with waste, Rom 16:17-18.
3. The emotional revolt, backed by the old sin nature, causes emotion
to become the aggressor instead of the responder. This causes emotion to
become the criterion, rather than the doctrinal content of the right lobe.
4. Therefore, emotional revolution against the establishment of the
soul causes the total failure or malfunction of GAP. The failure of GAP
makes the Christian life and God's plan impossible to fulfill.
5. Instead of responding to doctrine in the soul, emotion revolts and
takes command of the soul. With the emotion in command, all capacity, love,
and happiness is gone.
a. Instead of responding to doctrine in the right lobe, the
emotion responds to mental attitude sins, approbation and power lust, and
human good. Then the emotion reacts and revolts against the right lobe, and
cuts off any doctrine in the right lobe.
b. Once emotion revolts against the heart and becomes the
aggressor, it loses all capacity for life and comes under the influence and
domination of the old sin nature. Since the old sin nature isn't "man
enough" to carry out his duties, people in emotional revolt are very
frustrated.
c. In effect, emotional revolt is the emotion fornicating with
the old sin nature, just as Jeremiah's right woman fornicated with her
paramours.
d. Hence, the old sin nature is a paramour which turns emotion
from a responder into an aggressor and reactor. This produces that chaos in
the soul called psychosis.
6. There is negative volition to doctrine plus recession of thought,
replaced by the frantic search for happiness and total dependence on feeling
rather than on common sense. People often substitute chemical stimulation
for thought.
7. Having lost the ability to respond to the right lobe, the emotion
becomes inflexible regarding the non-essentials. Rev 2:23 illustrates:
"And all the churches will know I am the One investigating the emotions and
the right lobe, and I will do to each according to their actions." The
right lobe must control the emotional pattern for spiritual advance.
8. Therefore, the command to separate from those in emotional revolt
is given in Rom 16:17-18. "Now I beseech you, brethren, make a
reconnaissance; observe them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to
the doctrine which you have learned, and keep on avoiding them. For they
are such that serve not the Lord Jesus Christ, but their own bellies [in
emotional revolt]. And by good words and fair speeches, they deceive the
hearts of the stupid [getting you to go into emotional revolt also]."
a. How do you deceive the heart? The old sin nature inspires the
emotion to revolt against the right lobe.
b. Believers who live by their emotions are believers whose
emotional revolt has produced chaos of the soul. Their emotion is no longer
a responder but an aggressor.
c. Believers with such chaos in their souls are troublemakers.
Therefore, other believers are commanded to separate from them. This means
separation from those involved in the tongues movement. The tongues
movement is an emotional revolt against the divine establishment of the
soul.
H. Emotion as a responder contributes to capacity for life.œ
1. Emotion is an appreciator of love. But emotion as a leader
destroys capacity for life.
2. Gen 43:30, "And Joseph made haste, for his emotions did yearn upon
his brother, and he sought where to weep, and he entered into his chamber
and wept there." Because he loved his brother Benjamin so much, Joseph was
responding emotionally to what was in his right lobe. Sometimes you are not
aware of the love in your right lobe until something triggers it in the
memory center and elicits a response in the emotion.
3. 1 Kg 3:26, "Then spoke the woman whose child was the living child
to the king, for her bowels [emotions] yearned upon her son." This shows
the same emotional response to right lobe love as in the above passage.
4. Other references: Phil 1:8; 1 Jn 3:17.
5. In Prov 23:15-17, there is an illustration of the relationship
between thinking and normal emotion. Emotion is related to category three
love as stimulating capacity in this area. David is teaching Solomon. "And
my emotions will rejoice when your lips speak what is right."
6. Emotional response makes one very aware of the existence of love in
his soul. Of course, your emotions are not designed to respond all day. If
they did, they would be destroyed. You have things to do. But you still
have love for someone in your right lobe all the time. When triggered, the
emotions respond and make you aware of that love. However, emotions do not
contain love.
7. The communion table is designed to remember and appreciate our Lord
Jesus Christ and His work on the cross. If you love Him, your emotions
respond in memory of all He is and all He has done for you.
a. The pertinent doctrines are in your right lobe. The cup and
the bread give your emotion an opportunity to respond to the One unseen whom
you love, and yet still maintain poise and stability in assembled worship.
b. Ritual keeps emotions from getting out of hand. It provides
control and order in assembly. (The Scots do the same in their singing of
Auld Lang Syne and toasting the cup.)
c. So as believer-priests assembled together for communion, this
is a very tender moment for all of us.
d. Ritual was designed for two things: to communicate, and to
allow the function of emotion without destroying order.
8. But if the emotion rules the soul, having no content in the
emotion, you become psychotic. To emote without response but as thoughtless
control is to become temporarily or permanently psychotic.
I. Emotion stimulates happiness.œ
1. Prov 23:16, "Yea, my reins shall rejoice." Verse 15 says the
happiness is in the right lobe. But the emotions respond, and he becomes
aware of what is in his right lobe. This is analogous to when the right man
is happy, the right woman responds and she is happy. Phile 7, 20.
2. The frame of reference in the right lobe provides information for
the memory center which stimulates response in the emotions. Therefore, the
emotions become a stimulus to happiness. They are not happiness; they make
you aware that you're happy.
3. Your conscience which contains your norms and standards also turns
on your emotions. Your priesthood is stimulated to function when your
emotion is turned on by your norms and standards. Emotional response to
your conscience causes you to have esprit de corps.
4. The viewpoint in the right lobe provides stimulus or response from
the emotions, as when you hear someone else speak divine viewpoint. This
stimulates response to your own viewpoint from doctrine.
J. Emotion as a reactor (to tragedy) contributes to loss of capacity for
life as well as loss of motivation and momentum.œ
1. Jer 4:19, "My emotions [bowels], my emotions! I am pained at my
very heart! My heart makes a noise in me [screaming in me]; I cannot hold
my peace [lack of tranquility] because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound
of the trumpet, the alarm of war."
2. Lam 1:20, "Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress; my bowels are
troubled [emotions dominating]; my heart is turned within me, so I have
grievously rebelled. Abroad the sword bereaves, at home there is death."
3. Lam 2:11, "My eyes do fail with tears, my bowels [emotions] are
troubled, my liver is poured out upon the earth, for the destruction of the
daughter of my people . . ."
4. Jer 11:19-20.
5. In tragedy or catastrophe, emotions must respond to doctrine in the
right lobe for any tranquility. But when they react so that they rebel
against the right lobe, this agony occurs.
K. Emotions can be destroyed, Job 16:13; Ps 73:21; Lam 3:13.œ
1. If the kidneys back up into the bladder, one result is death. So
just as the kidneys are destroyed by the bladder reflexing or backing up, so
the emotions are destroyed by the old sin nature, being bombarded by mental
attitude sins. The emotions were never designed to respond to mental
attitude sins. So when they do, the emotions are destroyed.
2. This motivates the emotions to revolt against the dominant (right)
lobe. For in responding to the bladder or old sin nature, emotion revolts
against the dominant lobe, producing revolution in the soul.
3. The result is instability, wide emotional swings, revolution, and
chaos, with either temporary or permanent psychosis.
4. Not only does the emotional domination of the soul produce
psychotic conditions, but it explains certain things in the life of the
believer: apostasy, sublimation, lack of capacity for life, lack of
capacity for love, and degeneracy.
5. Note the fine balance between emotions producing a happiness
spectrum and emotions producing a misery spectrum. The fine line between
happiness and misery in your soul is determined by which way your emotions
go. Do they respond to your right lobe with doctrine, or to your old sin
nature?
L. Good and Bad Emotion.œ
1. Introduction.
a. When the divine solution is used to solve any problem, emotion
is not an issue. This is true for the problem of spiritual death and for
the problem of carnality.
(1) There is no such thing as "godly sorrow." This is a
mistranslation of 2 Cor 7:9-10.
(2) When it comes to your spiritual life, God's solution
does not require emotion.
(3) Emotion is not related to spirituality until the
millennial reign of Christ.
b. The fruit of the Spirit is joy. Joy has nothing to do with
emotion. Joy means to share the happiness of God. Sharing the happiness of
God is a gift from God to the believer with capacity for that happiness from
maximum metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. We
can respond to joy or sharing the happiness of God. In sharing the
happiness of God we respond emotionally, and that is good emotion. This
does not mean that joy or rejoicing is emotion.
c. Good and bad emotion are antithetical. Good emotion is
spiritual response to life. Bad emotion is carnal reaction to life.
2. Good Emotion.
a. Good emotion is response to the two power options the filling
of the Holy Spirit and resumption of the spiritual life, metabolized
doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness.
b. Response to the resumption of the spiritual life, which is
thinking and applying metabolized doctrine, is the basis for continuation of
good emotion.
c. Good emotion responds to thinking and the values, norms, and
standards of the conscience of the soul. When you are out of fellowship,
you abandon the values, norms, and standards you developed when you were in
fellowship. Good emotion responds to thinking of the spiritual life,
including self©evaluation and the application of Bible doctrine.
d. The ultimate in good emotion is occupation with Christ.
Occupation with Christ combines the mechanics of the spiritual life with
good emotional response. Occupation with Christ is the maximum outlet for
good emotion. Occupation with Christ produces three categories of spiritual
thinking on which good emotion is based: cognitive self-confidence,
cognitive independence, and cognitive invincibility.
e. Good emotion comes from response to the laws of divine
establishment, such as patriotism, virtue in government, virtue in marriage,
family values, personal values. Honor, integrity, nobility of character is
a source of good emotion for the believer related to doctrine and for the
unbeliever related to the laws of divine establishment.
f. The biblical documentation for "joy" and rejoice" combines
spiritual mechanics with good emotional response.
(1) Neh 8:10, "Do not be grieved for the joy of the Lord is
your strength." cf Ps 30:5, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes
in the morning." When you use the problem solving devices, you may weep in
the night, but in the morning you have perfect happiness as the problem
solving device.
(2) Good emotion always comes from metabolized doctrine
circulating in the stream of consciousness.
(a) Col 1:10d-11, "...increasing in epignosis of God,
strengthened with all power on the basis of the power of His glory,
resulting in all perseverance and steadfastness associated with joy." Joy
is perfect happiness which produces good emotion as an appreciator of that
happiness. Emotional revolt of the soul is bad emotion.
(b) 1 Thes 1:6, "You also became imitators of us and of
the Lord, having received the word in much adversity associated with the joy
of the Holy Spirit." We are imitators of the Lord and someone like Paul by
use of the three spiritual skills. We do not imitate personality
characteristics. When you get into role model arrogance, you have bad
emotion.
(c) Phil 4:4, "Keep on rejoicing in the Lord at all
times; again I say, keep on rejoicing!" Circumstances are not the issue in
sharing the perfect happiness of God.
(d) Phil 1:23©25, "But I am hard-pressed from both
circumstances [living or dying], having a desire to depart and be with
Christ is far better; yet to remain on in the flesh is far better for your
benefit, having become confident of this option [personal sense of destiny],
I know that I shall remain and continue with all of you resulting in your
progress and joy from doctrine." Maximum doctrine circulating in the stream
of consciousness elicits the ultimate in good emotion.
g. Joy is the function of sharing the happiness of God at a point
of maximum metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness,
so that the emotions have something to appreciate that is good. The Greek
verb CHAIRO (meaning "joy") is thinking God's happiness in contrast to
emotion or stimulated feelings often confused as a status of human
happiness. The Greek noun CHARA (translated "joy") is the quintessence of
combining the mechanics of the spiritual life with a system of thinking
which elicits the response of good emotion.
h. Sharing the happiness of God is the peak of emotional response
in life. But even good emotional response is not the criterion for the
spiritual life. You are never saved because you feel saved. You are never
spiritual because you feel spiritual. A carnal believer cannot have a
legitimate emotion related to the spiritual life. When you are out of
fellowship, your emotion is not an issue. The issue is name your sins to
God in the privacy of your priesthood. The spiritual life runs on divine
power, never how you feel. Even good emotion will not get you back into
fellowship.
3. Bad Emotion.
a. Definition.
(1) Bad emotion is defined as reaction emotion, which makes
how you feel the criterion for the spiritual life instead of Bible doctrine
perceived, metabolized, and circulating in your stream of consciousness.
(2) Bad emotion is emotion out of control in a state of
reaction toward the teaching of the word.
(3) Bad emotion is emotion out of control, emotion divorced
from doctrine, emotional revolt of the soul, the emotional complex of sins,
and the emotional complex of sins combined with the arrogance complex of
sins to form evil obsession and hybrid emotion.
(4) Bad emotion is divorced from reality, so that believer
sees the problem but never sees the solution.
(5) Bad emotion is pseudo compassion, pseudo love, crusader
arrogance, Christian activism, and similar type things.
(6) Bad emotion alleges that the gift of tongues is still in
existence after the completion of the canon of Scripture. Bad emotion is
the allegation that emotional activity such as remorse or regret have
something to do with being saved or being forgiven for sin.
(7) Bad emotion is often pathological arrogance.
(8) Bad emotion is the emotional complex of sins.
(9) Bad emotion is the function of evil obsession,
unrealistic expectation, role model arrogance, the feet of clay syndrome,
iconoclastic arrogance followed by evil obsession related to legalism, power
lust, and allegations of sinless perfection.
b. The emotional complex of sins is bad emotion and has a number
of categories.
(1) The hysteria category includes fear, worry, anxiety,
panic, consternation, irrationality in a state of fear.
(2) The revenge category includes malice, the lust to
inflict injury or suffering on others, revenge motivation and revenge modus
operandi, violence, murder, vituperation (which includes gossip, slander,
maligning, and judging), vilification (which is creates a public lie about
someone who is the object of jealousy, hatred, vindictiveness, or
implacability.
(3) The hatred category includes anger, hatred, bitterness,
jealousy, loathing, animosity, implacability.
(4) The irrational category includes tantrums, vulnerability
to imagined insults or snubs, self-pity, whining, sniveling, denial,
projection, and neurosis.
(5) The guilt category includes remorse for real or imagined
sins, morbid self©reproach, emotional feelings of culpability, selfªrighteous arrogance, arrogant preoccupation with one's feelings and
impulses, guilt resulting from the manipulation of legalism, arrogant
preoccupation with the correctness of one's behavior.
c. Many of the emotional complexes of sins are a hybrid,
combining the sins of the emotional complex with the sins of the arrogance
complex.
(1) The repression category is defined as the denial of the
reality of the problem because it is too painful or too unpleasant to face.
Repression avoids facing the issue. A part of this is denial, which results
in the projection or transfer of one's flaws, sins, or failures to someone
else.
(2) The hybrid guilt category is one of the most dangerous
categories. In this category feelings of guilt which cause perpetual
anxiety may be alleviated by a contrived defense mechanism of blaming others
for your own sins. You find someone else and assign them the problem;
therefore, you avoid the reality of the law of volitional responsibility.
Part of the hybrid guilt category is the pseudo rebound through
restitutionism. The only one to whom we are responsible when we sin is God
the Father. As a part of the laws of volitional responsibility and cultural
concepts developed from it, apologies are often made to people. But this is
not a part of the spiritual life, because this can be done by the unbeliever
and anything the unbeliever can do is not part of the spiritual life.
Apologizing to others and getting their forgiveness is not rebound and not a
part of the spiritual life.
Comments
You are so right.
by Dixie1 on June 1st, 2007
Great answer. :) +
by Kal-El on May 29th, 2008
lol seriously though..warmer inside your body and a sense of tranquility. Are you sure it's not a drug you are taking that is doing that to you?
The holy spirit is really just your spirit and once you love yourself and are happy with life then your spirit is happy too.
by Just-A-Pineapple on October 8th, 2009
I feel a warmth, a happiness, and a feeling of "closeness" to God. Normally my hands start tingling and shaking/vibrating, and sometimes I fall out in the Spirit. Sometimes tears pour down your face for no reason. It's different with people though, because God does not necessarily fill us all the same way. I have a friend whose head shakes back and forth. With me, it's my hands.
I promise you that it is completely different than being happy in your own spirit, like you said. TOTALLY different thing altogether.
You are trying to find a scientific explanation for something that only GOD can make happen, and it won't work at all.
by Jesus_Saves on October 9th, 2009
It is the most amazing feeling one can get. I personally felt an overwhelming feeling of warmth and tranquility. I feel a great sense of peace and love and want to thank my Lord every moment for this great feeling. I pray now that everyone can feel what I do.
by newbeliver on April 3rd, 2011