Definition and Description.
1. Introduction.
a. In planning the creation of mankind, God said, “Let us make mankind in our shadow(c)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(c)image, but not a part of the shadow(c)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(c)(c)from the body, while bad emotion attacks the soul from the inside(c)(c)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(c)love is not swayed by emotion, 1 Cor 13:4.
(2) In the garden of Eden, perfect mankind functioned under four shadow(c)image principles (self(c)consciousness(c)(c)I am, self(c)perception(c)(c)I think, volitional options(c)(c)I ought, and self(c)determination(c)(c)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(c)(c)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(c)(c)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(c)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(c)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(c)18.
(3) Therefore, emotion hinders post(c)salvation epistemological rehabilitation; i.e., the perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine, 2 Cor 6:11(c)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(c)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(c)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(c)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(c)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(c)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(c)solving devices, such as rebound, the filling of the Spirit, the faith(c)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.
© 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) 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(c)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(c)passing the norms and standards you have developed from doctrine.
(2) Abnormal emotional experience may express itself in pseudo(c)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.
1. Rev 2:23, Ë _ _Ë"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. . 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 . The advancing believer has a normal soul in which the right lobe dominates, Jer 11:20, 17:10.
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.
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.
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.
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(c)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(c)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.
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.
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.
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.
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(c)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(c)(c)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(c)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(c)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(c)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.
© 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(c)25, “But I am hard(c)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(c)pity, whining, sniveling, denial, projection, and neurosis.
(5) The guilt category includes remorse for real or imagined sins, morbid self(c)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.
R. B. Thieme, Jr., Bible Ministries 5139 West Alabama, Houston, Texas 77056 (713) 621-3740
© 1996, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved
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