Unfortunately, many Christians believe that emotions should have nothing to do with making biblical decisions, but as we will see, the Scriptures insist that emotions have a very important role to play.

The Bible doesn’t tend to speak about emotions abstractly or as a group. But it talks a great deal about individual emotions, such as love, hate, anger, fear, joy, sorrow, anxiety, contentment, and the like. So, to see the ways we use emotions to assess knowledge, we will look at how several particular emotions can help us interpret the world around us.

Emotions are God-given human abilities that enable us to assess our knowledge in many different ways. For instance, we often have emotional responses to situations even before we engage in any conscious, rational reflection. In these cases, our emotions provide our initial orientation toward the facts. They are immediate assessments of our circumstances.

Think about the way King David responded to the prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 12. David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then had her husband Uriah killed to cover up the adultery. But he had never felt sorrow and contrition over his sin, and so he had never repented. His lack of these emotions prevented him from thinking rightly about his sin, blinding him to its severity, and thereby keeping him from repenting.

In response to David’s hard-heartedness, God sent Nathan to tell David a parable about a rich man who had stolen a poor man’s pet sheep, and fed it to his guests. David, of course, had been a shepherd himself, and this story stirred his emotions. His emotions enabled him to see the injustice in the situation, and he was outraged by the rich man’s lack of pity. Then Nathan revealed the truth: the parable was a metaphor for David’s own actions. David was the rich man who had stolen Bathsheba from poor Uriah. David had known the facts of his actions for a long time. But he was able to see his sin clearly only when he used his emotions to measure these facts against God’s standard.

Our emotions can be very useful tools for determining how God’s Word applies to our modern lives. Feelings of compassion can help us see the importance of helping those in need. The stirring of anger can persuade us of the value of pursuing justice. Experiences of joy can enable us to see and affirm God’s goodness even in the midst of difficult times. Fear can cause us to search for ways to avoid sin. Feelings of guilt can alert us to time when we have fallen into sin. Feelings of love can teach us how to provide, and protect, and admonish, and show mercy.

Of course, like the rest of our existential faculties, our emotions are corrupted by sin and therefore subject to error. This is why we should counsel people not to follow their emotions blindly, without reflection. Not every feeling we have is righteous, or even accurate. Our emotions reveal the whole range of our hearts, including our sins and misunderstandings. So, we must always be careful to submit them to the leading of the Holy Spirit and the guidance of God’s Word, and to harmonize them with our other God-given abilities and capacities.