Yes, Jesus is God. But He was also fully human. 100% God and 100% man at the same time. It's a hard concept to wrap your head around I know, but it is the truth.
Jesus, our God, our Savior, the One who reigns eternally, knows what it is like to have human emotions. To hurt and to have pain, to cry, to be overwhelmed. He knows and understands our deepest sorrow and our most painful agony. He understands because He walked through it, too.
He felt all of those same emotions here on earth. Yes, there were times of great ministry and great miracles and healings and powerful encounters that occurred when He stepped onto the scene. But He also had moments of great weariness. Tiredness. Grief. Frustration. Anger, even.
To deny ourselves the human ability to feel is to deny ourselves an opportunity to be like Christ. It is not that we as Christians are not allowed to feel, but quite the opposite. God gives us the ability to feel not just for our own sake, but also for the sake of others. He allows us to walk through hard things and difficult moments, so that we know how to suffer well with others. Yes, encouragement is necessary, but the Bible also instructs us to bear one another's burdens [Galatians 6:2] and weep with those who weep [Romans 12:15]. Even Jesus wept [John 11:35].
This is what it means to love our neighbor like we love ourself. We don't shy away from our own humanness and emotions, but we acknowledge them, let ourselves feel them, recognize that Jesus also felt them, and then we are able to help bear up our brothers and sisters as they are also feeling the very real weight of their own emotions.
Emotions are not bad. They do not make us sinful. They make us human. And to use them as an avenue to know Christ and to bear one another's burdens, is the way that God has intended for them to be used.
Let yourself feel. Let your neighbor feel. Remember that Christ felt.
In doing so, you can carry one another's burdens, and so demonstrate the love of Christ Himself.
Hebrews 2:14-18
Since the children have flesh and blood, he [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Galatians 6:2
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Romans 12:15
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
Romans 12:15
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
Be blessed,
Elisha