Can You Make God Sad?

In Ephesians 4:30 Paul writes:

"And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption".

This is one the most remarkable instances of anthropomorphism (attributing human qualities) in the New Testament. God the Spirit is described as experiencing sorrow. There is a sense in which God is never disturbed by anything. God is the ever-blessed God (1 Timothy 1:11). Yet God has chosen this particular word "grieve" to teach us something very important about the way God interacts with his people. Paul is telling us that it is possible for Spirit-filled believers to bring sorrow to the heart of God. Paul means what he says. We can't minimise the importance of the command “do not grieve the Holy Spirit”.  So what is Paul saying then? He's saying that God takes our relationship with Him so seriously that He allows himself to feel emotions under the reactions of his people. This is the wonder of the covenant of God with his people in Jesus. In the covenant of grace, God opens his heart to us and in doing so God opens himself to unpleasant attitudes coming from the covenant-community. But God is always the blessed God. He is never subject to unhappy emotions. How can this be? First, we need to remember that God’s emotional life is vastly different from ours. This means that we should never project our emotions on God. Take wrath for example. In the Being of God wrath is perfectly compatible with his blessedness. When God displays the fury of his wrath, He is displaying a righteous feeling against evil and wicked things. It follows then, that when God is angry he also feels within Himself the internal satisfaction of showing justice and righteousness. When Paul says that God the Spirit may be grieved, it does not mean that God is sad or overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Paul simply means that God through the Spirit reacts to the inconsistencies spoken of in this context. In other words, God will withdraw the operations of the good Spirit in us.