Does God feel pain?

This morning’s news about the current conflict in the middle east featured an interview with an Israeli newswoman who spoke of repeated rocket attacks from Palestine, something they agreed not to do in a document that was signed in 2000. She said that after eight years of living in fear, they decided this must stop so have attacked in an effort to put an end to this “terrorism.”

Aside from the right and wrong of their retaliation, I saw grief on the face of this woman. She was deeply concerned for the well-being of her people. As I read Genesis 6:5-6, I began thinking about grief and how it feels. The New International Version says this:

The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

The last line stopped me. God’s heart filled with pain? Do sinners have the power to make God hurt? Or is this saying something other than, “Every time you sin, God feels pain”?

The last book of the Bible says that there is no sorrow and pain in heaven for us. It doesn’t seem right that God who lives in heaven should feel pain, at least not the physical pain people feel when someone does something that hurts them. So I read these verses in a few other Bible versions. The New King James says:

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.

In 17 versions, only two of them mention pain; the others speak of grief. Is there a difference? I also wondered if “sorry” means “regret” and if it does, what does that say about the love of God? Does it mean that every time I sin He wishes I’d never been born?

I am not a Hebrew scholar but by doing my best, I found that “grief” as used in this passage is from root words that mean to carve and to torment. I can relate to this. When something happens to cause me grief, I feel as if someone cut something from my heart. The sense of loss is painful, but not so much like the pain of an injury; it is more an emotional distress.

I also looked up the word “sorry” and found that it has more to do with compassion than it does pain, more like the feeling Jesus had when He saw the lost multitudes like sheep without a shepherd. He was sorry for their sakes, not because they were hurting Him.

Before I became a Christian, when someone sinned I may have thought it was funny, or disgusting. I also might have felt angry or hurt, particularly if the sin was against me or someone that I cared about. However, after Christ came into my life, I noticed a difference. Now I usually feel sorry and have emotional distress for the sinner, not for myself. They have done a bad thing that will affect their relationship with God and with others. I feel sad for their sakes and have a compassion that torments my heart in that I didn’t want sin to happen in their lives. My grief is not about me, but about the sinner. I also grieve in the sense that there is a loss of purity and a brokenness that is created by that sin.

One or two verses should never form a person’s theology. I need to read the entire Bible to get the whole picture of God’s revelation of Himself. I particularly need to look at Jesus. Hebrews 1:3 says, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. . . .”

When I see Him, I see God cut to the heart when I sin, not so much because He is deeply offended and wounded, but because He has such great compassion and wants better things for me. He aches because I’ve fallen short.

In Genesis, God took action to save “righteous Noah” who had faith in Him, and his family. He destroyed the rest. At the cross, He took action to save all who place their faith in Him and in the redemptive work of His Son. Instead of a destructive flood, I experience the washing or cleansing of my life. He nails my old self to the cross with Christ and replaces it with a new nature. As that old self fades into oblivion, I experience His compassion. I also feel His feelings because He lives in me. Therefore, sin makes me sad and I grieve over it, both my own and that of others.

The flood and destruction in Genesis seem a horrible thing, yet these verses are not about what sinners do to God. They are about His holiness and how His emotions are touched by our unsaved condition. The rest of the Bible affirms that He cares more about me and how I live than He does about Himself. If He didn’t, there would be no sending of His Son, no offer of salvation by faith, and no hope of escaping judgment’s destruction.