The Emotional Life of Our Lord (Crossway Short Classics) Paperback – 10 May 2022

I've been liking this series from Crossway Short Classics. They provide a snippet of a longer book from an influential Christian and talk about who the person was, what setting they were writing in or against, and an overview of the longer book. This encourages someone who may want to have more than your average taste for a book before committing one's self to the longer work.The opening of the book covers B.B. Warfield as a person what the writing in the rest of the book shows about Warfield - that he is both a great scholar and great preacher of God's Word. Having Sinclair Ferguson pen the Forward is a great choice to show that Warfield is not "just" a scholar. An interesting point that Ferguson points out is how much the fuller book is invested in citations and how well-read Warfield was. This was in a day and age when citations weren't just plopping them in from Logos or Zotero. What's interesting about that is that the passage from Warfield feels like a book that would exist in today's world is the "make me feel good about being a Christian" books where citation is low and rhetoric is more valued. In this short work, Warfield's command of both sets are on display and the purpose is to give a fuller understanding of who Jesus is and how He responded emotionally in His earthly ministry and what we can learn from that, change our lives to conform to that, and be in awe of the Man-God Jesus Christ who is our Chief example.Warfield covers a number of emotions such as love, compassion, anger, sadness, grief, indignation, and a few others. While love is where Warfield starts and rightly so, he makes some really interesting observations such as the Synoptic Gospels only attributing "love" to Jesus just one time but "compassion" often. Whereas John doesn't use "compassion" of Jesus once but "love" many, many times. This is where knowing the history of the person writing and when they are writing is important and it's something that I don't think the introduction hits on as fully as it should. Warfield writing during the response to the liberal movement of Christianity in the early 20th century and the desire to respond to "God is love...and that's all He is" causes this topic to be much needed. Warfield writes in response to "is love" is seen here but not from a theology standpoint from a viewpoint of what does the Man-God Jesus Christ love and how does He love is the topic at hand.The answering of "and that's all He is" is covered then with the other emotions, especially anger and grief. Warfield really drills down on the point of the writers of the Gospel observing and then writing down Jesus responding to certain people in anger. This is not just the Pharisees mind you. Warfield speaks of the compassion Jesus has for sinners but also the anger for those, for example, He knows will not follow His command to tell anyone and sends them away in anger. At the very least this provides a fuller picture of who Jesus is and not some Hallmark, always with a slight smile Jesus we can invent in our heads. That path clearly leads us down the same paths the liberals of the 20th century wanted to take but were foiled by people like Warfield. It's the same path current day "God accepts everyone no matter what" liberal churches use when co-opting the Gospel message. Warfield's discussion on the grief of Jesus is superb here; his discussion on Jesus' grief for His mother's wailing at the foot of the cross is a great showing of his juxtaposition of scholar and preacher.This is a short book like the rest in the series but gives you a great glance at this brilliant man of God we owe so much to. It's not a book that hand holds you with self-help slogans but gives focus to an element of Scripture that is given so that you might continue in your sanctification process. Let us conform our hearts to the heart of Jesus Christ who feels and emotes and responds but without sin. That is our goal. Final Grade - A

I had read this essay years ago in his Selected Shorter Writings, but decided to read it again in this new addition to the Crossway Short Classics series. This whole series is well-edited, nicely formatted, and includes forewords by contemporary writers, like Sinclair Ferguson for this work. Warfield turns his great intellect and learning to examining Jesus’ humanity, specifically his possession of the full range of human emotions, yet without sin being present or expressed in them. Ferguson puts it well, saying that “this essay should help you re-center your life and faith on Jesus Christ himself” (pg. 13). Warfield explores Jesus’ mercy, moral judgements, anger, sorrow, joy, and even physical reactions expressing human emotions. Each part is Biblically supported and examined, and is, as you might guess, quite well expressed by this giant of theologians.Here is a small taste of his writing that really struck me: “It is death that is the object of his wrath, and behind death him who has the power of death and whom he has come into the world to destroy. Tears of sympathy may fill his eyes, but this is incidental. His soul is held by rage: and he advances to the tomb, in Calvin’s words again, ‘as a champion who prepares for conflict.’ The raising of Lazarus thus becomes not an isolated marvel but --as indeed it is presented throughout the whole narrative (compare especially vv. 24-26)--a decisive instance and open symbol of Jesus’s conquest of death and hell. What John does for us in this particular statement is to uncover to us the heart of Jesus as he wins for us our salvation. Not in cold unconcern but in flaming wrath against the foe, Jesus smites in our behalf. He has not only saved us from the evils that oppress us; he has felt for and with us in our oppression, and under the impulse of these feelings has wrought our redemption.” (pgs. 66-67).Highly recommended!

I am a conservative, Reformed Presbyterian, so you should know that B.B. Warfield is definitely in my lineage. I like what Warfield stood for, and I think he was important to the various faithful and believing denominations of Presbyterianism.Having said that, the man was a very cerebral writer. His work is dense, rewarding, and penetrating, but can be somewhat inaccessible. He writes about the topics that were very important to the time, and he lived and wrote immediately prior to J. Gresham Machen, but I can imagine that Machen was very influenced by Warfield, and I can almost hear a Warfieldian accent when reading Machen. 2 Peter 3:15-17 comes to mind.It seems sort of double minded to write about the emotional life of Christ in such a cerebral style, and that is the ONLY reason to take a star off for this review. It was somewhat jarring and felt difficult to access for that reason. It's a good book, and muses a good deal about something that I imagine modern Christians haven't spent a lot of time on. It would be easy to think of Christ entirely in His divine nature, without considering that our emotions may be a large part of what is meant by being created "in the image of God." This vision of our Lord imagines the Christ as an uncaring, vending machine of prayer answering. But the Bible does not support this view. Throughout the Bible, Jesus's actions are accompanied with words indicating felt emotion. Warfield dives into the meanings of these words from the original language. Having laid the groundwork in this fashion, Warfield proceeds to draw out what this says about the life of our Lord. Dense, slow-going, and rewarding.Thinking of Jesus apart from His emotions might lead us to not trust Him with our needs. But this is contrary to 1 Peter 5:7, and that is the reward of this book.The printing of the book is compact, and I've received lots of compliments from attendees to our Bible study. The pages are easy to turn, sturdy, and of a good quality. The cover of the book is of a thicker material than the pages, with matte finish and golden colored foil lettering. It also contains front and back flaps, which allows you to save your place throughout your reading.I think this book probably deserves a spot on your shelf, though, especially if you're light on titles by Warfield.

I first heard of B.B Warfield in Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, where author Dane Ortlund quotes another of Warfield’s books, The Person and Work of Christ, several times. I love going back to original sources, so when this book popped up on my Amazon feed, I was intrigued. Originally published in 1912, The Emotional Life of Our Lord seems to have disappeared off the radar, much to our loss.This book is the first in a series called “short classics,” and it’s aptly named. Being over a century old, it naturally feels more like classic literature than like modern pop culture theology, but it’s not a difficult read. The book itself is quite small (see pictures!), but is beautifully done with thicker covers and pages than I expected. The actual text is only 85 pages, plus a short forward, intro, and biography at the beginning.Within those pages, Warfield works his way through the emotions Jesus displays in the gospels: compassion, grief, love, anger, joy, anguish, and all their variations. Each one has multiple Bible passages to back it up. As he begins to draw the book to a close, Warfield makes careful note that he is not trying to assign a particular temperament to Jesus, instead allowing him to speak for himself (see Matthew 11:29). Instead, he concludes that having our Savior experience and display human emotions makes him even more fully the perfect high priest that he’s described as being in the book of Hebrews. “He has not only saved us from the evils that oppress us; he has felt for and with us in our oppression, and under the impulse of these feelings has wrought out our redemption.” It's an excellent reminder.

B. B. Warfield was one of the leading American theologians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I had not heard of Warfield until I read this short meditation on Christ's emotional life. Warfield argues that it is important to recognize Christ's humanity, as well as His divinity, and that is a way by which we can relate to Christ. He examines several of Christ's emotional traits that are revealed in the Gospel's--compassion, love, indignation, anger, sorrow, and joy. He also discusses Christ's individuality as a means of conclusion. Warfield's writing is clear and accessible, but he also challenges you to think. This volume is part of Crossway's "short classics" series which presents important essays on various aspects of Christian thought from the Reformation to the twentieth century. The books are pocket size, with readable type. The book has an introduction which explains the work's significance, a pithy biography of the author (this should be longer, I'd like to see Warfield's thought placed in some context), and a scripture index. The original essay had copious notes, most of these are not included unless there is a direct reference in the text. The book also has a pleasantly designed cover that matches other volumes in the series. This book encourages me to take a look at other volumes in the series. They seem to be good for individual study, devotional reading, or for Bible study discussion groups.