At a Christian youth rally, I observed something that gave me pause. As one of the worship sessions was winding down, the worship leader led us in the song “There Is None like You,” which is meant to highlight God’s incomparable greatness:
There is none like you
No one else can touch my heart like you do
I can search for all eternity long
And find there is none like you
Near the end, he declared that God wanted to sing this song to all the teenagers who filled the room that evening, which meant the object of worship suddenly shifted from the incomparable greatness of our God to a group of teenagers.
I felt my blood pressure rising, but more surprising was that as this song was sung to them, many of the teenagers in the room cried. No doubt, they craved love and affirmation—the worship leader rightly recognized this need, but his approach was flawed. It manipulated the emotions of susceptible teenagers rather than addressing them with honesty and care. Had a poll been taken that evening, the leader’s actions might have received overwhelming support, but popularity doesn’t justify compromising truth. Just because it felt right in that moment didn’t make it right.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a preacher who loves good music, and I’ve been to many worship events throughout my life that featured gifted speakers, vocalists, musicians, and sound engineers (praise God for such people!). Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed a few instances where a soothing tongue, a catchy bass riff, and the right ambience took over an entire room.
Our emotions play a significant role in the Christian life. It’s undeniable that throughout Scripture, God calls us to feel certain things—love, joy, sorrow, fear, anguish, and hope. The Psalms, for example, is a rich tapestry of human emotions expressed before God, showing that our feelings aren’t to be suppressed; they should be appropriately expressed through worship, prayer, and song.
However, due to the rise of the postmodern self and therapeutic culture, emotions have become not just part of the human experience but the central authority in people’s lives. This makes evangelism challenging today, specifically as it relates to contextualization—connecting the changeless gospel to our changing times.
Contextualization and Our Emotions
Contextualization is the practice of adapting the gospel to a specific culture in a way that makes it understandable and relevant. It allows the timeless truth of God’s Word to resonate with people in their unique cultural settings, helping us reach as many as possible for Christ as we “become all things to all people” (1 Cor. 9:22). But contextualization comes with a risk: the temptation to prioritize cultural relevance or emotional appeal over the integrity of biblical truth.
Instead of letting God’s Word shape our emotions, we allow our emotions to dictate our beliefs. This idea that our feelings can define what’s true has become an increasing problem in our culture, where the way someone feels often takes precedence over reality. Yet our emotions aren’t the enemy; they’re a vital part of who we are. Our emotions are created by God and meant to be sanctified by his grace.
Instead of letting God’s Word shape our emotions, we allow our emotions to dictate our beliefs.
However, when feelings take the lead, our capacity to discern objective truth diminishes. We trust our emotional responses more than we trust God’s revealed Word. Compromise looms, especially when contextualization aims to make the gospel more palatable to ever-changing postmodern sensibilities.
We face pressure to downplay the more difficult aspects of Christian teaching so we’ll remain culturally relevant and emotionally appealing. If we publicly condemn certain sins in our culture, we risk losing our good standing. This creates a powerful temptation to address people’s emotional needs and unquestionably affirm their lifestyle choices with something less demanding than the gospel, which is a message that always calls for faith, repentance, and humble obedience.
This raises a critical question: How can we contextualize the gospel to engage the emotions without compromising what’s true?
Turn Emotions into Holy Affections
One of my heroes, Jonathan Edwards, speaks in his work The Religious Affections of “holy affections” to convey that our emotions, when properly aligned with God’s Word, are meant to draw us deeper into communion with the Lord.
Edwards’s insight is helpful in our reflection on contextualization and compromise. Rather than viewing emotions as obstacles to the truth, we should see them as an integral part of the Christian life, but only when they’re brought into alignment with God’s will. The solution isn’t to suppress emotions but to allow God’s Word to shape how we feel about all matters of life, including our relationships, values, and sense of right and wrong.
Emotions, when properly aligned with God’s Word, are meant to draw us deeper into communion with the Lord.
When we allow our feelings to be informed by Scripture, they become holy affections. These are emotions purified by grace, ones that lead us to love what God loves and hate what he hates. A heart governed by such holy affections has the spiritual capacity to honor truth, love mercy, and pursue true biblical justice, rather than foolishly embrace the trendy forms of pseudojustice we’ve been pressured to uphold as a culture.
The challenge, then, is to let God’s Word have the final say in shaping our thinking and our feelings. When we share the gospel with others, we should never shy away from our message’s emotional effects. The gospel is meant to stir the soul, convict the heart, and bring both joy and sorrow as our sin is confronted and God’s grace assures us of forgiveness and the promise of new life found in Christ. But our emotions must be grounded in Scripture’s truth and not shaped by the cultural winds of the day or our desire to feel good about ourselves.
In a world where feelings often hold more weight than facts, the church faces a unique challenge in maintaining fidelity to God’s Word while reaching people in their cultural contexts. If emotions—ours or those of others—become the final arbiter of truth, we’ll quickly lose our way. Christians are called to submit every part of our lives, including our emotions, to Christ’s authority. When our affections are grounded in Scripture’s truth, we’ll be able to better navigate the complexities of contextualization without compromising the gospel.
The Gospel Coalition