If God is perfectly content, why does he suffer for us and worry about us?

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A very human answer is that while God may not ‘need’ us, He selflessly loves us - which means He wills the best for us.

I know my earthly father loves me and worries about me. How much more would our Father in heaven?

Yet I would add that my own words and feelings are entirely inadequate to describe those of God, and I am not sure if we can accurately describe contentedness in a divine sense - when we are usually only able to grasp it fleetingly. I would sooner focus on magnifying the love I am able to muster.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
Wouldn’t that imply that he isn’t perfectly content?
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God doesn’t worry! He chooses to suffer because He has given us free will without which we would be incapable of unselfish love but it also enables us to be selfish and inflict unnecessary suffering on others. By sharing our suffering He liberates us from evil and demonstrates that if necessary we should be prepared to suffer and die for others because love can never be destroyed. In heaven nothing affects God’s joy because He knows goodness triumphs over evil but here, as Pascal pointed out, Jesus is in agony until the end of the world…
 
Lily_Bernans said:
Someone who is Love itself wants to share that love. Love always wants to share, not keep to itself.
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Indeed - even when it leads to self-sacrifice. God shares His power with us and enables us to defy His Will and reject His love because otherwise we would be incapable of the highest form of love. We cannot have it both ways!
 
David_Alexander said:
A very human answer is that while God may not ‘need’ us, He selflessly loves us - which means He wills the best for us.

I know my earthly father loves me and worries about me. How much more would our Father in heaven?

Yet I would add that my own words and feelings are entirely inadequate to describe those of God, and I am not sure if we can accurately describe contentedness in a divine sense - when we are usually only able to grasp it fleetingly. I would sooner focus on magnifying the love I am able to muster.
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Welcome to the forum, David. 🙂

👍 You are right. Jesus has demonstrated how much He loves us and in that context nothing else matters. I always think of those wonderful words of St Paul:
31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep). No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Romans 8:31-39
 
tonyrey said:
The OP!
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I was questioning the premise that God suffers or worries. Can anyone really say that God suffers or worries about anything? I don’t think he does. Anything I’ve ever read says the divine nature can not suffer. And worrying is something fallible humans do, but not God who knows everything.

God acts to save us because he loves us, not because he is worried. For God to worry would mean that he doesn’t know something. Yet, since he is omnipotent he already knows what will happen.
 
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