God has always suffered ever since the point that humans began suffering and sinning.

The whole point of telling people not to grieve the Holy Spirit is because there are actions that cause God grief.  Furthermore, when God’s people are afflicted, then God is afflicted.  In fact, the idea that humans experience frustration and emotional painful pangs due to circumstances while God is above such things is precisely backwards, if the Bible is true.  The reason we groan “in the pains of childbirth” waiting for the resurrection world is precisely because God allows us to participate in his own frustration.  God is engaged and affected by fallen reality.  If it were not for His presence with us, we would be detached stoics.

Of course, God’s suffering takes on a new dimension in the incarnation.  Through the humanity of Jesus God suffered, bled, and died in a new way–one that accomplished our redemption.

But the important point here is that the incarnation did not obscure God’s nature, but perfectly revealed the character of God.  If God were incapable of suffering then the incarnation would be misleading.  That is totally backward.  And even though Jesus has entered resurrection life ahead of us, he still suffers with us.  Jesus did not suffer instead of God. Jesus and God the Son are not two different persons.  Rather, God the Son, Jesus, suffered through the humanity that he assumed.

This fact is both revealed in the Bible, and part of the unique offense of Christianity.  All the Christological heresies of the early church were attempts to protect God’s “transcendance” from being vulnerable to physical reality.  The whole doctrine of the incarnation is intended to cut off these non-christian metaphysical delusions.

The only way that theologians have found to evade the Bible’s clear teaching is to come up with a way of saying that the Bible teaches false doctrines that require a sophisticated theologian to correct (see Gerstner, for example).  Contrary to John Calvin, God does not “lisp” and require us to read the Institutes to correct his lisping.  God reveals himself clearly.  You should put your faith in Him.