You know what it is like when humanly we are jealous. It so consumes us that the very person we are jealous about, the very person we loved, we now hate. It’s self-centred jealousy, because it’s about us, how we feel, how we don’t have what we want.
The consecrated heart is free from this jealousy. Yet it also has experienced a jealousy that many don’t understand.
God has it. He is jealous.
God’s jealousy is so utterly different and utterly beautiful, it will blow you away. James knows it.
“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us[b]? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.” (James 4 v 4-6)
It’s a strange concept to get our heads around; God being a jealous God. It’s actually a thought that perhaps we’d rather not think about, because it could be offensive or too confusing. Why?
Because everywhere else in the Bible, jealousy when not referring to God is negative. We’re told not to be jealous. Jealousy leads us into wrong thoughts, wrong actions. And yet God is regarded as a jealous God and this is supposed to be seen as a good thing.
But this is because God’s jealousy is so different to ours. There’s a bad type of jealousy and a godly type. We as humans experience a jealousy that to be honest is rather an ugly trait. It’s a jealousy that unites itself with envy.
It’s so different from godly jealousy. We see a glimpse of godly jealousy when Paul writes to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 11). He says to them that he is jealous over them with a godly jealousy, because he promised them to one husband, to Christ, and now they were being led astray and Paul is upset with them, angered by their behaviour, but in a good way, it’s out of such love for them, that he wants them to be completely dedicated to Christ, for their sakes. He’s jealous that they are turning from Christ. His heart is consecrated and he is operating in the jealousy from God.
It is an angered love, and it stays loving. It’s not about him. It’s about them.
Godly jealousy remains loving whereas bad jealousy kills love.
He is wanting the best for you. He is wanting intimacy, so that when you go the way of the world, the way of worldly wisdom, He is jealous, but it’s not self-centred, it’s all about you. It’s because He wants the best for you. The greek word for jealous, zelos, means burning heat. So intense is God’s love for us. It’s passionate, and cannot bear to see our hearts being drawn to other things.
How can we respond, how can we heed what James is saying?
How do we do this life? How do we live up to that devotion to God and not the world? Are we a lost cause? Within our desire for consecration will we ever know this?
‘But he gives more grace’ v6.
James quotes Proverbs 3:34 “He mocks proud mockers but shows favour to the humble and oppressed.”
He gives grace to those who recognise their own frailty and weaknesses. To those who end up at the cross.
And God says he is ‘YOUR God’. I am the Lord your God – Ex 20
There’s this intimacy here. And it’s because of this intimacy that ‘YOUR God’ went to the cross. He gave himself so that the jealousy he has over us, when we befriend the world, doesn’t lead him to destroy us or hate us or kill us, like bad jealousy would, no his jealousy takes him to the cross where he dies for the one that rejects him.
The consecrated heart knows this. It has experienced the angered love of God that stays loving.
Missions Paul 