I grew up in a legalistic church that confined my ability to see God through eyes of hope, grace, and relentless compassion. Instead of heavenly light and wispy, fluffy clouds hovering around Him, I always saw Him looming in gray storms that were banking on my failure.
Exhausting, I know.
Naturally, it was easy for me to misconstrue the idea of God’s jealousy as I erred on the side of fear and negativity. But as I got older, as life got harder, as I made bigger mistakes and noticed that God continued to stick around, I slowly—slowly—relinquished my grip on the notion of a cynical God. Instead, I recognized that He is all things good, even when things like jealousy seem bad, for Him, they are forever good.
Maybe you grew up with a church background similar to mine, and maybe deep, deep down, your perception of God leaves you unsteady, unsure that He’ll catch you if you fall hard. If that’s where you are today, I am so sorry. My heart hurts for those who’ve walked down the same red carpet and blue stained-glass church corridors that I did, the buildings that held onto judgment and shut out love.
But as you heal, as you search so desperately for a good, good God, take a look at three ways to understand the heroic jealousy of a forever-devoted God:
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1. Recognize where jealousy comes from—even from a sinful, finite human place.
While God isn’t limited to the selfless, often sin-driven methods behind human jealousy, it’s easier to understand the jealousy of God when you understand the way jealousy functions within human confines.
To understand that, you must pinpoint the origins of human jealousy. Sure, jealousy can be present in many areas, such as romance, money, prestige, etc., but at the end of the day, jealousy originates from a deep craving, a deep desire to obtain something.
And while humans will never master the perfect way to desire something without crossing sneaky, selfish, sometimes vengeful methods, God can wildly crave something, or rather, someone, in the purest form. He doesn’t need sneaky plans or self-centered recklessness to want something with all His heart.
He can just want something with everything in Him in the best of ways, and that something will always be you—flawed and all.
2. Validate the beauty behind some of these “harsher” Old Testament ideas of jealousy.
The Old Testament can be a strange, confusing, seemingly harsh realm, and honestly, few people know how to view Genesis through Malachi through the same lenses of grace and love that we see Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
However, if God and Son are one, then the God of the Old Testament esteems and grants the same compassion as Jesus did while on earth.
When Deuteronomy 4:23-24 says, “So watch yourselves, that you do not forget the covenant of the Lord your God which He made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which the Lord your God has commanded you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (NAS), it seems to come with some heat—the you’re-in-trouble kind of heat.
But, if you recall that fire purifies both body and soul, then it’s safe to say that God’s jealousy serves as purification — the strengthening of your very core. In the name of a seemingly selfish jealousy, God’s end goal is to bring complete healing to who you are.
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3. Identify yourself as His.
This one sounds like a no-brainer, like a “Nah, duh. I’ve known that since birth,” but grasping a bigger, better kind of jealousy is only possible when we recognize just who God is jealous for. And sure, it’s easy to say the answer is, “me.” You have to take it a step further, a step deeper, a step closer to your true identity.
You are God’s child, His beloved, the chosen, the set apart, the redeemed, the beautiful, the hand-crafted creature that God gave everything up to chase after. He let His Son die so He could spend eternity wooing you to Himself—with no guarantee that each of us will in any way, shape, or form return such a love.
When you see yourself as something so priceless, jealousy not only makes sense in light of possession, but in light of love.
And in light of love, God’s raw, real, true jealousy holds no injustice—only an undying devotion.
Again, if you’ve experienced any church culture that gave God the sort of rep that made you scared of Him rather than fearful of Him in complete, reverent adoration, the concept of a holy and jealous God seems risky—and risky isn’t for most people.
Yet, when the risk involves a guaranteed reward—an eternal sort of reward that invites us into the presence of God’s glory—it's a risk worth taking. Often, when we find a risk worth taking, the risk is trustworthy. And in a world where skepticism reigns supreme, it’s refreshing to know that we have a good, good God who is jealous for us in the best sort of way.
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Originally published Tuesday, 15 June 2021.
