Ezekiel 40:28-41:26 / James 4 / Psalm 118:19-29 / Proverbs 28:3-5
Many of us have struggled with jealousy. If you haven’t, that’s great! Jealousy, envy: wanting what someone else has. These are all common sins, and most people deal with them at some level. Let’s define jealousy and envy according to Merriam Webster.
Jealousy means, “Feeling or showing an unhappy or angry desire to have what someone else has.”
Envy means, “The feeling of wanting to have what someone else has.”
Scripture also talks about God being jealous for His people and the relationship He has with them. I’m going to share a verse with you and then we’ll define God’s jealousy to see how it compares with human jealousy.
James 4:5, in the New Living Translation, (NLT), says: “Do you think the scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the Spirit He has placed within us should be faithful to Him.” The same verse in the New International Version, (NIV), says it this way: “Or do you think Scripture says without reason that He jealously longs for the Spirit He has caused to dwell in us?” James 4:5, in the King James Version, (KJV) reads, “Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?”
The New International Version translates the Greek word phthonos (fthon-os) as jealously. While the New Living Translation uses the word passionate. And the King James Version as envy.
So, let’s check the Strong’s Concordance on James 4:5. (This is important because the Bible translation that The Strong’s Concordance is based upon is the KJV.) Strong’s defines the Greek word phthonos (fthon-os) to mean envy. Based on these simple definitions; passion, jealousy, and envy; it appears that both jealousy and envy may be used for either evil or good.
How so? How can a word that we have been taught is negative, be used in a positive sense? Word meanings shift when Holy Spirit gets involved. This will not apply to all words, but it does apply here.
When we surrendered to Jesus Christ, making Him Savior and Lord, we committed ourselves to Him fully. However, there is a process of total commitment that takes place over our entire lives. We are not able to give Him everything inside us at once; i.e. all our attitudes, our past, our habits, our sin, etc. All these things have been covered by Jesus’s sacrifice, but we must work to renew our minds, so we believe we operate in what we’ve been given.
God knows our surrender and our becoming holy is a process. Some of us readily submit everything to Him as we are made aware of it, and some of us are more reluctant. That reluctance may be because we don’t want to see the true state of our hearts. Or it may be that once we’ve seen it, we are not prepared to change the way we think and act.
Our Father in heaven sees what sin does to us. He sees the pain sin causes; He sees the destruction and sorrow that are the result of sin. He wants us to be free because He loves us so much and it grieves Him to see us suffer. That is why He is jealous and envious that the Spirit within us would overtake our humanity. He wants us to be changed into His image so we can have more and more intimate fellowship with Him.
His death brought us life, and it also brought us an opportunity to live in love and community with God through His sacrifice. That’s why God is jealous for you. He wants you all to Himself!
