Love Is Not Jealous
Love Perfected: Love Is Not Jealous
If I have all faith, to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Love will make what we say, who we are and what we achieve of eternal significance. Without the love of God empowering our lives, we are a nobody, going nowhere and making a huge fuss about getting there!
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. Galatians 5:6 ESV
Years ago, when I was first married, we were staying with Linda’s mother in New Zealand. It was our first winter together and on the first cool day of winter, being the man of the house, I decided I would light the fire in the potbelly stove. I was eminently qualified to start fires because as a young child I almost burnt our house down at Illamo in PNG. From there I went on to gain my ‘Fire-Starting’ badge from the Lane Cove Boy Scouts. Unfortunately for me the wood, which had been kept outside, was damp. I tried to start the fire with a bit in paper and kindling. It smouldered for a bit but wouldn’t stay alight. Naturally, I concluded that a bit of petrol would get things going and fortuitously Linda’s mum kept some fuel in a jerry-can around the back of the house.
To understand what happened next, you have to understand something about 20-something males. They are a distinct breed. They are pretty well at the only stage of life where you have done almost nothing but are sure of virtually everything. Like most 20-something males, I was sure that the answer to any problem is more. That could be more food, more football, bigger engines, more games and of course if you want to make sure a fire starts you need more petrol. I know now, that to pour petrol on wood and light a fire is dangerous at the best of times. But to do it when the wood has already been alight and is hot, causes petrol to evaporate. To make it worse, when petrol evaporated in an enclosed space, like a potbelly stove, what you have is basically … a bomb.
You need to appreciate that Linda is in no way to blame for what happened next. She was upstairs in our bedroom. The first thing she knew about it was hearing the boom and feeling the house shake. She rushed downstairs to find a room filled with smoke and me sprawled on my back. Of course, she was full of sympathy, that is until she saw that I had lost all of my eye-lashes, eye-brows and a large portion of my hair. To add insult to injury, what there was of the fire had been blown out. I had all the fuel (faith) that I needed, in fact, I had more than what I needed, but because I didn't know how to apply it in wisdom (love), all my efforts amounted to nothing! The Bible teaches us that faith can move mountains, but if it’s not guided by love, it will dump those mountains in all sorts of useless or hurtful places.
Using more faith without love, like putting more petrol on a smouldering fire, is not going to make things any better. One of the qualities of the God kind of love is that it is ‘kind and not jealous’. It doesn’t envy, it does not get all steamed up when it sees others prospering.
“Love is kind and thoughtful, and is not jealous or envious;…” (1 Cor 13:4 Amplified)
The actual word used for kind means to be mild and benevolent, whereas jealous is best translated ‘boils over with envy’. The phrase, ‘love is kind and not jealous’ could be paraphrased ‘love is gentle when its been hard done by, rather than getting all riled up when it looks like you have missed out’. The word translated jealous literally means to ‘boil over’
The Bible talks about ‘Godly’ jealousy and a fleshly type of jealousy. A Godly jealous is to be zealous for God’s will in your life- His plans and His purposes. James said that ‘God jealously desires the spirit he has placed to live within us’ (James 4:5), meaning that we are rightly His, and God desires a relationship with us. Also, in 2 Cor 11: 2, Paul said ‘I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy’. This kind of jealously could be translated as ‘passionately, or intently interested in your well being’. This is not a selfish jealousy, but a keen interest in the spiritual well being of others. Put simply, Godly jealousy is a strong desire for the purposes of God.
Fleshly jealousy means to have passions stirred up out of self-interest. This can be for things that you have no right for or envying others who are doing well. It begrudges other people’s success and can even result in working against others.
In Acts 17:5-6 The jews became jealous of Paul's success in ministry, so they went about trying to destroy Paul and pull-down what God was doing through him.
Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women. But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas to bring them out to the crowd. Acts 17:5-6 NIV
When we know the love of God that is shed abroad on our hearts (Romans 5:6) we look at the success of others from a position of overflow in our own lives. Love doesn’t work on an emotional or spiritual deficit.
The person who doesn’t know the love of God is likely to see the success of others as highlighting their own failures. When someone else succeeds, it affects them by making them feel inferior. Lack of love fuels a sense of need, but worse it sees the answer to its own need as a limited resource that must be earned. If that’s the case, when someone else is getting blessed, we feel we’ve failed.
Children are especially vulnerable to jealousy concerning their siblings. Especially at Christmas time. As parents, we would go to great lengths to tally up all the presents our kids got so none of them would feel left out. We’d calculate the perceived value of each present, the numbers of presents, the comparative size of each present. We did this because we knew that when children are young and emotionally immature, they make comparisons. Isn’t it a shame when people can’t enjoy what God has blessed them with, because they are too busy comparing it with how God has blessed others?
Paul wrote in 1 Cor 13, ‘when I was a child I thought like a child’. Well, part of growing up spiritually is knowing and experiencing how much God loves us personally. We don’t need to live in love deficit. The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts. We can refuse envy and be excited when God blesses others, knowing that we are loved, we are blessed and we are free to love and bless others.
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