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Do I love God as much as he loves me?  Am I as committed to his Name and his Glory as he is?  Am I as committed to following him as he is committed to having me follow him?  Do I love others the way God loves me?  Do I understand God according to his actual character?  In particular this week, do I understand (and imitate) God according to his Jealousy?

To strictly avoid re-preaching the excellently faithful sermon of Andy Stearns this past Sunday, let’s directly consider the implications and applications of understanding and living in light of God’s Jealousy.

Do I have any relationships in my life in which I have actually exhausted Jesus’s intention of 70 x 7 in forgiveness, patience, and steadfast love?  Humanly I want to demand that others treat me the “right way” (often confused in my heart as MY way) or I won’t give them my love.  And then I may even be tempted to treat them as my enemy.  To be sure, I have relationships in my life in which I have not and/or am not being treated the right way (this time meaning GOD’S way) and there are significant hurts.  But do I get to wash my hands and walk away?  Do I get to break the unity of the Spirit and not keep the peace?  Do I get to demand that they live in faithful obedience to the LORD?  Do I get to withhold love until they “get it right”?

Praise the LORD, this is not how God treats us as his children!  May we take greater care, caution, and consideration in how we relate to one another…as fellow church members…as parents/children/siblings…as spouses.  May the zeal that consumes us be a Godly Jealousy; a desire for righteousness that safeguards the rights, honor, and glory of God.  May we be patient, loving, kind, tender-hearted, bearing with one another, forgiving one another, serving in all humility, considering others more significant than ourselves.  May we rightly hold one another accountable to walking in a manner worthy of calling to which they have been called.  May we exhort one another toward genuine confession, repentance and faithful obedience to the Word of God.

Jealousy is to be reserved for relational matters, for covenantal commitments.  It is not to be wasted on the trivial.  We must continue to die to ourselves, continually giving ourselves over to the death of Christ so that the life of Christ may be manifested in us as well.  The gospel call for Christian living is a repeated cycle of dying and rising with Christ.  We have been called to suffer with/like him.  May be do so TOGETHER!