Pondering the jealousy of God has been very laborious for me. The struggle seems to begin with my own idea of a jealous God — an angry, insecure dictator wielding excessive force over His unwilling subjects. Most of us would agree that this attitude is wrong, and that God is perfect and upright. How then do we reconcile the jealousy of God with His uprightness?
Let me suggest that we are starting at the wrong place. We have started looking first at our own character, experience, and ideas — rather than from God’s perspective. We must remember that we are sinful and prone to error, whereas, God is upright and makes no mistake. Furthermore, we were created by God for His glory; God was created by no one, and therefore, deserves all glory. Is not the creator of a machine given credit and glory for making the machine? The machine itself is not given credit and glory for its own existence and character, is it?
This last analogy of the creator getting credit for the machine would work quite well to explain God’s jealousy for His glory, except that a slight piece is missing, we humans…are not machines. We were made in the image of God and, therefore, have a free will, senses of right and wrong, reasoning abilities, creativity, and relational abilities. God created man so that He could have a relationship with man; God did not make man as a machine that had no choice but to carry out His imposing will. We were created by God not only for His glory, but because He wanted to love us, and we, being made in the image of God, were able to reciprocate God’s love.
Now we must understand, we were designed and created by God for His glory, and to be loved by Him. We are most joyful when we are reciprocating this love. When we begin to give glory to ourselves or things other than God, we lose our joyfulness for we have ceased to fulfill our designed purpose. A car which is designed to be driven – cannot make waffles, can it? Or a man designed by God, which is designed to give God glory and receive His love and then reciprocate that love – cannot give glory to himself or some created being, can he? Or rather, should man glorify himself or a created object? What are the consequences when man does this?
When man glorifies himself, he tries to destroy his purpose for which he was designed — to glorify God. He becomes prideful, arrogant, and considers himself God. Soon, the man begins deciding what is right and wrong for himself. But this is God’s world, and when man doesn’t fulfill the purpose for which he was designed, the created order suffers.
When God is glorified, humanity fulfills its purpose. He is exalted because He deserves it, and we are humbled because we realize that we don’t exist outside of Him. This results in fulfillment of our purpose — glorifying God. We can have joy when we glorify and love God because that is our purpose.
What does this have to do with the jealousy of God? The progenitor of the human race, Adam, chose to reject the purpose of glorifying and loving God, and refused to receive God’s love. Thereby, all mankind has inherited a self-glorifying nature. We became separated from God by our rebellion — glorifying ourselves over the Creator. Yet, God was jealous for us to fulfill our purpose and have a full life in glorifying and loving Him and accepting His love.
Hence, God sent His only Son to this world to die for our rebellious nature. Jesus died that we would once again be able to love and glorify God. The only requirement is that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” (1 Corinthians 10:31).