A precious new baby is born and taken home from the hospital, and other siblings in the home begin to show animosity toward the newborn. Two young girls are out shopping with their mother who buys one of them a beautiful new dress. Three sons who all love sports are excited about an upcoming ballgame, but the father says only one of them can go with him to the game. A husband is out for an evening with his wife, and they run into a friend who seems to be flirting with his wife. All of these and many more situations have inspired jealousy since the beginning of time.
The result is what we know as jealousy, and it often creates huge problems. What is jealousy? The dictionary describes it as being “fearful that a person one loves may love or prefer someone else.” It is a fear of being rejected and another being accepted. We all want to feel that no one else is loved or preferred above us by someone else. It brings about a feeling of loss and being “left out in the cold alone.”
Jealousy has broken up families, caused people to murder and commit all sorts of heinous crimes. The Bible addresses such jealousy in Proverbs 6:34, “Jealousy is the rage of a man.” Rage throws a person into violent anger, and he acts upon it. The wise man said that “Jealousy is as cruel as the grave” (Song of Solomon 8:6). These reactions to our feelings of jealousy are normal under certain situations, and most do not take time to evaluate the situation and determine if there actually is a problem, or if, perhaps, the problem is within us.
However, jealousy is not always bad. After all, our God is jealous! He Himself declared so in Exodus 20:3, “Thou shall have no other gods before Me …for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.” Ezekiel 36:5 says, “Surely in the fire of My jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen.”
Therefore, we see that jealousy can be a good thing if handled right. Paul told the Corinthian brethren, “I am jealous over you with godly jealousy for I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2). He was jealous! Because of his work and effort, he had won them to Christ, and he loved them so much that he did not want them to go back to preferring Satan’s ways over God’s ways.
Paul spoke of this again in 1 Corinthians 10:21ff, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; you cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?” In simple terms, Paul told them that if they continued to partake of worldliness, God would become jealous, and there would be a price to pay for God would win. Jealousy is a good thing when it is used to keep one faithful. As Christians, we belong to Christ and have made our vows to Him, and we cannot continue to do those things that please the devil, for he is in opposition to good.
In worldly matters, we could frequently rid ourselves of jealousy if we could do what Paul continued to say to the Corinthian brethren in verse 24, “Let no man seek his own but each his neighbor’s good.” Commentator Burton Coffman penned, “This requires that every action will be weighed in light of its effect upon one’s fellow Christians. The purely selfish Christian is by definition non-Christian.” If we made a sincere effort to seek good for all, a lot of jealousy could be avoided.
Do not let jealousy ruin your life and the lives of those around you. Be careful to examine the circumstances that bring jealousy to fruition. Determine to consider others and what has caused them to act in such a way as to cause jealousy. Perhaps we are at fault in the matter! God will help us get past the jealousy if we do it His way!
