Part IX - God is Jealous for You

A God Who Pursues His People

Despite our knowledge of God’s unrelenting love, we are all too quick to offer our love and devotion to every conceivable idol that might please us for a moment, and we forsake our God.

The Lord is infinite in size, power, and holiness, yet He also sets His affections upon us. He is not indifferent or calloused to our idolatrous hearts, nor has He washed His hands of mankind. Instead, He perseveres in His love for us, and He is jealous of our affections.

Nevertheless, man has a natural inclination to flee from God — clinging to the empty pleasures and powerless idols of a fallen world. Though the Lord pursues us, He will not share our affections with petty idols — whether these idols come in the form of mythical gods, golden statues, or worldly pursuits. He alone is worthy of our praise, honor, and glory.

Atop Mount Sinai, God commanded Moses: “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exod 34:14). Some may ask how the sovereign God of the universe could possibly experience jealousy over man’s affections.

The Scriptures reveal that God’s jealousy is compelled by both His love and holiness.

God is jealous over us, because He loves us. A truly loving husband could never callously shrug at his wife’s wayward affections. Instead, he demands that she be faithful to Him. Covenantal love requires jealousy. God’s jealousy over mankind’s affections led Him to endure the Cross.

God is also jealous over us, because of His holiness. He demands that His creation be restored to its original status, which was “very good.” We must realize that the supremacy of God above all other things is so firmly established that He has a right to demand our affection.

The jealousy of God could be compared to the gravitational pull of the sun. The earth’s survival absolutely depends upon the sun’s unrelenting gravity. No one questions the sun’s right to draw the entire solar system to itself. After all, the sun is awesome in magnitude and glorious in power. If its gravitational force ever failed, then the earth and its inhabitants would be slung off of its orbit into a perilously dark universe. Everyone and everything would quickly perish. 

The jealousy of God, which seeks to pull the hearts of men to Himself, functions in much the same way. He is awesome in magnitude and glorious in power. He jealously pursues His people and draws them into the pathway of life. But if His jealousy over mankind’s affections was ever extinguished, then we too would be lost forever into a dark and perilous fate. Thankfully, God refuses to surrender our fates to eternal darkness.