In a recent post I argued that God is not a jealous God, even though He said He was. I am either the world’s greatest heretic, or I am confident that I know who my Father is! How can I say God is not jealous when it’s right there in black and white in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 6? Because I have learned to filter what I read in the Bible through Jesus and His finished work. Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). Don’t you know that Jesus loved us and died for us while we were still idol-worshipping sinners (Rms 5:8)? That doesn’t look like jealousy to me!
Rest assured that God never changes. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8). But judging from the feedback I’ve received, some of you are having trouble wrapping your heads around the idea that God can change the way He relates to us without changing His nature. Yet there are many examples in the Bible of God acting differently in different circumstances. Most notably, God changes the way He relates to us in covenant. If this puzzles you, look at the table below which compares God’s behavior before and after Mt Sinai (when the 10 commandments were given):
God’s Behavior Before and After Mt Sinai
| Before: Covenant of Grace (unmerited favor) | After: Covenant of Law-Keeping (merited favor) |
| Cain kills his brother and God protects him (Gen 4:15) | A man picks up sticks on the Sabbath and God says “kill him” (Nu 15:32-36) |
| The Israelites cry out to God about their hardships and He delivers them (Ex 3:7-8) | The Israelites complain about their hardships and God sends fire and kills them (Nu 11:1-3) |
| The Israelites complain about the Egyptians and God delivers them (Ex 14:11-12, 21ff) | The Israelites complain about the Canaanites and 10 are immediately struck down; the rest are condemned to die in the wilderness (Nu 14:26-37) |
| The Israelites grumble about the bitter water and God gives them good water (Ex 15:22-25) | The Israelites grumble about the bad food and God strikes them with a plague killing many (Nu 11:4-10, 31-34) |
| The Israelites whine about the lack of food and water and God feeds them supernaturally (Ex 16,17) | The Israelites whine about the lack of food and water and God sends a plague of snakes that kills many (Nu 21:4-6) |
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Doesn’t it strike you as odd that a loving God acts one way one time, but a completely different way another? If it does, then you’ve never raised children. Go find a loving parent and ask them, “Did you spank your kids when they were little? Do you still spank them now that they’re grown?” Do you see? The same loving parent relates to their children differently depending on how the children wish to relate to them. Under the old covenant, God chose to restrain His heart of love towards the Children of Israel in order that they might see the dangers of sin and recognize their need for a Savior.
God has always loved us with an everlasting, and therefore, unconditional love. He blessed Abraham and told him, “I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendents” (Gen 17:7). Even while the Israelites were under the temporary law-keeping covenant, God’s true and unchanging nature would occasionally be detected by prophets like Jeremiah (31:3) and Isaiah (54:10) – not to mention David who lived as if the old covenant wasn’t as real to Him as God’s loving-kindness (Ps 51:1, 63:3,KJV). This is why God said of David, “Now there’s a man who knows my heart.”
That old covenant – the one where God chose to make His love conditional on the Israelites’ performance – is long gone. We live under a new and better covenant where the heart of God is clearly seen in the way He relates to us. And how does He relate? Through the pure and unqualified grace that comes to us through Jesus Christ. If you want to know how much your heavenly Father loves you, look to Jesus who died for you and now lives for you.
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Related posts:
- Does God kill babies?
- Is God’s love unconditional?
- The badness of David vs the goodness of God
Another great article! I can’t tell you how much I learn from you addressing the hard questions that so many avoid and simply don’t take the time to answer. I have been thinking lately about why God came up with the Law for the Israelites in the first place. Correct me if I am wrong but this is what I have been thinking. God began this whole thing relating to us (Adam and Eve) the way He wanted. Adam chose another way to relate to God when he made the choice to know or chose right and wrong, good and evil, for himself. This decision changed the dynamic of man’s relationship with God and the way God related to man. MAN’S choice…not God’s. Then as this choice brought destruction into the world, man couldn’t clean up his mess so God would chose individuals to empower to lead mankind CONTINUALLY back to Himself. Here is what I read. God gets to the point where He has delivered the Hebrews out of Egypt and He calls them to Himself once again. As a nation they respond by telling Moses that they are afraid to come near God so they ask Moses to go for them and talk to Him and tell them what He wants them to do. The way I see it THEY chose the LAW…not God. He gave them what they asked for. He simply showed us the truth about the terms in which we wanted to relate to Him. The AMAZING thing is that Jesus came so we could relate to Him on His terms! YAY GOD. The sad thing is that so many STILL want to relate to Him on their terms…LAW. I chose GRACE!
I love reading your articles and I pray that everything is going well for you in this transition you are in!
Blessings,
Justin
Justin, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head!
Justin your understanding on law is amazing. After Adam & Eve chose the law instead of trusting God to lead them; it’s God mercy and grace that the fullness of the law only came more than 2000 years later at mount Sinai. The patriarch Abraham, Issac & Jacob enjoy amazing grace! No Israelis died before mount Sinai even they murmured & complained. God’s grace is locked-up during the dispensation of law which only lasted about 1500 years but thanks be to God; (John :16-17) And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
He is jealous FOR us and not OF us. This is not the jealousy that is otherise known as envy. Love/God is not envious or insecure of us, but His love wants the best for us as any Father does and is not satisfied until we experience all of His fullness. That’s jealousy.
Jeff, I fully agree with you that love is not envious or insecure – love is indeed everything we read in 1 Cor 13 and more besides. But that is love, not jealousy. Jealousy, as God describes it in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 6 is bona fide jealousy – the kind that seeks to control through fear and punishment. (Is there any other kind? Not in the Bible.) I appreciate that people have been trying to put a spin on “godly jealousy” for hundreds of years, but note that His threats are directed to Israel, not to their enemies. How is this a good thing? This can only be called good if we change the meaning of the word good. “Godly jealousy” is one of those terms that we have accepted without thinking. God does not want us to view Him as jealous anymore than He wants us to see Him as angry. Yes, He acted jealous for a time (during the old covenant, but even then He often let that mask slip revealing His true nature of loving-kindness). But let us not confuse how He acted towards Israel during that period with His true and eternal nature. To illustrate the difference, let me paraphrase Psalm 30:5: “His jealousy lasts only an old covenant moment, but He is love and His loving-kindness lasts forever.”
Awesome! Absolutely, Awesome!
Hi Paul, My view is that God is still a God who is jealous and demands justice, but Christ took all the punishment for that for all mankind on the cross so we can now receive His unconditional love. So His nature has not changed but the way He relates to us had changed. Because of Christ, God will never be jealous of us again and no matter our behaviour, His love for us will always be unconditional. Thanks, Peter Wilson.
Wonderful!!!!
A couple of questions I am wrestling with: Given that from the Exodus to Sinai no Israelites died (though they grumbled and complained a lot) and that from Sinai onwards many did (due to the curses activated by the Law), how does one:
a. explain the flood and the destruction that took place there before the Law;
b. deal with the quesiton of the genocide of the Canaanites – was it commanded by the Law and not by God?
Thanks for any help in these areas!
Dave
Hi Dave,
I’ll tackle the flood question. My view is that God wiped out mankind to save the human race. He had a redemption plan that required certain things to happen. But the way people were going crazy with sin that plan was in jeopardy. For instance, He needed a virgin mother for His Son. But by the time of the flood there were only 8 worthy people left in the whole world. God had waited until all was nearly lost – He gave people every chance to repent, but when they didn’t, He saved Noah’s family and started over. If He hadn’t, you might’ve been lost.
I’ll leave the genocide question for some clever E2R reader to tackle.
Paul
I agree, good stuff Paul. Praise God for the wisdom that he demonstrates through you. I also find that Peter said Noah was a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 1:5), so there must have been something he was saying or telling others. It really does speak of Gods grace seeing as how Noah was naked and drunk at one time (Gen 9:21) lol.
Yes indeed, that was an intesting answer from Paul about the flood. Indeed, God waited until the very end before sending the flood. Methuselah lived for 969 years(Gen.5:27) the oldest man on earth. His name means ‘when he is gone it shall come’. Can you see God’s grace there? The flood would only come when Methuselah had died and what did God do? Made him live for almost 1000 yrs. If he had died at 200 years, the flood would have come. God has always been about Grace and Mercy from the beginning. Many thanks to Paul for the Grace filled articles. This is indeed the Gospel