Opus 2025-469: Is Not Jealous...

One of the insights I had a while back was that if God is love, and that is one of His attributes, then looking at Paul’s definition of love in I Corinthians 13 would be a good way to get insights into God’s character.  I’ve already talked about that first quality of patience or long suffering.  God is definitely patient with us.  He was patient with Israel.

This morning, as I was basking in the presence of the living God, and reaching out to receive His blessing, it occurred to me that the Holy Spirit already lives within me.  Why would I be reaching out to receive something when God is already here?  That got me to wondering if God the Father would get a little upset if I prayed to God the Spirit?  That made me think of a professor who once shared that we are to pray to the Father, in the name of the Son and in the power of the Spirit but if we got them mixed up God would understand.  

One of the things I’ve heard expressed by different writers and speakers is that the Trinity demonstrates this concept of love and also shows us that God does not need fellowship with human beings because He already has fellowship within Himself.  I don’t know how biblical that is, but it’s an interesting way of looking at it.  As I was thinking about that the phase from I Corinthians 13 came to my mind, “and is not jealous....”  Beautiful.

It’s hard for us to understand in our competitive world what it means to be not jealous.  We always have this attitude of getting ahead of the other guy.  Why is it when someone passes you on the interstate that you feel like you have to get ahead of them again?  Why is it when I stop because someone in the car has to go to the bathroom I look at all those people I’ve already passed and it occurs to me that I’m now going to have to get ahead of them again?  I know I am not the only one.  Competition rears its head everywhere.

A spirit of competitiveness is one of the blocks in our lives when we seek to not be jealous.  I should use God‘s Trinity as an example of what it means to not be jealous, to not worry about who gets first credit on the billing.  Someone once said it’s amazing what you can get done if you don’t worry about who gets the credit.  I think that’s kind of where God is.

A friend wants made a big deal about who we were praying to when we prayed to the capitalized LORD (Yahweh) in the OT.  I told him it didn’t really matter.  Yahweh is the name that God gave us to call Him, and I tend to think of it as the Father, but if it includes all three, so much the better.  He wasn’t happy with that because he was trying to convince me of some eschatological point.  I wasn’t buying and I stood by my position.  I’m not sure what my position was but I still stand by it.

So God is not jealous.  He doesn’t mind when Jesus gets top billing and He doesn’t mind when the Holy Spirit moves to the front of the pack.  They may be three persons, but they are one God and They are united in purpose and love.

Always something to rejoice about.

homo unius libri