By Jason Smith

“Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” (Deuteronomy 4:23-24)

Oprah Winfrey tells the story of a time when she first began to question the teaching of Scripture. She was sitting in a church, hearing the preacher talk about God’s attributes, such as His omnipotence and omnipresence. She continues,

“Then he said, ‘The Lord thy God is a jealous God.’ I was caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said ‘jealous,’ and something struck me. I was like 27 or 28 and I’m thinking, ‘God is all. God is omnipresent. And God is also jealous?’ God is jealous of me? And something about that didn’t feel right in my spirit because I believe that God is love, and that God is in all things… And that is where the search for something more than doctrine started to stir within me.”

The passage the preacher quoted is indeed in the Bible (Deuteronomy 5:9). In fact, there are many references to God’s jealousy in Scripture. “You shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14). God even grows angry when we spurn Him and go after worthless pursuits. “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24).

On the one hand, I want to sympathize with Oprah. Our God? Jealous? Never! That’s because in our current cultural climate, “jealousy” usually carries a negative connotation. In many cases, it describes someone who has an unwarranted suspicion of anything and anyone that could threaten a cherished relationship. At the same time, we need to consider that this is the supreme God we are talking about. However we construe this word “jealousy” as it relates to God, we need to remember that He is the all-sufficient God who doesn’t need anything from us. After all, He is the Maker of everything. “If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it” (Psalm 50:12).

Our tendency is to say, “My God is not like that… He’s like this…” The problem is that whenever we do that before carefully consulting Scripture, we are actually creating a god in our own image. Rather than listening to what God says of Himself, we place our own opinions above the authority of the Bible. Instead, we need to humbly come to God’s Word, expecting there to be many cases where our own thoughts and opinions will be challenged. Rather than assert that something can’t be true simply because it doesn’t sit right with us, we need to consider why God is described as “jealous.”

In order to understand what is meant by passages like these that speak of God’s jealousy, we have to first see that there are in fact both good and bad kinds of jealousy. For example, there is a petty jealousy a self-centered young man may feel when a slightly older man offers to carry a heavy suitcase for his girlfriend. The older man’s offer may be a simple, courteous response to seeing the young woman struggling with the heavy load. In this case, the young man is not thinking of his girlfriend’s needs. He is threatened by the courteous gentleman because he cares more about his status as the girl’s boyfriend than the girl herself.

This young man is persistently suspicious and insecure. He doesn’t want any other man to even show common courtesy to his girlfriend. His jealousy is like the unhealthy possessiveness of a terrier that growls and snaps at anyone coming near his bone, despite the fact that no one actually wants to steal the bone. Rather than protecting her, his unhealthy jealousy actually smothers the young girl. From the outsider’s perspective, it’s plain to see that the young man is consumed with self-love, rather than genuine love for the girl.

Now, what is an example of a good kind of jealousy? Think of a husband and wife at an office party. The husband notices that a good-looking young man, who is constantly bragging about his sexual exploits, has approached his wife. The young man is clearly hitting on his wife and even tenderly takes hold of her hand. Now, ask yourself, in this situation, is it wrong for the husband to feel a kind of jealousy? After all, he is passionately devoted to his wife, wanting nothing to come between them. His wife might even be quite pleased to see her husband tell off such a womanizer for trying to threaten their marriage.

If you’re still struggling with whether jealousy can ever be a good thing, imagine now that this same husband sees the young man make advances on his wife, then shrugs and passively walks away. What would you conclude? Clearly, such a husband doesn’t really love his wife!

When you think of God being jealous, think of a devoted husband who is passionately in love with his wife. God wants nothing to come between you and Him. As our Creator, He alone has the right to be the Lord of our lives. God is jealous for our affection, not because He is needy or insecure, but because He is passionate about our flourishing, which comes from being in a right relationship with Him.

False gods — such as fame, power, lust, or money — are persistently trying to steal our hearts away. Not only do these counterfeit gods threaten our relationship with the one true God, they only hurt us in the long run. In such cases, God indeed grows angry, but the heat of His anger displays the vibrancy of His love for us. Whenever we give something else our ultimate devotion, we are falling prey to idolatry. God made us for Himself, so nothing else will truly satisfy our longings like He will. “Know that the LORD is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, the sheep of His pasture” (Psalm 100:3). As the all-glorious, all-satisfying God, He and He alone has every right to command our allegiance to Him.

I would want Oprah to understand that, yes, God is a “jealous God” (Exodus 20:5), but He’s jealous for us in all the right ways. We ought to thank God that He is the kind of God who is incredibly passionate about His relationship with us.