Saturday, November 26, 2011

Love of a jealous kind, 9.

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Envious love is basically selfish, it's basically about you. It starts being upset because I've lost love, but it ends in nothing but destructive anger. It's all about your ego, it's all about your hurt pride. Therefore what happens is love gets replaced by anger. Love goes away and you get very angry and you can even attack the person whose love you lost because you're so angry at them.

But then there's godly jealousy... In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul is being sarcastic, strong, confrontive, angry. Paul's love for them is angered love... His love is angered love, but it's godly because it stays love. Godly jealousy is angered love that stays love--and it's not so much about you and your hurt pride--it's about the loss of the relationship. 
Put another way: Godly jealousy is love fighting extinction; normal jealousy is love gone extinct because of your self-centeredness and because of your hurt pride... and now you just hate the person who loved you before. But godly jealousy is angered love that stays love, and stays committed to rescuing that crumbling love relationship and getting that person back.  
What provokes His jealousy is idolatry. 
Envious human jealousy, when you push, replaces love with anger... The selfishness and the pride just take the love and destroy it, you don't love them anymore. You just hate them... Godly love gets angry, but stays love. 
Human love, if pushed, will kill the lover who rejects. But God's love, when pushed, will die for the one who rejects Him. Will die--and has died, He has given Himself for us... Why is it in spite of our spiritual adultery can God stay with us and not reject us? How could God's angered love stay love? Because He died for us.
// "The Jealousy of God," Tim Keller's 2011 March 27 sermon on Exodus 20:1-6.

thank You for rescuing, reclaiming, loving me
for severe mercies that wound vanity until it is slain
for *loving-kindness and unrelenting pursuit after my heart.
Lord create in me a heart after Yours.
one that becomes more like Your heart in the seeking/seeing of it
*Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness (CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain).

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