For a full description of the (Y3) reading plan, see the “About” page.
- What attributes of God’s character does this passage reveal?
- How does the passage point to Jesus?
- How should the truth of this passage change me?
- How do the events of today’s reading help you better understand the grand narrative of Scripture?
Jms. 4
For some reason the distinction between envy and jealousy keeps coming up lately. It piqued my interest because I’ve often wondered about the fact that God is a jealous God. I understand that God is sovereign and is, therefore, the standard. I also know that His ways are not like ours. So I have always sort of answered this in my mind with the vague understanding that God’s idea of jealously is not quite the same as ours. I got a little bit of a light bulb moment, however, when I started thinking about the distinctions between envy and jealousy.
Envy deals with wanting something somebody else has. Jealousy, on the other hand, deals with wanting to keep what is yours. We humans tend to be jealous out of fear. Thus, we develop negative feelings toward anything or anyone we think might take away what we have and desire to keep. God’s jealousy isn’t like that, because God does not fear. He knows that nothing can take away what’s His. So what does it mean to say that He’s a jealous God? It means that He wants our whole heart; He does not share. Not because He’s petty and selfish, but because He knows first, that no one can serve two masters and second, that righteousness is an all or nothing deal. Thus, we cannot be His unless we are wholly righteous. And we cannot be wholly righteous unless we fully surrender our whole selves to Christ.
I bring this all up because in the CSB James notes Scripture as saying, “The Spirit He made to dwell in us envies intensely” (Jms. 4:5b). I’m not sure envies is the best word there. The footnote, however, gives alternate translations of, “He jealously yearns for the Spirit He made to live in us” or “The Spirit He made to dwell in us longs jealously”. That, I think, starts to give me the right idea.
God desires to keep what is His, and He has the power to keep anything from taking us from Him. Yet He knows that our flesh is weak. The desires of our flesh tempt us and entice us toward the things of this world, pulling us away from God. The good news is that God has the power to overcome that as well. When we truly desire to be His, He puts His Spirit in us so that we jealously long for Him to be ours as much as He longs for us to be His.
Jms. 5
I love how James gives the wealthy a view of the end. “Your wealth has rotted and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded” (Jms. 5:2a). This puts all of us face-to-face with the question of where we place our trust. Note that James does not say that it is wrong to have wealth. Wealth is actually a gift from God. The problem comes when we don’t acknowledge it as such. When wealth becomes the thing we serve, when we seek after it at other’s expense, it has become our god.
Besides letting us down in the end, as James portrays, placing our trust in wealth has an even more sinister effect. As with every other false god we serve, it puts us in opposition with God. James also gives us the gut wrenching truth about that. When we choose another god, “[We] have condemned, [we] have murdered the righteous, who does not resist [us].” (Jms. 5:6). James says this in the singular. Thus, he states that we nail Jesus to that cross.