Faithbase

Good morning, and welcome to Thinking About the Bible as we continue thinking about love. Today we look at 1 Corinthians 4, where it says, Love is not jealous. We've talked about love as patient, love as kind. Love is not jealous. Now, we need to talk a little bit about this term, jealous. Zelao, and that's how I pronounced it in the Greek, in my learning of the Greek language. However we pronounce it, what it means is to have a strong affection to be devoted to, to be zealous, of course. That's where we get the term zealous. But the problem is, sometimes we think of jealousy, and we don't understand that there is actually a good side to that. God's name is jealous, we read in the Old Testament. And to be jealous of someone's affection, your spouse, for instance, you should be jealous of their affection in the sense that you are devoted to them, you do have a strong affection for them, and that you want to keep their affection for yourself. Now, we're not going to get into how that can be a problem, to be overly jealous or to be jealous in a misguided way, but really the better translation here would be love is not envious. Envy is where you want to replace a person's good fortune, to use that term, with ill circumstance, and to have for yourself that positive outcome, whatever it might be. So love is not jealous in that way, love is not envious. Love doesn't look at somebody and say, man, they don't deserve that, I wish I had that, that belongs to me, that should be mine. That is obviously not loving. So love is not jealous, love is not envious, love does not look at another person's positive outcome, whatever it might be, and say, they don't deserve that, I do. That isn't loving. So today as we think about love, I think maybe the best thing we can do is to think about the times that we might have been envious of other people and think, boy, they don't deserve that, I think I deserve that. That's not loving, and we want to cut that off at the root. So today as we think about love, think about how you can correct that situation in your own life, if it's there, this envy that is actually contrary to love. So today we're thinking about love, but some of the things we can do to correct may be a problem. And along with that, think about showing the patience and the kindness and the affirmation in place of jealousy or in place of envy. So thinking about love. Thanks for being here this morning. I look forward to talking to you again tomorrow. And until then, think about love. May God bless you.