By Mike Ivaska, Associate Pastor
“Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.” – Romans 11:13-14 ESV
I always thought this was an odd way for the Apostle Paul to describe his motivations. Paul says he wanted to draw attention to himself and his ministry to the gentiles in order to make the Jews jealous. I’ve heard this jealousy referred to as a “godly jealousy.” What was Paul’s goal exactly? He wanted the Jews to feel left out. He wanted them to see the spiritual richness the uncircumcised multitudes were experiencing through faith in Jesus and to get upset about it and want it for themselves too. To me at least, that is kind of funny.
Just the other day, however, I began feeling a “godly jealousy” myself. A young man I know gave me a copy of a paper he has been working on. It is sort of a theological treatise based on Romans chapter 8. It is an excellent little paper. There are areas for improvement, perhaps, but this young man’s insights are fantastic. What particularly struck me was his ability to draw illustrations from around scripture to backup his points. The connections he drew would never have occurred to me, but they were spot on. His familiarity with the topic challenged me. I was driven by godly jealousy to want to dig deeper into the Word.
My wife, too, has been powering her way through the Minor Prophets (the shorter prophetic books which conclude our Old Testament). This is an area of the Bible I am less familiar with. Again, godly jealousy.
The author of Hebrews encourages us to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). One of the ways the people around me have been stirring me up is through the unexpected grace of godly jealousy.