(upbeat music) - Last time, Gene had written in to ask, "Pastor John, how do I handle the envy and jealousy "that are eating away at me?" And in the last podcast, in episode 151, you addressed the envy side, and you wanted to address them individually. So now, Pastor John, address the jealousy category.

- Right, I wanted to break jealousy and envy up because jealousy, I think, is significantly different. Jealousy is an anger because someone else is getting affections that I believe belong to me. And that's not always wrong, right? It's not wrong to be angry at a wife or a husband who are giving their marital affections to another when they're married to you.

We know it's not wrong because God is called a jealous God in Exodus 20. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God. In other words, your allegiance, your love, your worship belongs to me.

Don't give it to anybody else. If you give it to somebody else, I get angry because I'm a jealous God. I want all of your love, all of your worship, your allegiance, your affections for me. And that's a beautiful thing of God to do because he is infinitely worthy of those allegiance and affections, and therefore it is a loving thing of God to be a jealous God.

And for us, we wanna find a way to distinguish between sinful jealousy and loving jealousy. So what's the difference? What's the sin of jealousy that this person who asked this question, evidently, is feeling eaten up by? The first thing, I could think of three things that make a desire for someone's affections sinful.

One is when there's no ground for feeling jealousy. In other words, they really aren't giving their affections away in any inordinate or inappropriate way, and you shouldn't be feeling the craving for their unique affections the way you are. I think I've seen mothers, for example, jealous of their son's affections when they find a girl.

And on, they start falling in love with a girl, and mom used to be so central in this little boy's affections, and now there's this girl who's come into his life, and this mother doesn't have the maturity to let go those affections that have to be now given mainly to this woman rather than to her.

That would be a sinful jealousy if this mother was angry at this son because she shouldn't be angry because those affections that he is giving to this young woman are not the mother's. They don't belong to her. She should let them go. She should be thankful that they're happening.

That's the first one. The second one is when the anger is all out of proportion to the degree of the issue. A husband might spend some time reading or watching television or going bowling with his friends, and this wife might not have the security to feel okay about her husband doing some other things besides focusing all of his attention on her.

And so that would be a sinful jealousy is if she got all excessively bent out of shape. It's okay for her to talk to him about his schedule and try to work out whatever seems appropriate, but there are kinds of jealousy that are out of proportion to the degree of the offense if it is an offense at all.

And the third one I could think of, the third thing that makes jealousy sin would be when it's flowing from a lack of trust in God to meet your needs, to intervene where it's needed. In other words, you see something happening where in fact maybe there is a real breach of trust and you're legitimately feeling jealous, but that jealousy which begins as something right can move over into something wrong when in fact you don't trust God with it.

So the real battle, I think, has to be fought at the level of trusting God. James 3, "If you have bitter jealousy in your hearts, "don't boast and be false to the truth. "This is not the wisdom that comes down from above." In other words, James is saying, your jealousy is owing to the fact that you're not getting this from heaven.

This is not of the Holy Spirit. This is not born of faith. This is coming from something demon-like and ugly. So we need to kill, I would say, kill sinful jealousy with godly jealousy. Godly jealousy says, "I am jealous "that God get all my affections of love and trust "and not be given away to anybody else.

"And if God has them, then my heart will be steadied "and I will not crave the attention "that I'm sinfully craving in my jealousy of others." So I think really at the root, being eaten up with a sinful jealousy is probably owing to a failure to be jealous enough for God getting all my affections and all my trust and all my allegiance so that I can be stable and strong and restful in him.

- Yes, thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. You can visit us online at desiringgod.org to find thousands of free books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)