Legitimate Jealousy

Imagine walking along with your husband or wife, when suddenly a stranger walks up and starts trying to seduce your spouse. Right there in public, someone is trying to steal your husband or wife from you! How do you feel?

You feel angry. You feel violated. You feel humiliated. You want to fight! The core emotion fueling that response is jealousy. You’d also feel it if someone wanted to kidnap your child.

We often think of jealousy in a negative sense, but in some cases it’s a form of protection of what belongs to you. It can be righteous.

How do we know? Because God describes Himself as jealous: “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14).

If God can be jealous, then maybe it’s less negative than we think. Because God loves us and created us to love Him above all else, then it’s not surprising that he becomes jealous when that relationship is threatened. God is displaying  legitimate jealousy.

Legitimate jealousy also factors in a healthy marriage. God designed marriage to be the most important of any human relationship. That’s why he commanded that “a man shall leave his father and his mother” (Gen. 2:24).

Before marriage, the most important relationship a man or woman has is with his or her parents.  That’s the reason God told man to “leave” his parents in order to properly “cleave” to his wife. Marriage redefines a person’s relationships.

In Hebrew, the word we translate leave means “to loosen or relinquish.” It doesn’t mean abandoning that relationship, but reprioritizing it. We still honor our parents, but no longer does our utmost commitment belong to them. Instead, we relinquish this arrangement and transfer that devotion to our spouse.

This is God’s plan. Which means God designed marriage to operate as the second-most important priority in our lives, next to a personal relationship with Him.

When we misplace priorities, we’ll see marital problems and failures result. It’s been true in my marriage and in the lives of those whom I’ve counseled. A marriage that keeps its priorities straight will be a successful marriage.

And in order to keep their priorities straight, both the husband and wife will occasionally have to rely on legitimate jealousy. We experience it when time, energy, or resources that belong to us are given away by our spouses to something (or someone) else—and when that happens constantly, or significantly.

Both spouses have moral obligations to God and to each other to protect their marriage from being violated in this way.

Next to your relationship with Him, God designed marriage to be the priority relationship in your life. Is that true of your marriage? Are there any things for which your spouse has the right to be jealous? If so, it’s time to leave, loosen, and relinquish those priorities in order to cleave to your spouse.