Love

Love is an emotion, but there are many different ways of expressing it. Can I love a lamp the same way as I love my wife? No. In America, the word "love" is used both as a term of extreme adoration and a term of true love. In Greek, there are 3 major types of love, and each is very distinct in its usage.

The definition of love in the following passage is the definition for an unconditional, godly type of love, agape love (αγάπη). Not the way one loves their wife, not the way one loves a lamp, but the way that God loves mankind and commands us to love one another.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NASB)- "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

Look at that carefully...Love is not jealous. If God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5), and if God is love (1 John 4:8), how can love not be jealous as stated above? Is this a point of contradiction in the Bible, or is there a legitimate reason for this discrepancy?

Since the King James Version of the Bible was used, a definition of "jealous" needs to be found. Os Guiness in, Steering Through Chaos, stated:

The words envy and jealousy commonly overlap in ordinary usage, but jealousy was once distinctive - the passionate effort to keep what is one's own by right. (pg. 73)

Points that follow Mr. Guiness' statement are:

	Envy is the feeling we get when we want something that we don't deserve. When someone is getting praise that we want and think we deserve, but don't truly deserve it.
	Jealousy is the feeling we get when we are not getting what we deserve. If I am the person who put on the entire production of a show and someone else takes credit for it and receives praise, then I might be jealous, but my jealousy is justified, so is not envy.

God in Exodus 20:5 is described as a jealous God. God is jealous when we worship other Gods because He created us and rightfully deserves our praise! If He doesn't get it, then He has the right to be jealous. He deserves our entire being!

With this, the translation in the King James Version can be understood properly. Jealousy and envy had two slightly different meanings during the times of King James. Thanks to one of my professors at Cedarville University, Professor Michael Holt, I was able to learn that the Hebrew word used in Exodus and the Greek word used in 1 Corinthians don't mean the exact same thing. Through the translation into English, we lost the slightly different meaning of the words. The verse in 1 Corinthians uses the word for "envy", and the verse in Exodus uses the word for "jealous".

What this means is that God is jealous and not envious. Enviousness implies that God wouldn't have the right to desire our love and attention, when in reality He does. This apparent contradiction in the Bible is not a contradiction as much as it is an outdated way of using English. Be careful when interpreting passage from the King James Version.