Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. – 1 Corinthians 13:4-6
There is such a thing as spiritual envy. There is even what St. John of the Cross
calls in Dark Night of the Soul “holy envy”, a “… grief over the
realization that one does not have the same virtues another has”. Yet holy envy also rejoices in that
realization as well, rejoices that those virtues are practiced by someone, that
God’s truth is being upheld and lived out.
I understand why he used the term holy envy, still there ought to be a
better way to put it. Envy itself is far
too corrosive and deadly to be tamed in the service of the truth. We can find in the spiritual success and
virtue of another encouragement and hope, but envy is as happy, if not happier
when the envied one is pulled down as when the envious is elevated. God called Himself “a jealous God”, never an
envious one, and certainly God is incapable of envy since no one could possibly
be better than He is in any way.
Beside that, love is simply incompatible with envy. Where love genuinely exists, the success and
happiness, spiritual and otherwise, of the one we love is synonymous with our
own highest desire. This is why Psalm
37:4 says that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires
of our heart. If we love God, we want
Him to be happy. Wait, can God ever be
unhappy? There is a part of me (the thick-headed, dogmatic Scots part, probably) that wants to say, No, absolutely not. Yet Jesus wept, not just at the tomb of His
friend Lazarus, but over the city of Jerusalem.
The prophets speak often enough of God’s longing for His people, not
because He needed anything from them, but because He loved them and wanted what
was best for them. That is, God finds His
own delight in delighting us, or He is delighted by our delight in Him.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. – 1 John 4:8-10
If we didn’t get it, John says it again in verse 19, “We
love because He first loved us.”
Happy Valentine's Day. Somebody loves you.
