'Love Does Not Envy or Boast...'

The other day the Lord spoke to me about envy. I was looking out of the window at the trees in our garden, the blue sky, the LIFE just bursting all around, and felt the Lord say, 'See, that's why Satan hates and envies Me - because he is not a creator. He cannot create anything - all he can do is counterfeit and corrupt.'

Is it any wonder why Satan attacks the truth about Creation through the diabolical doctrine of evolution, which taken to its logical end, leads to death and genocide? Because he hates and envies the Creator of life and because he hates and envies those He has created.  He hates man's ability to create as well, corrupting art and invention, as well as the awesome act of procreation, so that sex becomes perverted and degenerate.

So I looked up envy in the Bible, and was more than a little intrigued to find that it was because of envy that the Pharisees had delivered Jesus up to Pontius Pilate (Matt. 27:18)  and it was because of envy that the patriarchs had given Joseph up to the Ishmaelites (Acts 7:9). The Joseph of Bereshit (Genesis) is of course, a type of the Messiah (1st century Jews expected two Messiahs - the Son of Joseph (who they literally got) and the Son of David, who they will get, not realising that these are one and the same Person). Is it surprising, seeing as how envy originates with Satan, that he would have filled his followers with the same destructive attitude? I now understand why the tenth commandment is "You shall not covert."

A couple of days later I was meeting with one of our friends to pray and she shared about a situation in which the person who had originally led her to the Lord, had said something to N, showing that she cannot stand the fact that my friend has left the Baptist Church system to follow Jesus as He wants to lead her.  We have often experienced the impossibility of sharing spiritual truths with some people who are not yet able to hear them for whatever reason, because they have not received the truth in some way and have not understood the Word. He (as well as His written word) is offensive to them. They judge the Word of God and those who follow Him according to their own fleshly, soulish, natural wisdom, which as James says, is earthly and demonic. As an example - the 'Christian' sister who counselled a friend to get a divorce because her non-Christian husband was so difficult.

This is why those who follow Jesus are persecuted by those who would rather save their flesh and go the way of man-made religion and control. "But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also." (Galatians 4:29)
This was the problem in the Galatian church - there were some Judaizers who wanted to get these new Spirit-filled believing Gentiles under their, no doubt well-meaning, control and have them circumcised. But what did Paul say would be the result if they let themselves be circumcised? "Messiah will be of no benefit to you!" (Gal 5:2)

What a colossal statement! It meant, in effect, that having become outwardly Jews, they would have to keep the entire Torah, a things which even Peter (Acts 15:10) said was an impossible burden to bear. The freedom which Jesus died to give them, would be eliminated.

What religious people (and Satan, who is the author of religion, is very religious) absolutely HATE, is the Cross. The Cross cuts across all religious twaddle and sets people free from its strictures and structures! If we walk by the Spirit, which Paul urges his readers to do, rather than obeying the dictates of the flesh, which are opposed to the Spirit, we will be crucifying our flesh - reckoning it dead on the Cross of Messiah.
The flesh desires to please the religious man, placate and appease Satan (thinking that he is God) with all manner of sacrifices designed to show how holy we are on one hand, OR, desires to please the irreligious man, who only wants to live for pleasure. Both are wrong. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is just that - and those who stick to eating its fruit will either know good or evil, both of which are the enemy of LIFE.

So we prayed about what the problem was and N then said that the only word she had heard was 'envy'. We were both surprised at this, and then I remembered what the Lord had shown me earlier. So we prayed about it some more and then the Lord opened up this whole thing about flesh and Spirit. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God, (Romans 8:8) and they will persecute those who are in the Spirit, in whatever way they see fit, often thinking that they are doing God a service ("...an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God..." (John 16:2). The most religious are the worst inquisitors.

In Galatians 5:19 it says, "Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are ....... envying ..." And in verse 25 and 26 it says: "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another." At this point, N suddenly became agitated and exclaimed that her friend, who genuinely loves Jesus and wants to follow Him, often used to boast about N, pointing out her growth in maturity to others in the Baptist church, and N always felt that she was being boasted about - as if her friend was saying... "and I led her to the Lord."
This is why this friend cannot cope with the fact that N has left the church - she can no longer boast about her, in fact, it is a matter of shame for her that N has left.

"Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For those who are circumcised do not even keep the Law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh. But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." (Gal 6:12-14)
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love."  (Gal 5:22) "Love does not envy or boast..." (1 Cor 13:4)