Names of God – Pt 5
El Qanna or Kanna – “The Jealous God” (Exodus 20:5; 34:14)
Prepare yourself for Today’s Name of God as it is a difficult one. However, it will truly help you understand more fully His perfect Love for us and how we can grow in Christ from imperfect fleshly lust to His kind of selfless, self-giving Love.
Today’s Name of God is found in Exodus 20:5 and 34:14 and it means that He is “El Qanna or Kanna – The Jealous God.” See what I mean. Oprah Winfrey said she couldn’t accept The God of The Bible because of this name for Him. So she along with many others now know who He is better than He does instead for being willing to work through this and more fully know and love Him. Because our love apart from Him is actually not love at all but rooted in our flesh…we love only because He first loved us (1 John 4:19)…we see jealousy only through our fleshly emotions and experience.
God’s Jealous Love is actually rooted in the Hebrew word for “zeal or zealous” and because His Love is completely selfless and self-giving, His Jealousy is for our good! We see this in the first three of the 10 Commandments from both Exodus 20:1-7 and Deuteronomy 5:6-11 texts to have no other gods before us, make no idols, worship no others gods, and not take His Name in vain.
Why is His Jealous Love a result of His Zeal for us? Because He knows that any “love” that is rooted in or that we place in anything else will destroy us? Because His Jealous Love truly is for our good!
Paul describes His Jealous Love in Christ in 2 Corinthians 11:2 applying the selfless love of Christ for His people, The Church. That same pure, loving Jealousy extends to us through His Spirit given to us in Christ as we see in James 4:5 as well. It is for our good and anything else ultimately destroys us.
We must see this through the Truth of His Perfect Love and not our warped fleshly “love” that is really lust! Our fleshly jealousy is sin…His Jealousy is Perfect Love that we can know in Christ as His Love is that He is Jealous or Zealous for what it best for us!
God’s Jealous Love in Christ, unlike ours, which is for selfish reasons, is to keep us from all others that would destroy us! God jealously loves us far too much to allow us to chase after that which would separate us from His Love and be our eternal ruin.
PSALM 135:3…”Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; Sing praises to His name, for it is lovely.”
The above Scripture was one of my devotional texts recently! I couldn’t help but think of how The Holy Spirit was simply confirming a better understanding of Who God Is by looking at and getting to know His Names and all they represent about Him…and to and for us!
Jehovah Mekoddishkem – “The God Who Sanctifies You” or “The God Who Makes You Holy” (Exodus 31:13)
This Name for God is found in Exodus 31:13 in which God, in commanding His people to keep the Sabbath gives us His Name that explains the reason for the Sabbath…I AM Jehovah Mekoddishkem – “The God Who Sanctifies You” or “The God Who Makes You Holy.”
God in His own nature of Love has chosen to point us to Holiness in The Sabbath as we honor Him by keeping it, not just on a particular day, but also in principle and moment by moment.
But He didn’t stop there because in Christ’s finished work on The Cross and out of The Tomb, He has made holy all who will by faith submit to Him.
Through The Sabbath, God pointed to His Holiness and our unholiness and our need to keep The Sabbath in an obedient effort to recognize this. We could not do so because of sin. In Christ, we are made holy, sanctified, set apart and acceptable. Christ is Jehovah Mekoddishkem to us. (Romans 12:1; 1 Corinthians 1:30)!
Christ is not only Holy, but He is our Holiness, and has made us Holy! Praise You Lord! May we live like it as Peter said repeating from Leviticus, “Be holy as I Am holy.” 1 Peter 1:16
El Rachum – “The God of Compassion” (Deuteronomy 4:31)
Our next Name of God for this post is one that we all will love for it is God revealing Himself in Deuteronomy 4:31 as “EL RACHUM – The God of Compassion.”
Throughout Deuteronomy 4 Moses is explaining very prophetically what the future of the Israelites will look like with regard to their running away from God after false gods, returning to Him and then seeking Him again with all their heart and soul (v. 29). God, “a compassionate God – EL RACHUM,” would hear them and would not abandon them but would remember His covenant with them.
He does the same for us in Christ! There are numerous Scriptures in the New Testament that reveal Christ as the Compassionate God – EL RACHUM. Here are just three:
1) Matthew 14:13-14 – Compassion and healing the sick in the multitudes.
2) Mark 1:40-42 – Healing the outcast leper.
3) Hebrews 4:15 – Our forever High Priest who empathizes with us with great compassion.
Love and Lordship…Food for Thought – God as El Qanna/Kanna is a Jealous (Zealous) God but it is totally selfless in that it is for our good. He is for our good as the only way we thrive or flourish is in His Love. He is Jehovah Mekoddishkem – The God Who Sanctifies You or The God Who Makes You Holy. We can only stand before God as Holy and thanks to Christ He has made us holy or we would be forever lost. Finally, He is El Rachum – The God of Compassion that we all need and love to experience as we seek Him daily with all our heart and stay close to Him.
Love and Lordship…Action Item –
- Read the Scriptures in this article and ask The Holy Spirit to teach you.
- Write down what each of the Names of God in this post mean to you.
- How does an understanding of God’s Jealous Love help you understand His Love contrasted with our jealousies? How might that help you in your relationships?
- We are called to be holy and yet we can’t be apart from Christ. What does this Name of God do to help you desire to walk in His Holiness in Christ?
Contact us at Love and Lordship to find out more about how you can know God the Father, Christ His Son and The Holy Spirit and The Lord God.
Check out this week’s Love & Lordship Mentoring Minute Video