Wednesday’s 333 Devotional: “Being Rightly Zealous”

There is good and bad zeal. What are we zealous for, and is it good or bad?

What is zeal? The word zeal means to be filled with intense enthusiasm. It’s being enthusiastically devoted to and diligently furthering a cause, ideal, or goal.

But are we enthusiastic about the right thing?

It’s easy to be zealous for wrong things. The world promotes wrongly motivated zeal. People are zealous for their favorite sporting team. They also zealously pursue sin through inappropriate relationships and questionable morals.

People can also zealously pursue social causes or religious rules and traditions, persuading others to join their cause or way of thinking.

To the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.” (Matthew 23:15)

Such were the Judaizers Paul encountered in Galatia.

Paul said, “They zealously court you, but for no good; yes, they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them.” (Galatians 4:17)

To these sorts of individuals, both religious and non-religious, Paul said, “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” (Romans 10:2)

But Paul also said that there is a good sort of zeal. “But it is good to be zealous in a good thing always, and not only when I am present with you.” (Galatians 4:18)

Being zealous for the right thing is being zealous for the things of God. The word enthusiasm gives us this clue. The Greek word for enthusiasm means, “God in them.” It’s where we are so full of God that God dominates our behavior. It’s a spirit alive by the power of God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Being rightly zealous is a willingness not only to die for the cause of Christ, but also to willing live for Him as well.