In the NT Wright / John Piper dustup there is a lot of debate over God’s jealously over his honor. It seems clear that Wright is correct in not allowing Piper’s re-defining “righteousness” as God’s zeal for his glory. Wright’s definition to me seems to actually be the original Reformed understanding of “righteousness” that I learned long before this little conflict. Piper parlayed his “Christian hedonism” into a church movement and at times oversells some of his catchphrases. That’s a forgivable offense that most preachers commit.

It would, however, be premature to completely abandon the notion that God in fact is jealous of his name. Remember that jealousy is one’s willingness to defend something they rightfully possess. Even if you can’t re-define “righteousness” in those terms in Paul, there are multiple examples in the Bible of God doing just this. In the Old Testament Moses appeals to this in asking God not to destroy the rebellious Israelites in the desert. “The nations will hear that you saved them from Egypt but couldn’t bring them through the desert!”

In the prophets God’s zeal for his name is part of what also motivates him to bring Assyria and Babylon in to punish his people, even allowing the Babylonians to destroy his house, the temple. God will endure the destruction of his name, his reputation, his glory only to a point and he will take it from Israel.

The gospels also have examples in Jesus’ parables of God doing this. In the parable of the crooked manager the embezzler counts on the master’s jealousy of his reputation to write down the debts of the clients. In the parable of the sleeping householder in Luke 11 it seems the lord of the house gets up not out of friendship but out of his zeal for his own good name in the midst of the village. He will inconvenience himself to maintain his reputation.

In a sense this too is an affirmation of how Wright understands righteousness. God’s jealousy for his name motivates him to keep the covenant he has made and to be faithful, even if he does so at great cost to himself (Genesis 15). God is concerned with his glory, he is a jealous God and he will defend his name, and to our good fortune we are the beneficiaries of this zeal.