SIGNED BY GOD

Divine Jealousy, Intellectual Property, and the Integrity of Glory

Every masterpiece carries a signature.
Painters sign canvases. Coders embed watermarks. Musicians register copyrights, all to prove the work is theirs.

The universe is no different.
It was signed by its Author.

When Scripture calls God “jealous,” it isn’t describing a fragile deity craving applause. It’s describing a Creator who refuses to let His signature be erased from what He made.

This is Signed by God: a meditation on divine authorship, human imitation, and why the fire of jealousy is really the flame of love.

But to understand that fire, we have to start with the nature of divine jealousy itself; the integrity of glory.

The Integrity of Glory

Scripture tells us that humans are made in the image and likeness of God. That means even our fractured emotions; love, grief, longing, and yes, jealousy, echo something true about Him.

But here’s the difference: our jealousy is small, insecure, and rooted in fear of loss. God’s jealousy is holy. It’s not the tantrum of a fragile ego, but the zeal of a Creator guarding the truth of reality itself. He knows that life only works when it stays aligned with Him, the fountain of all being.

We catch glimpses of this same logic in our own world; the instinct to guard what rightfully belongs to us, to defend the integrity of what we’ve built. We understand it instinctively, though we rarely call it divine.
A parent expects obedience from their child.
A leader expects loyalty from their team.
A nation enforces intellectual-property law.

Intellectual Property Law and Divine Jealousy

Think about it. Intellectual property law is a form of legalized jealousy, not in the petty sense, but in the protective one.

It emerged from humanity’s instinct to guard the bond between creator and creation. From the moment people began to compose music, design tools, and write books, they felt a need to ensure their work would not be stolen or twisted; that credit, profit, and purpose would remain true to the source. The entire system of copyright, patent, and trademark law flows from that moral intuition: that authorship deserves recognition, and misuse is a form of violation.

Apple doesn’t just design software; it governs how that software may be used. Every iPhone or Mac operates under strict license terms. Developers who violate Apple’s ecosystem rules lose access to its App Store. The company guards its design philosophy because it knows that unrestrained modification distorts the experience it intends.

Musicians copyright their songs so melodies aren’t mutilated or exploited.
Authors safeguard manuscripts to preserve their voice from corruption.
Filmmakers protect distribution rights so their stories aren’t recut into something they never made.
Inventors patent their designs so imitators can’t profit from their imagination.
Architects’ trademark signature designs to defend their creative identity.

None of this stems from insecurity; it flows from integrity, from the creator’s desire for the work to remain true to its design and purpose.

Because misuse is never neutral. It’s distortion. And distortion, left unchecked, destroys.

Now if flawed humans guard their fragile innovations with such zeal, how much more would the God who authored galaxies and sustains every heartbeat guard His creation?

Reality itself is His intellectual property, not by registration, but by right. Every law of physics, every spark of beauty, every rhythm of life bears His signature.

To “use” creation while denying its Author is plagiarism on a cosmic scale. To worship idols is not just bad religion; it’s spiritual copyright infringement: profiting from God’s creation while erasing His name from the credits.

The universe was signed by its Creator. Sin is the attempt to scrub that signature off the canvas.

That is why His jealousy burns; not from insecurity, but from integrity. He is jealous not of us, but for us; for the truth that anchors life itself.

Worship without Him is theft; glory given elsewhere is robbery. Sin is not just law-breaking; it’s misattribution; the moral equivalent of taking a symphony written by God and performing it under another name.

Unlike human jealousy, His does not arise from lack. Human jealousy defends ego; divine jealousy defends reality.

God’s passion for His glory is not self-centered; it’s reality-centered. His glory is the truth of the universe; the light by which everything else makes sense. To misplace that glory is not merely to offend God’s pride; it’s to unhinge creation from its purpose.

When the Creator’s design is ignored, creation malfunctions. When worship is misplaced, meaning begins to unravel.

Even secular law reflects this instinct in miniature. Intellectual property law doesn’t exist because ideas are fragile, but because meaning is. The integrity of authorship is the foundation of order; the same moral gravity that holds creation together.

At its best, IP law mirrors a cosmic truth: every work owes its coherence to its author, and every act of erasure invites chaos.

Of course, God doesn’t need legal protection. The metaphor works not because He fears theft, but because truth naturally returns to its source. Glory, like gravity, always falls back to where it belongs.

And when it doesn’t, the world bends under the tension of misalignment.

That is divine jealousy; not pettiness, but perfection defending itself. Not the paranoia of a god among rivals, but the fidelity of the One whose authorship sustains all existence.

The universe is not just a canvas. It is a signed masterpiece. Erase the signature, and you erase meaning itself.

Ego or Essence?

This is where many stumble. They hear of divine jealousy and sneer: “So God just wants to be praised; how egotistical.”

That accusation misunderstands both what worship is and who God is.

Human egotism stems from emptiness, the craving to be noticed, affirmed, validated. God’s self-exaltation flows from fullness. He commands worship not because He needs it, but because we do.

To glorify anything above God is not humility; it’s delusion. It’s assigning ultimate worth to what is finite, false, and fading.

If God were indifferent to that, He would cease to be loving. To let us live on lies would be the ultimate cruelty. His jealousy, then, is love safeguarding reality.

C.S. Lewis admitted that the Psalms once sounded to him like “a vain woman seeking compliments,” until he realized that praise is the completion of joy. Lovers praise what they love; delight is never silent. When God commands worship, He’s inviting us into the same joy He possesses within Himself.

Divine “ego” is not pride; it’s ontological honesty. There is no one greater. For God to exalt Himself is not arrogance; it’s truth-telling. For Him to permit us to glorify anything less would be negligence.

His jealousy is not vanity; it’s fidelity; the holy refusal to let us settle for imitation when we were made for the Infinite.

The God Who Seeks Worshipers

And yet Scripture reveals something staggering: the self-sufficient God seeks.

“The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.”
— John 4:23–24

Pause and let that settle. The God who commands galaxies is looking.

For what? Not armies, wealth, or empires. He seeks worshipers.

Why? Not because He lacks anything. Psalm 50:12 says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it.”

Worship restores us to reality. Humanity’s collapse began, Romans 1 says, when it “exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” Worship is not flattery; it’s truth-telling. It realigns the soul to reality’s grain.

Psalm 115 warns: “Those who make [idols] will be like them.” We become what we behold. Worship money, and greed consumes you. Worship pleasure, and lust enslaves you. Worship power, and pride twists you. But worship God; and you are transformed into His image (2 Cor. 3:18).

Worship is love returned. The Father delights when His children freely return the love He first poured out. He is not after cowering slaves, but sons and daughters who sing in freedom.

The Fire of Divine Jealousy

God’s jealousy blazed brightest at the Cross. Humanity poured its devotion into idols and self, yet God refused to surrender His creation to ruin.

His jealous love moved Him to act.
He demanded holiness; then supplied it.
He required righteousness; then gave it.
He judged sin; then bore it Himself.

At Golgotha, divine jealousy and mercy embraced. The God who insists on His glory also insists on rescuing His people for it.

This is YHWH the Jealous; not a petty deity clamoring for attention, but the holy Lover of souls who will not share us with lies because He made us for truth.

His jealousy is never bare demand; it is always a generous promise.
“Blessed is the one who fears the Lord,” sings Psalm 112:1.
Psalm 34 adds, “He guards all his bones; not one of them will be broken.”

To fear Him is not to cower, but to live beneath the canopy of His protection. His jealousy restrains and rewards. It ties blessing to reverence, preservation to obedience, and eternal glory to rightly ordered fear.

The Burning Proof of Love

Divine jealousy is not God’s weakness. It is His burning proof of love.

Like a husband who will not let his covenant be trampled, like a mother who refuses to watch her child waste away, God contends for His creation.

So when we worship, we are not appeasing a fragile ego; we are yielding to reality. We are aligning with the only source of life. We are stepping into the destiny for which we were made.

This is the call of YHWH the Jealous:
to see in His fire not insecurity but intimacy,
not tyranny but truth,
not pettiness but passion;
a passion strong enough to guard us, remake us, and claim us forever.

In grace and truth,

À bientôt.