Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Sin of Coveting


You have heard it a thousand times from your pastor that the law is external (meaning behavior), many of the churches within America have perverted and neglected the laws of the old testament to the point of making the laws enemies of humankind.  However here is the rub (so to speak) Since God’s moral nature does not and cannot change (Ex. 3:14; Isa. 41:4; Heb. 1:11, 12), the laws which are based on His nature are absolute.  The moral laws of God are those laws which are based on God’s nature.  God Himself is the absolute standard of righteousness. Since the moral laws reflect His nature and character, they are “immutable and irrepealable even by God Himself.”   This brings us to an interesting, but often overlooked umbrella concerning many of God’s Moral commands. 

It's interesting that many of God’s commandments are about coveting, and that God would have to go to great lengths to teach people all the subtleties of the inner workings of the law against covetousness.  You see this played out in everyday life all about you, a person who deceives himself and others without uttering a "real lie" would fulfill the law...in his own mind.  A person who gossips against his fellow man, destroying another's reputation and life and causing grief and hatred to tag along at a neighbor's foot, would not consider herself a murderer.  However in God's eyes, that person is guilty of great sins of the flesh; malice, resentment, adultery, fornication, etc.

Imagine if you can for a moment that you have been enslaved all your life.  Suddenly you are now free.  What do you suppose you would be like?  Slavery does not make people good or pure.  Pain and bitterness and a hard life does not make people holy. Sickness and suffering doesn't make people kind. Interestingly, a bad life --lived without God's constant uplifting strength-- will make people rather nasty and horrible and covetous. They covet the "good life" of others.  They resent the beauty and the popularity of others. They resent the ease and happiness of others.  Sorrow and hurt will bring sorrow and hurt.  Covetousness is not only wanting something that is not --or never has been – yours; it is much, much more.

Covetousness is judging God, and judging others...for our life. C.S. Lewis once said, "the devil of resentment is that it is justified."  Some of the greatest coveters have been the kindest, most sorrow-filled people.  Covetousness leads us to the concepts of envy and to sin in general.  Looking at just one particular sin of covetousness helps to reveal the true nature and destruction that covetousness brings.  

The law of adultery is a tough one, especially for this generation of American Christians, it is one of those trespasses (I will deal with trespass verses a sin in another post) that so-so many people are guilty of.  I suspect that adultery is probably more prevalent in our media-driven society because we always have the media defining our happiness for us (happiness, not holiness or joyfulness).  Just as it shows us the beautiful things we do not have and makes us resent our lowly home....or ungrateful for what we have, it also shows us beautiful women and men who make our spouses look like nothing.  

Paul warns us that Adultery is idolatry.  We look at the person we have and somehow they don't seem perfect.  Paul warns us against emulations, adulations, and fleshly mental sins of that type.  But Christian Americans often have an idealism that is rooted in the world's idealism.  Paradoxically, American Christians are so "idealistic" in a worldly way that they are often quite likely to divorce their wives and husbands to find true love because of their "idealism".  They say they have found the perfect spouse.  But what they feel is lust, and what they have found is Sin.  However, even if it were true love, it is no excuse for adultery.   

Jesus made this clear when He said that if someone divorces someone and marries another, that person has committed adultery (He also made it perfectly clear what the adulterer’s fate is).  Many of those sharing the pew next to you, have or are doing this.  They divorce their spouse and marry their adulterous partner, then use the act of matrimony in a truly blasphemous way to attempt to hide/erase the fact that the marriage began in adultery; which by definition is an act of covetousness.  

With a close reading of the Bible you will discover that many of those things that God declares that He hates are those things that come from the sin of Covetousness.  In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says: "the race is not to the swift nor bread to the wise."  People often say this as if they are the swift and the wise and life is treating them harshly.  But as for me, Thank God, the bread doesn't always go to the wise!  Thank God that most of us (especially me) don't get what we deserve!  I have a great job, amazing friends, a varied and interesting life; God has graciously given me some wonderful blessings, while withholding some of the things I desired. Thankfully God has helped the weak and poor and sent away the strong and rich.

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