Deuteronomy 5:21 “You shall
not covet your neighbor’s wife. And you shall not desire your neighbor’s house,
his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey,
or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Continuing in this short
study of the Ten Commandments, we come to the final commandment. One theologian
has said that “the focus on the heart is not a New Testament innovation. It is
also an Old Testament concern.” The emphasis on having the right internal
motivation did not start with Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount; rather, it has
been a part of God’s revelation from the very beginning. We see this quite
clearly in the tenth commandment.
If there were any doubt that
the Ten Commandments address all of life, the tenth commandment utterly
destroys it. After all, coveting deals with our very desires, and if God’s law
addresses even the intents and motivations that no one but the Lord can see,
then nothing is outside the purview (the purpose or scope of
a statute) of His concern. Coveting is a specific kind of desire, however,
and does not refer simply to any desire that we might have. Scripture endorses
a desire for God’s blessing by repeatedly telling us what the Lord will give us
if we follow Him. Moreover, the Bible is clear that Christians can rightly have
all sorts of godly desires, including the desire for sexual intimacy in
marriage, a man’s desire to be an elder in the church, and many other desires
of the heart. To be a Christian is not to be free of desire but to have one’s
desires rightly ordered and directed. Covetousness may be defined as the desire
to have or seize what is not lawfully ours and the desire to obtain something
in a manner that violates God’s law.
Exodus 20:17 “You
shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s
wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey,
nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
It is always best to define
the terms. Given these parameters, we can see that covetousness is in some
sense a root of all other evils. Theft results when we covet another person’s
belongings. Adultery is the logical end if we indulge our covetousness for
someone to whom we are not married. To worship another god is to manifest a
heart that covets a deity that can be manipulated or controlled. We could go
on, but the important point to note is that the tenth commandment reminds us
that all sin begins in our hearts.
James 1:13-15 Let no
one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by
evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is
drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has
conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings
forth death.
We were created to have
desires, particularly a desire to know and love our Creator. Covetousness
represents desires that have gone awry. Sometimes it can be hard to
differentiate covetousness from legitimate desire. But there are things for
which we can be on the lookout. Envy of another’s position likely indicates
that one is coveting it. Obsession with a particular good to the point that it
consumes one’s thoughts entirely may reveal a coveting heart. Let us ask the
Lord to search our hearts and reveal to us any point at which we are breaking
the tenth commandment so that we might repent.
Romans 7:7 What
shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the
contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would
not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not
covet.”
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