On Covetousness:
Allow me to begin with a definition. Insidious: “Stealthily treacherous or deceitful: an insidious enemy.”
Covetousness is “insidious”. That is, it is a stealthy, treacherous, and deceitful enemy. Covetousness, of course, speaks of greed; of that lustful desire to have what you don’t have….or to have more of what you have already. The Apostle Paul warns of this insidious sin, saying: “…do not let greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints” (Eph 5). Paul goes one step further in Colossians 3:5, where he states: “Consider your earthly bodies as dead to….evil desire and greed which leads to idolatry.” In other words, covetousness is the greedy, discontented longing of the creature which forsakes God in order to fill itself with the lower objects of the world. In a word, it is idolatry characterized by lustful self-gratification, and Scripture records that it is a feature that should never characterize the child of God. As Paul stated, the absence of covetousness “…is proper among the saints”. Self-gratification is diametrically opposed to sacrificial-love.
Having established what covetousness IS, notice now how it operates. As mentioned above, covetousness operates insidiously; deceitfully. How so? Because the covetous person hardly realizes his covetous character. A back-biter sees clearly she is a backbiter; an adulterer sees plainly he is adulterous. But a person that indulges in covetousness has hardly any suspicion of guilt. The crime tends to be more transient, more subtle, more subdued. Subsequently such a person is subtly carried off right through life and into death, having never emerged from this delusion. Paul states: “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many a pang.” (1 Tim 6:10). This doesn’t happen overnight, mind you….but systematically, transiently, over time. “Wandered” here has the idea of being deceitfully enticed and led astray. It would be irresponsible of me to omit the preceding verse from the 1 Timothy text: “But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction” (v9). What delusion! Watch yourselves against this insidious enemy.
For clarification, a man reveals his covetousness not by the riches that he has. After all, such riches can be righteously dispensed for promoting God’s glory. Rather, covetousness is demonstrated by the unrighteous and discontented “longing” for, or selfish intent to collect and employ wealth/resources in a self-gratifying manner and for self gratifying purposes. A man of this character is a man marked by covetous-delusion…and God pronounces him a fool. Why? Because his self-gratifying agenda will subtly, systematically, ultimately “…plunge him into destruction”. Further still, enslavement to covetousness is a clarion characterization of the unbelieving and unregenerate community. This too is the apostle’s very confident assertion in his letter to the Ephesians: “For this you know with certainty…..no covetous man who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” (Eph 5:5).
Conversely, Scripture consistently represents the children of God as those who have little interest with world, and whose chief concern are to glorify God. Jesus Himself said, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” This world was no object of His affection…it held no charming value to Him….it could not allure or entice Him. Therefore, in truth, the world is to be no more the object of your affection, Christian, than it was of His. As Paul states: “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6). Far from identification with self-gratification, the Christian has been completely identified with Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection to new life.
Only God’s regenerative grace can breach the stone that encases the idolatrous, covetous heart. Only the new creature in Christ has the capacity to arrest the self-gratifying flesh. Thereafter, Scripture remedies the remains of tempt-able flesh in this regard, saying: “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things on earth, for you have died and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3). If you are “in Christ” indeed, fix your heart upon the irrevocable blessings of eternity. Covetousness, that insidious enemy, is impotent to him who, when confronted with its allurements and deceit, hears the voice of his Redeemer bidding him to look ever higher, saying: “What is it to thee. Follow thou Me.”
Grace to you, today.
