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Exodus 20:17
"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You
shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his
manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or
anything that belongs to your neighbor."
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April 10
Don't Covet
It has often been said
that money is the root of all evil. This
is incorrect. 1 Timothy 6:10 says that
"the love of money is a root of all kinds of
evil." Coveting is a source of the love of
money however.
Coveting is listed last of
the commandments for a reason. Consider
the other commands and think how coveting can
lead to many of them. Coveting often leads
to stealing, lying, and even murder.
Coveting another person's spouse leads to
adultery.
If stealing is taking what
someone else has and we have no right to,
coveting is wanting what someone else has.
We may or may not have a right to it if we work
hard and earn it. Often we had no desire
for it until we learned that another person had
it.
When we start to compare
what we have to what someone else has we become
dissatisfied. We don't consider that
possibly the only way the person obtained it was
through great amounts of debt. Or perhaps
the person even gained what they had through
some immoral methods.
Coveting will lead us down
a bad pathway quickly. The first thing we
should ask ourselves when we find ourselves
wanting something is why. If it is simply
to impress others or because a friend or
neighbor has one, we need to reevaluate our
wants and our needs. |
