The
other day I saw a sign that pointed upstairs where there were more items to
behold, and the sign said, "More This Way."
Sometimes
more is not enough. Sometimes more "this way" is pointed in the wrong
direction. And sometimes, God does not want us to have more of the things in
this life. He wants us to have more of Him. When we do not want more of God,
but more of what our flesh desires, then we are entering the zone of covetousness.
What
is covetousness? Allow me to introduce a
passage that I will be using.
6 Do
you want to be truly rich? You already are if you are happy and good. 7 After all, we didn’t bring any money with us when
we came into the world, and we can’t carry away a single penny when we die. 8 So we should be well satisfied without money if we
have enough food and clothing. 9 But
people who long to be rich soon begin to do all kinds of wrong things to get
money, things that hurt them and make them evil-minded and finally send them
to hell itself. 10 For
the love of money is the first step toward all kinds of sin. Some people have
even turned away from God because of their love for it, and as a result
have pierced themselves with many sorrows. 11 O Timothy,
you are God’s man. Run from all these evil things, and work instead at what is
right and good, learning to trust him and love others and to be patient and
gentle. 12 Fight on for God. Hold
tightly to the eternal life that God has given you and that you have confessed
with such a ringing confession before many witnesses. (1
Tim. 6:6-12).
I
think this text in 1 Timothy 6 makes it clear what covetousness is, and that
the battle against it is a battle against unbelief, or a fight for faith in the
promises of God. Because battling
covetousness is a fight and involves unbelief to make it appetizing, and
because unbelief is so often subtle and it is the one sin that sends people to
hell, I refer to covetousness as a silent killer of relationships.
The
word “covetousness” isn’t used in 1 Timothy 6:6-12, but the reality is what
this text is all about. When verse 5b says that some are treating godliness as
a means of gain, Paul responds in verse 6 that “There is great gain in
godliness with contentment.” This gives us the key to the definition of
covetousness.
Definition: Covetousness
is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God. “There
is great gain in godliness with contentment.”
The
opposite of covetousness is contentment in God. When contentment in God
decreases, covetousness for gain increases. That’s why Paul says in Colossians
3:5 that covetousness is idolatry. “Put to death what is earthly in you:
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is
idolatry.” It’s idolatry because the contentment that the heart should be
getting from God, it starts to get from someone or something else.
So,
covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in
God. Or, we can also put it this way: Covetousness is losing your contentment
in God so that you start to seek it elsewhere.
Have
you ever considered that the Ten Commandments begin and end with virtually the
same commandment? “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus
20:3) and “You shall not covet” (Exodus
20:17) are almost equivalent commands. Coveting is desiring anything other
than God in a way that betrays a loss of contentment and satisfaction in Him.
Covetousness is a heart divided between two gods. So Paul calls it idolatry.
Now,
what Paul is doing in 1
Timothy 6:6–12 is trying to persuade people not to be covetous. But let’s
be real sure that we see how Paul understands this battle against covetousness.
He gives his reasons for not being covetous in verses 6–10, and then in verse
11 he tells Timothy to shun or to flee all that — to flee the love of money and
the desire to be rich, namely, covetousness.
And
he says in verse 11b, instead of giving in to covetousness, “aim at
righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.” Then out of
that list he picks “faith” for special attention, and says (in verse 12),
“Fight the good fight of the faith.” In essence, then, he says, “Flee
covetousness . . . fight the good fight of faith.”
In
other words, the fight against covetousness is nothing other than the fight of
faith. This is one of the clearest proofs that the way to obey the Ten
Commandments (which the tenth is, “Thou shall not covet”) is by faith. It’s
also proof that covetousness is a state of unbelief.
Jesus
said in John
6:35, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall never hunger, and
he who believes in me shall never thirst.” In other words, what it means to
believe in Jesus is to experience him as the satisfaction of my soul’s thirst
and my heart’s hunger. Faith is the experience of contentment in Jesus. The
fight of faith is the fight to keep your heart contented in Christ — to really
believe, and keep on believing, that he will meet every need and satisfy every
longing.
So
covetousness, then, is exactly the opposite of faith. It’s the loss of
contentment in Christ, so that we start to crave other things to satisfy the
longings of our heart. There’s no mistaking, then, that the battle against
covetousness is a battle against unbelief, and a battle for faith. Whenever we
sense the slightest rise of covetousness in our hearts, we must turn on it and
fight it with all our might with the weapons of faith.
End
of Part 1
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