Exodus 20.17

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

Deuteronomy 5.21

“‘And 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.’”

Luke 12.13-21; Ephesians 5.5; Colossians 3.5; 1 Timothy 6.6-8

How, then, can we control our desires? First, we must be alert to when desire is operating, and what its object is in any action we may be contemplating. When our thoughts linger on something, to the point that our imagination begins to treat that as our own, to see us in possession of it, whatever it may be – then desire is at work. But this may not necessarily be covetousness.

Desire makes the affections resonate with the possession of what we imagine ourselves having, so that excitement, happiness, anticipation, hope, and many other affections begin to rally to the imagination’s support. Before these combine to become a passion or obsession (cf. Jms. 4.2, 3), we must evaluate our desire, and the object of it, in order to determine whether this yearning is from God or the law of sin. The Spirit of God is able to convict us of sin, righteousness, and judgment (Jn. 16.8-11); thus, we must continually refer our desires to Him, submitting our thinking to the Word of God and considering the nature, focus, and likely outcomes of what we are imagining.

By such prayerful and thoughtful means we may hope to identify the early stages of coveting and nip it before it bears fruit in other sin.

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