The Tenth Commandment

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.”

Deuteronomy 5.21
“‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.’”

“Peter, do you love me more than these?” Over and over Jesus challenged Peter to examine his heart. What did he really love? And how much did he love it. God calls us to submit to the searching of His Spirit with respect to what is in our hearts (Ps. 139.23, 24), for we are not always as guarded as we should be with respect to our affections.

“Guard your heart with all vigilance!” was Solomon’s instruction to his son. But Rehoboam did not. He loved the idea of being king and wielding power more than of loving God and serving God’s people. Rehoboam’s covetous heart tore the nation of Israel in two and set the people of God on a downward spiral of rebellion, dissolution, and destruction.

Covetousness is not just a harmless peccadillo, a silly act of self-indulgence. It is a trap for the heart which springs up to snare not only us, but the people we should be loving as well.

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 imaginations begin 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, anticipate, 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.

T. M. Moore

The Law of God is the soil which, fertilized by the rest of God’s Word and watered by His Spirit, brings forth the fruit of Christian life. If you’d like to understand this process better, and how to make best use of the Law in your walk with and work for the Lord, order the book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, from our online store.

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.