What does the Bible say about coveting?

The Bible passages below can be used in sermons, prayers, or pastoral care focused on coveting or covetousness.

• Genesis 3:5, the serpant tempts Adam and Eve with omniscience
• Exodus 20:17, do not covet what is your neighbor's 
• Deuteronomy 7:25, do not covet the silver or gold that other nations' idols are made of
• Proverbs 30:8-9, give us what we need, not poverty or riches
• Colossians 3:5, put to death whatever in you is earthly, including evil desires and greed
• 1 Timothy 6:6-10, we brought nothing into this world and take nothing with us, so we should strive for godly contentment
• Hebrews 13:5, stay away from love of money; be conent
• James 1:14-15, we're tempted by our desires, which can lead to sin and death

Sermon ideas about coveting

Belongings

Sermons about coveting can explore the relationship between covetousness and belongings. Members of our community may have things or persons that belong to them or with them — a house, a spouse, a piece of land. They have belongings that are properly theirs. So to want to remove what's theirs and have it for ourself counts not merely as innocent desire, but as mental theft.

Innocent desire

Of course, there are plenty of cases of innocent desire. Suppose someone else is honest or hospitable or accomplished in restorative justice. Is it OK to "covet" these things? Absolutely. Imitation of others' virtues and goods is often natural and healthy, as when the young imitate parents, teachers, or other role models. Here the "coveter" does not hope to steal from someone, but just to emulate him or her. 

Coveting omniscience

What can our sermons say about why coveting is forbidden? From the beginning, what the Bible prohibits is desiring what you have no right to have. So, along with unbelief and pride, covetousness is part of the original sin in the story of Adam and Eve. The tempter promises that if they eat of the forbidden fruit, they will be like God, knowing good and evil.  

"Good and evil" here is what's called a merismus — an expression in which two major parts of something are used to denote the whole. Just as "heaven and earth" means the whole universe, so the knowledge of good and evil means the knowledge of everything. So to covet the knowledge of good and evil would be to covet omniscience — a trait belonging only to God. 

Gateway sin

The Bible frowns on coveting in part because it is a gateway sin: Mental theft is often prelude to actual theft. In his book Mere Morality, the theologian Lewis Smedes has written that "to covet something is to put your finger on the trigger of your will, or to crouch like an animal poised to pounce." In truly serious cases, coveting may lead to adultery, as in the case of David with Bathsheba, or to murder, as in the case of Ahab and Jezebel's murder of Naboth, who possessed a vineyard King Ahab coveted. 

Envy vs. covetousness

What can our sermons say about covetousness versus envy? Sinful covetousness is not the same thing as innocent emulation, as already explained. Neither is it quite the same thing as sinful envy. Envy is a nastier sin than covetousness. What an envier wants is not, first of all, what another has; what an envier wants is for another not to have it.  

Hence an 18-year-old will lobby against a liberal curfew for his 16-year-old brother even though the 18-year-old can gain nothing positive by winning his campaign. He simply resents an advantage he once lacked. Or put matters like this: To covet is to want someone else's goods so strongly that one is tempted to steal them; to envy is to resent someone else's goods so much that one is tempted to destroy them. The coveter has empty hands and wants to fill them with someone else's goods; the envier has empty hands and therefore wants to empty the hands of the other.  

Enviers may start out as coveters. They may begin by hankering for someone else's goods. But failed covetousness is likely to curdle into envy: The envier is often a disgruntled coveter — "If I can't have her, then I'll see to it that he can't have her either." 

Excerpts about covetousness

Following are sample excerpts from Zeteosearch.org sermon resources about covetousness: 

"James points out that many of our biggest stumbling blocks come as a result of covetousness: 'You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.' (4:2)" Children's Lesson by Beth Lyon-Suhring from Storypath  

"When does proper desire become coveting? I think we can put the answer down simply: desire becomes sin when it fails to include the love of God or men." Sermon Preparation by Haddon Robinson from Preaching Today   

"The scandal of our faith is that we are often covetous and jealous when God's gifts of forgiveness and life are given to other in equal measure." Sermon Preparation by Karl Jacobson from Working Preacher