Introduction
In this lesson we wrap up our discussion of the Christian ethics, the teaching of right and wrong; or, in the words of Paul, how we use our freedom to walk in the way of the Spirit rather than in the way of our sinful flesh. We have followed the Ten Commandments to guide us through the main topics. We started with the commandment to love the Lord and have no other gods on the side. Now we will conclude with the tenth commandment.
On one hand, the tenth commandment speaks about a concrete, practical issue in our lives: “You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.” On the other hand, the tenth commandment has a little different flavor than the previous commandments, because it speaks more directly to our thoughts, our minds, our hearts. The Heidelberg Catechism focuses especially on that aspect: Not even the slightest thought or desire contrary to any of God’s commandments should arise in our heart. Lord’s Day 44 then uses this as a springboard into a general discussion of our keeping of God’s law.
In this lesson we will first discuss the problem of coveting, before following Lord’s Day 44.
Freedom to be content.
1. The problem of coveting
2. The gift of contentment
3. Keeping the commandments
The problem of coveting
So what does that mean: “You shall not covet?” When you covet something, you have a strong desire for something; you really want to have it. Maybe you covet that beautiful new car, or that management position at your company, or one of those fancy new houses. Or perhaps you strongly desire that pretty classmate, or that nice young man at work.
Not all desire is wrong. We may desire a good life, we may desire beauty and joy, and a healthy marriage starts with people desiring each other. But when we use the word “covet”, it usually means misplaced desire. There are three important reasons why desire for something or someone may be misplaced.
(1) It already belongs to someone else. The Lord has given it to another person. This is the focus of the original text of the tenth commandment: You shall not desire your neighbor’s house (even though it is fine to want a house for yourself). You shall not desire your neighbor’s wife (but of course you may desire to have a spouse). And so on. Because this kind of desire leads to more concrete sin against your neighbor. Coveting what is not yours leads to jealousy and envy, which often feeds petty attitudes, anger, and worse. How often has this kind of covetousness led to theft, adultery, and even murder!
(2) It is something that does not fit with your Christian life. A Christian girl may need to curb her desire for a handsome young man who is an unbeliever; a Christian business owner may have to stop investing in things that are ethically questionable.
(3) It is out of your reach at this moment. If you keep desiring things that you cannot afford, you can ruin your life in many ways. You may end up squandering money that should be used for other purposes. Or you become so obsessed over something that it dominates your life, so that you become ungrateful and grumpy, discontent and unhappy.
When the Lord created the garden of Eden, for Adam and Eve to live and work in, he made fruit trees that were highly desirable—Genesis 2:9 uses the same word as “covet” in the Ten Commandments. It was right for Adam and Eve to want this delightful fruit. But in Genesis 3:6, Even thought that the forbidden tree was delightful—and her desire was the wrong kind of coveting, because that fruit was not for her, because God had set it apart for himself.
The Bible warns in many ways against coveting. Often it is formulated in terms of greed, especially for money. A powerful truth is that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” Many wicked sins start with the sin of coveting.
The challenge for us, as Christians who live in the freedom of our salvation, is to desire the things that are good for us, things the Lord intended for us. We can only learn this by the power of the Holy Spirit. As Paul wrote in Gal. 5:17, “the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit.” We are inclined to covet the wrong things—and we must learn to desire the things that the world hates.
In fact, when the prophet Isaiah spoke of the coming Servant of the Lord, in that famous prophecy of Is. 53, he said that he “had no beauty that we should desire him”. The way we are born, as sinful people, we would desire and covet all kinds of things, but not that which is the most beautiful, the most desirable, the most necessary, the most beneficial: and that is our Lord Jesus, and his Kingdom.
The gift of contentment
“You shall not covet,” is the negative commandment. The positive commandment is: “Be content.” A content person is someone who is at peace without feeling the need for more, happy with what he has, enjoying life as it is rather than eyeing what others have.
Contentment is a beautiful thing, because it keeps us from resentment, hatred, grumpiness, and many other relational sins. Content people are peaceful, agreeable, generous, hospitable, much more inclined to love and to care. Every Christian is called to be content—it is not a character trait that some people have, but a virtue we all must strive for. Hebrews 13:5 says it clearly: “Keep your lives from the love of money and be content with that you have, because God has said: Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”
This verse also gives us the great motivation for contentment: The Lord is with us, and we have his promise that he will always care for us, without fail. If we realize what that means, we can honestly say: “I have all that I need.” “The Lord is my Shepherd; I lack nothing.” Our contentment is a good measure of how well we have understood the gospel, which proclaims that all we need is God’s grace, that all we should seek is his Kingdom and his righteousness, and that everything else is ours for Jesus’ sake.
The apostle Paul makes this very practical in 1 Corinthians 7. The main topic there is whether Christians can get married in an unbelieving world, and if they should get divorced if their spouse is an unbeliever. Paul broadens the discussion and says, more generally: “Each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to him.” As a Christian, you can be content even if you remain a slave your whole earthly life, or if you remain single, or if you remain poor. The apostle explains why: “The time is short; let those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.” Famously, in Romans 8:18, Paul explains why as a believer he can even be content with a life full of suffering: “I consider that our present suffering are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
This spiritual perspective, where we take the long view in light of God’s promise, is the basis for true contentment and the best antidote to all forms of coveting. It is the perspective of faith, which flows from Christian hope. But we also recognize that faith that really believes this is not something we find in ourselves. It is a gift of God. That is why real contentment is also a gift of God, something that only comes with real faith, as the Holy Spirit gives it to us.
Another way of saying it: Contentment is a central quality of the new life we receive from God. It only takes shape in our lives if we are renewed in the image of God, born again into the new life of the resurrection. When Col. 3 calls us to put away our old self and put on the new, part of that means that we get rid of all covetous attitudes, and learn to be content.
That contentment will then give us much freedom. If we are no longer driven by the never-ending search for things that we don’t have yet, we find time, energy, and emotional strength to be altruistic, focused on blessing others rather than fending for ourselves. If the grace of the Lord is enough for us, we have room to breathe, room to worship, room to dedicate our lives to Kingdom matters, room to pass God’s grace on to people around us.
Every Christian must learn to be content with God’s presence and his Kingdom. In the end, when we live on the new earth in heavenly glory, those things will be the heart of our lives. If we are going to enjoy this in eternity, we’d better start practicing now.
Keeping the commandments
The Tenth Commandment makes clear, more than any of the other commandments, that living in obedience to God is a matter of the heart. This is the focus of the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 44. It doesn’t speak explicitly about coveting or contentment, but broadens the scope: all of our law-keeping, whether it is the first or the fifth or the seventh or any other commandment, must start from a heart devoted to the Lord. We are not merely to act as free people, but all we do should spring from the freedom we have in Christ, and our love for him.
So q&a 113 point out just how radical the Christian ideal of right and wrong is. It is not just about our external behavior. No, not even the slightest thought or desire contrary to any of God’s commandments should ever arise in our heart. We have pointed this out before: you don’t just sin if you hurt or kill someone; you sin if we want to hurt or kill him. You don’t just sin if you are intimate with another man’s wife; you sin if you desire her. And so on. The catechism uses all kinds of words—”even the slightest”, “any”, “ever”—to underscore that there are no exceptions, that we may never be content than complete holiness even in our most private thought.
That is the negative side of radical Christian obedience. The positive side is just as all-encompassing: with all our heart we should always hate all sin and delight in all righteousness. Four times “all”—to make sure we understand that our Lord wants our devotion to him not just part-time, not even almost all of the time, but at every moment and in every circumstance of life.
Make sure to understand this radical, absolute ideal! Too many Christians think that their calling as believers, as well as the basis for God’s love for them, is that they are “a pretty good person” (but not perfect of course). Or that they “really try hard” to do the right thing. But that won’t cut it. The Bible says in James 2:10: “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” Perhaps you are very good at always speaking the truth and keeping your promises, but if you treat your colleague like dirt, you have still broken the law of God. Or maybe you excel in keeping yourself sexually pure, even in your deepest thoughts, but you disrespect the elders of the church—then, too, you are a lawbreaker.
This is not an easy lesson! When Jesus taught his disciples about the depth of law-keeping, many of them left, and the ones who stayed behind said: “Who then can be saved?” (Mat. 19:25) That is a fair and urgent question; because if we understand the radical call to obedience and we are even the slightest bit honest with ourselves, we know that we don’t pass this test. I fail it often, and so do you. The Catechism asks the question this way: But can those converted to God keep these commandments perfectly? The answer is: No. Even when we are born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, even when we grow in understanding of God’s Word and commitment to the faith, we don’t quickly get to perfection. On this side of glory, no one does.
That is not to say that we can’t experience wonderful, miraculous growth in our obedience to God. Real faith grows real fruit of good works, and faithful Christians don’t stagnate. Sanctification, the Spirit-given growth in holiness, is a real thing and must be a real thing in our Christian life. Answer 114 says: With earnest purpose—that is, with serious intention—we begin to live not only according to some but to all the commandments of God. That is the most important gift of the Holy Spirit of God in our lives. This is how we prove to be, more and more, a new creation, reflecting the perfections of our Lord Jesus.
But that growth of sanctification does not get us anywhere close to perfection. The author Jerry Bridges uses the analogy of people trying to jump across the Grand Canyon: some may jump 12 feet, a world champion in long jump may make it nearly 30 feet, but what difference does it make when the canyon in 600 feet wide?
Very pastorally and comforting, the Catechism therefore says: In this life the holiest have only a small beginning of this obedience. It is not wrong to recognize that some of our fellow Christians in past or present have reached a much higher level of holiness than most of us. There is, in fact, something to say for studying the lives of the so-called “saints”, not to venerate them but to learn from their example of holy living. But in the final analysis, even the top saints are far from perfect; their hearts, too, regularly brought forth sinful thoughts. In fact, what made many of these women and men particularly great “saints”, is their humble recognition that not they, but God is able.
Is this discouraging? — Only for those who have not yet embraced the gospel of grace. The catechism explains why it is so important that we clearly preach the absolute, radical nature of true law-keeping. It has to break down any self-reliance in us. Says the Catechism in q&a 115: so that throughout our life we may more and more become aware of our sinful nature—which is a negative thing and breaks us down—and therefore seek more eagerly the forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Christ. If you don’t think you have real sin, you don’t really know how much you need forgiveness, and you don’t really appreciate the work of Jesus Christ. Then let your failure to be perfect convict you; and go to the Lord and say: You are right, I am a sinner. I need forgiveness, or I am lost. Have mercy, with me, a sinner! Then the Lord will give you faith and declare you righteousness, not because of what you have accomplished, but because of what Jesus accomplished.
But the preaching of the need for radical obedience also benefits the true believers. This message must get us to pray and then get us to work. Pray, says the catechism, for the grace of the Holy Spirit, who can make us grow in sanctification. And work, never stop striving to be renewed more and more after God’s image. The Lord, through his Holy Spirit, makes us new; but he doesn’t do that without our involvement, and it is our every-day task to seek his renewing power and get to work with it.
And as we do these things, when the Law of God is our delight because we rely on the perfection of Jesus and find joy in the Holy-Spirit growth in our life, we also have something amazing to look forward to. Sanctification and perfect law-keeping may never be complete in this earthly life, but when the Lord Jesus returns, we will reach that end point. He will glorify his people. Then, after this life, we reach the goal of perfection.
Isn’t that a good motivation to practice, as much as we can, to keep the good law of the Lord, and pray eagerly, from day to day, that the Lord may make us holy, as he himself is holy?