Saints and Sinners: The Ninth and Tenth Commandments
The Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. (Exodus 20:17 and Deuteropnomy 5:21)
What does this mean?
“We shall fear and love God that we may not craftily seek to get our neighbor’s inheritance or house … but help and be of service to him in keeping it.” (Numberings and definition are from Martin Luther’s Small Catechism.)
The Tenth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.
What does this mean?
“We should fear and love God that we may not estrange, force or entice away from our neighbor his wife, servants or cattle, but urge them to stay and do their duty.” (Numberings and definition are from Martin Luther’s Small Catechism.)
The first eight commandments in their bare-bones form get us to examine our actions. The Ninth and Tenth Commandments get us to examine our heart and our motives. What these commandments say is that illicit desire is just as much a sin as an illicit act. It isn’t only that coveting often leads to overt acts of stealing, killing and adultery — even if it doesn’t, it can warp our thinking and twist our characters.
According to the Proverbs: “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” What this means is that there is nothing wrong with the act of coveting if what we covet is to achieve the highest and the best of ourselves. It is when we desire inordinately to better our circumstances and not ourselves, or envy what somebody else has, that desire can get us into trouble.
This kind of desire implies dissatisfaction with our situation in life. It is a sin against God who has given us everything we need for our happiness so that we need desire nothing. As it also says in the Proverbs: “Thou satisfiest the desire of every living thing.”
But like the women who went to the sepulcher to find Jesus on Easter morning, we may be looking in the wrong place for the satisfaction of our desires. The women were looking in the graveyard — among the dead. That is where we often look for the fulfillment of our desires — among things that lead to a dead end in terms of happiness.
As the story in the Bible goes, an angel met the women in the tomb, told them that Jesus was not there (he had risen), and instructed them to go quickly to Galilee to see him. And as they ran, the Master met them. From this we can learn that it is in running and reaching for the highest and the best that we find our heart’s desire fulfilled. There is no longer a need to covet anything.
We get a second clue from still another part of the Easter story. The disciples are walking to Emmaus after the resurrection. The risen Christ has joined them on the way but they don’t recognize him. That is often our trouble: The highest and the best is in our midst but we don’t recognize it.
Rev. Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, popular Christian agnostic and author of “The Will of God” (Abingdon Press, 1999), tells the story of a young wife whose husband had just died. She was sitting on the hearth rug in front of a flickering fire in the small cottage where friends and family had gathered in mourning. The arm of an old, white-haired woman was around her shoulder. The younger woman was very resentful as she said to the minister who was there: “You talk about the love of Christ. I don’t believe it. You talk about the everlasting arms of God. I don’t believe it. My husband and I were so in love with one another and now he has been taken away.”
And the minister said to her, “My dear girl, the love of Christ is within a foot of you — in your mother. And the everlasting arms you don’t believe in — why, they are around you at this moment. Whose do you think is the arm across your shoulder now?”
In a world like that, surrounded by love and supported by “everlasting arms,” what need is there to covet anything?
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)