COVETOUSNESS:

Why it is such a huge and fundamental sin

First a definition.  Covet: To want what rightfully belongs to another so much that you actually decide to make it yours. To allow envy to develop into robbery or attempted robbery; to usurp.

Now some synonyms from Scripture:

Col 3:5,6  Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:

1 Sam 15:23  For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.

We discussed HERE the fact that parents are supposed to use discipline/the rod of correction to help children develop self-discipline so they will not be willful brats who usurp the prerogatives of their parents (and other authorities such as God) and will develop into mature Christians who respect authority and obediently submit to it. Let’s look at why the above words in bold print are synonyms.

Covetousness is defined above. Applying that to Lucifer back in the beginning we can see that his covetousness caused him to stubbornly resist the will of God. In other words, he rebelled against God’s will. Because God is supposed to be the one and only supreme authority, when Lucifer rebelled he was robbing prerogatives that properly belonged to the one true God, which in practice made Lucifer his own god, which is idolatry. Witchcraft is when you follow Satan, and since he was the first to rebel against God, all who resist authority in any way are emulating – or following – Satan, which is witchcraft because you’ve made Satan your god or idol.

In other words, the doctrine of Biblical authority (which is based on the fact that God is The Boss and we are to obediently submit to everything He says) is supposed to be incorporated into who we are – servants who carry out God’s will. The doctrine of authority (wives submit to their husbands; children submit to their parents; servants submit to their masters; and members of society submit to governmental authorities) is so important that spanking young children is intended to get kids off to a proper start while they are in their formative years.

Most modern Christians are anything but Scriptural in their lives. Let’s pick up on something we talked about in the SPARE NOT THE ROD essay by looking at another reason God says it is good for us New Testament Christians to remain unmarried.  1 Pet 3:6 uses Abe’s wife, Sara, as an example for us because she called her husband “lord” in her actions and words. But today’s Christian wives – in spite of their rhetoric about being a “help mate” (an unscriptural term…see HERE) to their husbands, are so Enlightened and liberated they aren’t even afraid to look their husbands in the eye and say NO! – just like a stubbornly willful child who wickedly rebels against the authority of his parents.

What sin makes the above wicked wife resist the authority of her husband? Yes, it’s covetousness. Rather than properly submit to the will of her husband, the wife covets something else. Any time she argues with her husband it is because she so covets something else that she’s willing to dishonor her husband and God by rising up and committing the Eph 4:31 sin of clamoring. (I know: most of you have never heard a single sermon about that sin. Why? Because in this modern Enlightened Age of Reason the church is full of pussies who ignore the things in Scripture that scare them or they just don’t like! I say again, Christians today piss their pants at the very thought of letting the Bible make them different from the secular society around us. It is covetousness that makes Christians not incorporate the word of God into who they are. They want something different from that which God Almighty has decreed in writing. That is rebellion, witchcraft, and idolatry. And the very idea of resisting authority is so bad that even to resist secular governmental authority (including “froward”/evil authority – 1 Pet 2:13-18) is a damnable offense (Rom 13:1,2) because God Himself orders us to submit to the authorities over us.

For wives, children, and Christian members of society to dare to argue with, resist, and declare themselves to be equal to their respective bosses shows they are either incredibly ignorant of the Holy Scriptures by which we are to live, or they are in open and defiant rebellion against God Himself – just like Satan. They are witches. They are damning themselves by showing with their works they are not fit to be God’s servants because they want! If you think about it, every sin we commit goes back to covetousness…because we are living according to what we want rather than by thus saith the Lord.

And now we’ll look at the fundamental nature of the sin of covetousness. Because God is The Authority, and we Christians are supposed to be His wives, His servants who exist to do His will; and because covetousness is the opposite mindset – it makes us self-centered rather than God-centered – it is the opposite of Godliness, which makes it anti-Christ. Covetousness has to do with us – not God, and that makes it bad. For example, a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, and an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit. An evil tree/servant is self-oriented, which makes that person fundamentally opposed to God and His authority…because of what we learned above about covetousness, idolatry, rebellion, iniquity, and witchcraft. But what makes a good tree different? Aren’t we all sinners? Yes, but the difference is love.

Good Christians love God; bad Christians love self. They would deny that, of course – like the Pharisees did. But their words and deeds – evil fruit – reveal them to love self. True repentance can only come if we somehow realize we don’t love God enough and go to Him and ask Him to help us love Him so we can fight against our self-centered existence and graduate to a life of living for Him. In sum:

·       Love for God is the key element in being a good Christian (just as we said it was required to be a good Christian warrior – click HERE to read it).

·       And covetousness is the key ingredient in being Satanic, a witch, an evil tree.

As you know, most Christians have never bothered to read the Bible, let alone master it. Why do you think that is? Yes, it’s because of covetousness: Their love of self keeps them from loving God enough to spend the time reading the very Love Letter to us that He commanded us to study to shew ourselves approved unto Him. They are, fundamentally, all about self. That’s what Philippians 3:19 means when it says about bad Christians: “whose God is their belly”. Their God is Self, which is idolatry, covetousness, witchcraft, etc.

That’s why covetousness is so bad. And that’s why the Bible says we need to die to self daily. We can do that…if we truly love God rather than self.

Postscript: This essay is for Bible believers. Covetousness is only bad (and spanking children is only good) if you are a Christian. If you are not a Christian, and if you subscribe to the fundamentals of modern democracy, you may ignore this material. Why? Because you believe in the doctrines dreamed up by the pagan Greek philosophers, doctrines that have become the foundation of Western secular democracy: You believe in the supremacy of Self, the individual; you believe “man is the measure of all things (not God)”, and “to thine own Self be true (rather than being true to God)”. Therefore you believe the pursuit of self-happiness/covetousness is good, and therefore children’s formative years should be spent in willful self-indulgence so they can figure out what kind of people they want to be – rather than the kind of people God requires them to be. No Christian who knows and believes the Bible will argue with you about your Greek-philosophy-based beliefs; we can see the logic of your position. And, because we know you also believe in “freedom of religion”, we expect you to be consistent by respecting the fact that we base our lives on the Bible rather than on the tenants of pagan Greek philosophy.