Searching for Contentment in a World of Want
Why envy makes you miserable
It often seems like the Ten Commandments are about outward behavior: Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t kill. But the last command, “You shall not covet,” reaches into the hidden places of the heart where comparison and dissatisfaction grow. Even when our lives look fine on the outside, our hearts can still be restless, angry, and convinced that everyone else has been given something better.
In this introspective last episode of our 10 Keys to the Universe series, John and Shay explore why coveting is more than simply wanting something nice. Envy has the power to shape our entire lives, turning good desires into controlling desires. Coveting affects the way we see our homes, relationships, success, possessions, and our sense of worth. They explain why this commandment leaves even the Apostle Paul feeling exposed, and why comparison never actually satisfies.
They also talk about the difference between healthy desire and destructive craving, and why contentment must be learned over time. Coveting is actually connected to this first commandment about idolatry: whatever we believe will finally make us happy can slowly take God’s place in our hearts. But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus meets the ache underneath all our desires.
If you’ve ever struggled with comparison, disappointment, envy, or the feeling that everyone else’s life is better than yours, this conversation is for you. Listen to the full episode or read the podcast summary as we wrap up our series on the Ten Commandments and discover how true contentment is found not in getting everything we want, but in belonging to the God who already loves us completely.
Highlights from this Episode
As we’ve looked at each of the commandments, we’ve shown how they protect us, guide us, and bring us life. Most people think they’re killjoys. God just wants to take the fun out of life, right? But they’re meant for our joy and actually bring freedom if we follow them.
Today we arrive at the final commandment, “You shall not covet.” According to some very astute theological scholars, we break this commandment every time we break any of the other commands. Because this one’s taking place in the heart. It addresses our deep, deep core desires.
Another word for ‘covet’ is envy. When envy takes hold, we can’t just leave what others have alone. There’s an old fable about a man who is offered anything he desires. The genie says that he can have whatever he wishes, but his neighbor will get double of whatever he asks for. Rather than wishing for something good, the man asks to be blinded in one eye. Then his neighbor will be totally blind. That’s a good summary of what coveting or envy is.
The full commandment is in Exodus 20:17: “You must not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.” It’s a mirror that you can hold up to your heart and see who you really are.
Scrolling Into Discontentment
Let’s go through each part of the verse and make it personal:
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.” Well...they sure have a lot of nice stuff. Why can’t I have an HGTV house?
“You should not covet your neighbor’s wife.” I’d be so much happier if I married someone different. Why am I stuck with my spouse when there are so many other better partners out there?
“You should not covet his ox or donkey”. My car sure is a piece of junk. And all of our friends take amazing vacations. They go to Hawaii, they go to Europe, and we’re lucky if we make it down to Branson.
“…or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.” Why is everything in my life so hard when everyone else has it so easy?
There’s nothing wrong with noticing what other people have. But most of us don’t notice our neighbor’s new stuff and then drop to our knees to thank God for all of our blessings. We notice and then we stop being thankful for what God has given us. The Apostle Paul himself says, “When I looked at the commandments, I was doing okay. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t kill. And then I got to do not covet.” And he was like, “I am such a sinner!”
Part of the reason why coveting makes us miserable is because it’s one of the only sins that doesn’t bring any satisfaction at all. Ironically, those who get everything in life are often the ones that are actually the most miserable. They’ve lost hope that fulfilled desire can ever make them happy. In other words, they have it all, and yet they’re still somewhat not satisfied.
Ironically, those who get everything in life are often the ones that are actually the most miserable. They’ve lost hope that fulfilled desire can ever make them happy. In other words, they have it all, and yet they’re still somewhat not satisfied.
There is want, and then there is want. There is legitimate desire, and there is coveting. We’ve lost the vocabulary to tell them apart. There’s a simple way to understand the difference. In healthy wanting, you’re the dog, and your desire is the tail. The tail follows you. In coveting, the desire is the dog, and you’re the tail. It wags you.
Why You Keep Reaching for More
James 4:1-3 describes coveting this way. “You lust and you do not have, and so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives.” James is saying that your motives are not something that you can trust. Coveting is small decisions made over time. Then you become captive to it. It starts to wrap itself around you and it feels normal.
Desire itself is not the enemy. God is pro-pleasure. Psalm 16 says, “In your presence is fullness of joy. In your right hand, there are pleasures forever.” The problem is not that we desire too much. C.S. Lewis put it perfectly. He said, “We are far too easily pleased, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea.”
We settle for fleeting, trivial things when God is saying, I can give you something far better and far more lasting. Lewis is pointing out that our desires aren’t too strong. They’re just twisted and aimed at the wrong things. Coveting begins in the heart. If you surrender to it or let it have its way with you, it will end up making you miserable. The answer lies in the 1st commandment: “Have no other gods before me.”
Coveting essentially is idolatry; it’s putting something in God’s place. Every time our desires become the dog, and they end up wagging us, we’ve taken something: a person, a possession, a status, or our reputation and put it in the place of God as our source of happiness. It becomes your functional God. That’s what you look to for fulfillment.
Made for Another World
Breaking this command not only hurts God, and not only hurts other people, but it also hurts you. God giving you over to your desires leads to your own personal hell, because you were made for something else. The Apostle Paul says in Philippians 4:12-13, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
Contentment, Paul is saying, is the secret to true happiness. Notice something. Paul says that he learned it. That’s what we skip over. I have learned the secret. Contentment is learned over time, and you may have your heart broken and many dreams shattered before you learn it. For Paul, it was imprisonment. He’s writing this from prison, where almost nothing is under his control, and yet he’s talking about contentment.
C.S. Lewis also astutely observed, “Most people, if they really learn to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and they want very acutely, something that cannot be had or found in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise.”
He said that when you arrive at this painful realization, there are four possible responses:
First, you blame the thing itself. You keep moving the finish line when the next thing doesn’t bring happiness.
Second, you blame yourself. You feel defective. You assume that something is wrong with you that everyone else has figured out.
Third, you blame life. You become cynical and assume that the universe is out to get you.
Fourth, you understand that creatures are not born with desires unless a satisfaction for that desire actually exists. A baby feels hunger. Well, there’s food. A duckling wants to swim. Well, there’s such a thing as water.
If you find yourself with a desire that no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that you were made for another world.
The Law Leads to Jesus
Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. And whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” In Jesus, you have the friend who sticks closer than a brother. You have the high priest who loves to intercede for his people. God is with you. He hasn’t forgotten you. You are not alone. And so when you begin to envy, when you begin to covet, when you begin to think you’re missing out in life, and God has not been good, remember that.
We’re going to wrap up our discussion on the 10th commandment. But we’re also wrapping up the entire series. So let’s put the Ten Commandments in perspective. Think of them like a mirror when you’re shaving in the morning. The mirror is only showing you what needs to be addressed. So you can look at these commands, and you can wag your finger at yourself and say, now you’ve got to be better at this. That’s like asking the mirror to shave you, right? The mirror doesn’t shave you. You have to look for the thing that will address the needs that you have.
You want to love God. You want to love your neighbor as yourself because of this new heart that God’s given you. You know you’re forgiven. You know you’re loved. And that frees you up to love God and to love others. If you try and please God by living up to these commands, you’ll never be able to achieve that and it will result in frustration and legalism.
If you eat the icing off of cake all of your life, you will become extremely unhealthy. No protein, no complex carbs, no nutrients. If you approach the Ten Commandments that way, without Jesus being the bread of life, you’re going to destroy yourself. You’ve got to eat the bread too.
This is exactly how Paul understood the Ten Commandments. He said the law, the Ten Commandments, is like a tutor. It leads us to Christ so that by faith, by trusting in the one who kept all the commandments perfectly, we will be made right with God.