How many of you were just waiting and waiting and wanting to read this last post of the 10 commandments? Come on, were you coveting this post? If you were, please reconsider your day job. :)
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
In a nutshell, we aren’t supposed to sit around thinking about what someone else has, you know the
phrase, “Keeping up with the Jones”? They have it, we want it, we go out and buy something to make ourselves feel good, we can now say we have it too! Doesn’t this stem from coveting or wanting what our “neighbor” has? Do you like their new pool? How about that new lawnmower? We know it’s wrong to steal (we talked about that commandment already), so coveting doesn’t get the job done. We head out and buy something and this fills the void until we covet again.
We all know that having strong desires can lead to murder, stealing, lying etc. Coveting kind of falls into the “pre-exisiting” condition category of many other sins. When we covet what someone else has, it can lead to all sorts of bad actions.
Filed under: Challenge, Life, Religion, Short Thoughts | Tagged: 10 commandments, Christianity, coveting, desiring, ten commandments, wanting
i think this speaks for to extensive “coveting” such as drunkenness doesnt speak to a couple beers on a saturday night..
Would that mean that keeping the Sabbath Holy would only mean, “mostly” Holy? Or, murder is okay as long as it’s not excessive? Jesus, himself noted that lusting after someone in your mind equated to adultery. I don’t think your observation is supported by the Bible.
Keep in mind that debauchery (drunkenness or meaning “out of ones mind due to some outside influence”) is not one of the Ten Commandments…..yet it is important. Debauchery is being drunk, high on drugs or in a state where you are not thinking straight enough to do what you would do if you were sober. The Bible doesn’t speak about being under the influence of 1 or 2 beers. The Bible is full of wine being drunk at meals and only condemning drunkenness. The Bible is NOT full of minor coveting and dismissing this coveting. So in a sense you haven’t compared apples to apples.
That’s my take, thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Right, but are you saying you dont believe in gradations of sin? Or do you equate an oft thought of a hot woman to murder?
I absolutely do not, thats why i made my comment as to extensive or excessive drunkeness thats all.
MacGregor,
Thanks for commenting back. It can be argued that the Bible describes levels of hell and levels of heaven. Unfortunately, in my brief studies it’s not crystal clear. I mention that as it’s one of the few examples of a gray area regarding sin and its consequences.
To us humans there are definitely gradations of sin! If there weren’t our thought life would be infinitely more prosecutable. But, alas, God knows our thought life and Jesus equates hatred to murder and lust of the mind to adultery.
The Bible clearly teaches that one sin damns you to hell. The truth is that all humans sin many, many, many times and are never judged for these spiritual transgressions. We may be judged on some in this world now, but we have not been judged by God. Hence, our need for Jesus. In a nutshell, Jesus paid the fine for the laws we broke. Without accepting this payment, we are destined for the verdict we deserve.
To God, sin is sin. There are truly no exceptions for there is no man who has only sinned once. (i.e. One who lusted versus one who murdered).
A good analogy to consider:
God is holy, holy, holy (the original language uses this triple repetition due to the magnified reality). A little sin in the presence of holy, holy, holy is like just a little water thrown on hot oil. BOTH produce an explosion.
If you still think God views all sins on some scale of bad versus worse please provide some Biblical support. Off hand I can think of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and also a mention of “deadly sins” in Proverbs 6. But as I said, all sin is deadly.
So, again, I guess the short question in this long post would have been, what biblical support do you use to support your position of belief in “gradations of sin”?
Here’s the deal, i agree with everyone you said, and that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God is the final answer.
But given the fact that we are ALL sinners, my support is simply common sense. As its inevitable that we live a lifetime of sin, it would impossible to draw distinctions between sins, but my common sense tells me that God has a sense of humor, and a man who lives his life for God, coming short often, repenting and believing, is looked at al ittle differently than the sadistic murderer who’s lived a life of knowing sin only to repent at the last minute. If we assume God has no common sense we’re all dooomed.
This explanation makes a whole lot more sense to me. One because I love God’s sense of humor, and two because out of the two topics ‘levels of hell’ and ‘levels of heaven’ I believe there is much more evidence in the Bible regarding levels in heaven (hence some Saints are better than others in a sense). When I say Saint, of course, I’m talking about any Believer.
Now saying that, we could get into a whole ‘nother discussion about the parable of the wages where a man who works a full day gets the same reward as the man who comes in at the last minute and works a few minutes….
I will humbly apologize for taking your comments a bit more seriously than I think you intended them to be!
Thanks for the discussion and see at Moresec0de’s blog I’m sure.