The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy
--I Samuel 18:5-9 and I Peter 2:1-3
I have to personally remind myself when it comes to this fourth deadly sin I “have stopped preaching and gone to meddling,” for envy or jealousy has been my personal, besetting sin since childhood and youth. Now every sermon I preach I always preach to myself, but this one really hits close to home. It is most personally revealing sermon I have ever preached.
Wayne Brouwer is a minister in the Reformed Church of America and a professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He shares this story in his sermon “Taming the Beast”: “Recently, I read the autobiography of Malcolm X. He talks about his younger years, when black people had nothing and white people had everything. That’s how he saw it, and he wasn’t alone.
“He bought skin cream to lighten the color of his skin. He got his hair conked—that’s what they called it. They soaked their scalps in a foul-smelling potion of lye and other chemicals until their scalps burned raw. Then they took a hot iron and seared the curls out of their hair. They wanted to be just like white people with straight hair. It was all part of life on the envy side of the street. Anything about his natural life had to be bad.”
Brouwer continues with his personal confession: “I too, play with enough false humility to wish myself someone else often. Sometimes all I see is the worst in me. I wish to be someone else. When I do that, envy kicks in overtime. Envy and a negative outlook on life are constant companions.” [SOURCE: --Wayne Brouwer, “Taming the Beast,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 118.]
I personally relate to the struggles of Malcolm X and Wayne Brouwer, for many times all I see is the worst in me, and I often wish I were someone else. I know what it means to have “envy kick in overtime.”
The Christmas of my freshman year at Southern Illinois University Carbondale when I was only eighteen, I almost changed Churches over envy and hurt feelings. I was a regular organist once a month in my home Church and the weekly organist every Sunday evening. I would accompany the choir on occasion as well.
None of the musicians at my Home Church received a salary, but one Sunday evening our Lay Leader presented Christmas gifts after Church to the pastor, our choir director, choir accompanist, and the Sunday evening pianist. After he made those presentations, he looked directly at me and said, “There are others who serve us that we also appreciate, but we could not give a gift to everyone.” I pouted over that one for a long time.
Academics, music, and achieving honors were always personal priorities during my teenage years. My close friends and I were always competitors in these fields. Every May all the students in all four classes at Marion High School who had consistently made the honor roll had their names put on a ballot for the teachers to vote for the ten students in each class who would receive the coveted Rotary Awards. Academic excellence was only one requirement for the Rotary honors. Other factors taken into consideration were extra curricular activities, citizenship, and a cooperative spirit with the faculty.
After the faculty voted for the winners in each of the four classes, the ten winners were announced and presented with their awards. The person receiving the most votes in each class received the gold key; the second highest received the silver key; and the remaining eight received a pin. I was fortunate enough to win a pin my sophomore through my senior years.
However, Steve, my best friend, surprised everyone our junior year and won the gold key for our class. Although I have had victory over that grudge for many years, originally it was hard for me to accept, and jealousy or envy really ripped my heart apart.
I verbally tore into a Christian brother by the name of Alan several years ago. Alan is an evangelist in our Annual Conference and had been the pastor of a State Trooper in the Church I was serving at the time. The State Trooper died of cancer during my first few months at that Church.
Although I had frequently visited and prayed with this brother and his family, they asked Alan to officiate at his funeral and snubbed me. When Alan came to talk about the situation, I snubbed him, that is, after I screamed and hollered at him with personal derogatory remarks and told him to leave as quickly as possible.
Now I am not proud of all of this, but I share it with you to let you know that I struggle just as much as anyone else in the constant battle against temptation and sin. It was the Walk to Emmaus that healed my relationship with my brother clergyman Alan. He was the Weekend Spiritual Director on the very first Emmaus Walk on which I was a team member.
Alan personally invited me to be one of his four Assistant Spiritual Directors and be a team member on Little Egypt Walk to Emmaus Number Thirteen, and since that time all my old resentments towards him have been completely eradicated by the blood of Jesus, and now I truly love and appreciate Alan and his ministry for our Lord Jesus Christ.
From early childhood, through youth, and throughout my adult life I have struggled with the deadly sin of envy. I’ve turned it over to the Holy Spirit and put it on the altar, but there have been times when that temptation attacks me once more. Sometimes I have taken it off the altar and let it mar my relationship with Jesus once again. Therefore, the struggle has not completely ended, but currently those feelings are surrendered to Jesus, and I feel no animosity or ill will towards anyone because of envy.
Oscar Wilde tells this powerful story: “The devil was once crossing the Libyan Desert, and he came upon a spot where a number of small fiends were tormenting a holy hermit. The sainted man easily shook off their evil suggestions. The devil watched their failure, and then he stepped forward to give them a lesson.
“What you do is too crude,” he said.
“Permit me for one moment.”
“With that he whispered to the holy man, ‘Your brother has just been mad bishop of Alexandria.’ A scowl of malignant envy at once clouded the serene face of the hermit.
“‘That,’ said the devil to his imps, ‘is the sort of thing which I should recommend.’” [SOURCE—Gordon MacDonald, The Life God Blesses, Nelson, 1994, p. 143.]
We often think of envy and jealousy as synonymous terms, and basically they are, but there are slight distinctions. Jealousy in Scripture can sometimes be a good quality. God is a jealous God , because as the Only True God He longs for a personal relationship with every human being ; and, for this very reason, He can not tolerate situations where anyone makes someone or something other than Jesus Christ the Lord of their life.
In the marital relationship between husband and wife, we promise that we will “forsake all other and keep each other only to ourselves as long as we both shall life.” When husbands and wives are jealous to keep this monogamous relationship between each other inviolate, that is a holy jealousy in the good sense of the word.
The Greek word ZELOS is ancestor of our English words zeal and zealous. It means either jealous or envy in the New Testament. When this term is used in the New Testament it is the choice of the translators whether to use the word jealous or envy in English, therefore, different translations use different terms. Once again the word ZELOS in referring to jealousy can covey either good or bad connotations depending on the context of the passage.
ZELOS is not the basic Greek term Scripture uses for the concept of envy, and that Greek word never conveys a positive image in Scripture and is never translated as jealousy in English. When I envy someone I harbor an attitude of ill will or bitterness against them because of their possession, status, popularity, success, achievements, advantages, or accomplishments for which I long as well. Such an attitude whether we call it envy or jealousy in English is sin in God’s eyes and is always condemned in Holy Scriptures.
Envy reflects a spirit of competition between rivals. The spirit of envy is seen in the original sibling rivalry in human history, and it led Cain to murder his brother Abel. Envy came between Jacob’s two wives, the sisters Rachel and Leah. We read in Genesis 30:1, “When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I shall die!’”
After David killed Goliath, Saul’s love, appreciation, and respect for David turned to bitterness and envy as we learn in I Samuel 18:8-9: “Saul was very angry; this refrain galled him. They have credited David with tens of thousands, he thought, but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom? And from that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David.”
It was spiritual envy that led the chief priests to turn Jesus over to Pilate to be executed on the cross. Matthew 27:18, “For he realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over.” The spirit of envy or jealousy on the part of religious leaders was a motivating factor in the crucifixion of our Lord. It might be termed as spiritual envy, and perhaps there is no greater and more dangerous form of envy than this.
“There was a man in ancient Greece who killed himself through envy. The story has it that a city erected a statute to honor the champion athlete in its public games. This athlete had an archrival who was so envious that he pledged to destroy the statue.
“Each night, under the cover of darkness, he would go to the statue and chisel at its base, hoping to make it fall. Finally, he achieved his goal and toppled the statue. His envy had driven him to destruction, not only of the statue, but of himself; for when the statue fell, it fell on him.” [SOURCE: --Maxie Dunnam and Kimberly Dunnam Reisman, The Workbook on the Seven Deadly Sins (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1997), 52-3.].
Dr. Maxie Dunnam and The Rev. Kimberly Dunnam Reisman make this astute observation in their devotional book “We were created by God, for God. Everything in life should revolve around God. Life will not work wholesomely in any other way. Sin, in all its forms, in one way or another, demands that everything, including God, revolve around me.” Envy revolves around me, and its battle cry becomes, “What’s yours should be mine.” [ibid.].
That was my personal sin in my relationship with Alan over the funeral of the State Trooper. I proclaimed that I should be the pastor to officiate at that service, not Alan. PRAISE GOD THAT HIS GRACE WAS SUFFICIENT TO FORGIVE AND BUILD A NEW RELATIONSHIP OF APPRECIATION AND RESPECT FOR MY BROTHER PASTOR.
Envy still threatens my relationship with Jesus and with brothers and sisters in Christ if I do not remain on my spiritual guard and keep it on the altar and underneath the blood of Jesus. Just like Malcolm X and Wayne Brouwer I am still tempted to wish I were someone else, to see only the worst in me, to compete to be top dog.
I must remember that envy so quickly and easily consumes the heart. I must constantly stand on the admonition of Gordon Mac Donald as quoted by Nancy Beach in her sermon entitled “Miriam, Aaron, and the Green-Eyed Monster”: “The soul cannot be healthy when one compares himself or herself to others. The soul dies a bit every time it’s involved in a lifestyle that competes.” [SOURCE: --Gordon MacDonald, quoted by Nancy Beach in “Miriam, Aaron, and the Green-Eyed Monster,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 172.]
Failure to confess and forsake the attitude of envy will destroy us. It may not result in our immediate physical death, but it leads in the end to spiritual and eternal death apart from the grace of God.
The Bible is explicitly clear in Galatians 5:18-21, “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, JEALOUSY, anger, quarrels, dissension, factions, ENVY, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: THOSE WHO DO SUCH THINGS WILL NOT INHERIT THE KINGDOM OF GOD.” Those who are jealous and envious will not inherit the Kingdom of God! WOW! That’s a double whammy!
As Christian disciples we have absolute assurance that we have an eternal home with Jesus. We conquer envy and jealousy because we live by the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit, and are led by the Spirit. Paul sums it up extremely well in Galatians 5:24-26, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” When we are led by the Spirit, live by the Spirit, and keep in step with the Spirit, He enables us to be humble, not conceited. He keeps us from provoking ane envying each other.
Solomon pointedly advises us in Proverbs 14:30: “A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” Envy is like bone cancer that rots our skeletal structure untreated will lead to our demise and death.
Envy is perhaps the most deadly sin of all, because it seeks to destroy individual disciples and the local Church. Paul feared it was jeopardizing the Church at Corinth when he says in II 12:20, “For I fear that when I come, I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish; I fear that there may perhaps be quarreling, JEALOUSY, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.” These sister vices work together in the local Church. Where you find quarreling in a local Church, jealousy and envy are not far behind.
So often envy leads to quarreling within the Church. Where there is quarreling and jealousy in a body of believers you also quickly discern the poison spirits of anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, and conceit as well. All these demonic powers quickly lead to chaos and disorder. Left to run their course without true humility and repentance, these forces have produced splits in many congregations and permanently closed many church doors.
The spirit of envy has no place among the people of God, either as an individual disciple of Jesus Christ or collectively as His Church. So what is the solution? How can we conquer the deadly sin of envy? Peter certainly was one to know how to do so from personal experience. He constantly was envious of the other disciples, especial John, “the disciple Jesus loved,” but by the power of the Holy Spirit Peter stopped comparing himself to others and allowed Jesus to use the unique person of Peter in his ministry.
There is no better person to give us the key to victory over envy than Peter when he commands us in I Peter 2:1-2, “Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
Last Saturday we “got rid of a lot of garbage at Trinity.” We threw away junk that had cluttered our basement for years. We threw all that junk and garbage into the dumpster, and it was a liberating experience. That’s what the Holy Spirit calls his disciples and his Churches to do with the deadly sin of envy. To “throw it away,” “to renounce it,” to “give it up to Jesus.” This is precisely what Paul is talking about in Galatians 5:24 in saying, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus HAVE CRUCIFIED THE SINFUL NATURE WITH IT PASSIONS AND DESIRES.”
The place we do that spiritually is not at the dumpster, but at the altar, the place of sacrifice. We get rid of our garbage of envy, we “throw it away” by surrendering it to Jesus for forgiveness and to the Holy Spirit for the power to live in victory over its fatal poison. In doing so we stand on the promise of James 4:6, “But He gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says (in Proverbs 3:34):
‘God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.’”
When we give our garbage of envy to Jesus and depend on Him to forgive us, the Holy Spirit gives us victory, both as individual disciples and as a local body of Christ.
“F. B. Meyer was pastor of Christ’s Church in London at the time that G. Campbell Morgan was pastor of Westminster Chapel and Charles H. Spurgeon was pastor of the Metropolitan Chapel. Both Morgan and Spurgeon often had much larger audiences than did Meyer. Troubled by envy, Meyer confessed that not until he began praying for his colleagues did he have peace of heart. ‘When I prayed for their success,’ said Meyer, ‘the result was that God filled their churches so full that the overflow filled mine, and it has been full since.’” [SOURCE: --BIBLE ILLUSTRATOR, Topic: Envy; Index: 1137-1138; Date: 3/1988.19]. May we do likewise and totally surrender all our envy to the Lordship of Jesus and walk in victory in the power of the Holy Spirit.
