The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy Series

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.