Ancient Envy
Today's Three-minute Bible Study
Print, Study and Apply
Title: Ancient Envy------------------------------ Date: 7/8/2003
Keywords:
"covet" "envy" "lust"
Welcome
to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual
temptation.
Passage: Exodus 20:17*
"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
Questions
1. What is the principle behind this verse?
2. How can we apply it to our struggles against pornography?
Practical help
Conventional wisdom holds that Jesus ramped up the requirements of the law in the Beatitudes: Anger became tantamount to murder, and lust became the equivalent of adultery. The Old Testament, so the story goes, was a much tamer place.
Precisely wrong.
As the tenth commandment demonstrates, Jesus' robust concept of lust traces straight back to the Old Testament. Only it appears under a different category of sin: covetousness. Or envy for short.
Envy wants what it does not own. The other's property. The other's perks. And the other's attractive spouse. Nowadays, the other charges for the privilege of looking at the attractive spouse in the buff. That's called pornography.
The next time you're struggling against pornography, reframe the temptation in Old Testament terms. You're not only in the throes of lust, but also in the grip of envy. Respond in Old Testament fashion.
eXXit
homepage
Index of three-minute studies
Copyright 2003 by eXXit
*Scriptures are from The Holy Bible: New International Version © Copyright 1973,
1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.
|