Proverbs 23:17-18. 17Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day. 18Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.
What is envy? Sometimes we want some THING that someone else has. That’s called coveting or jealousy. But envy goes even deeper. Envy simultaneously admires and resents. Envy is wishing you had someone else’s life. Why do they get everything? Why do things always work out for them and not me? I wish I could be like him. Envy then begins to make us resent God for making us who we are and giving us the life we have.
There’s only one thing worse than envy. Envying the life of a sinner. The sinner has no desire to trust the Lord. They are unregenerate. Unsaved. In Psalm 73, Asaph confesses that his faith was failing because of his envy of the arrogant. The prosperous sinner.
Psalm 73:2-3. 2But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. 3For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
When you think about it, it’s pretty strange that a Christian, someone who is united to Christ and all of his spiritual blessings, would envy the life of someone who is disconnected from Christ. And yet, so many of us live our lives enslaved by this sort of envy. Christians who want earthly power, earthly wealth, earthly beauty, and who constantly compare their lives to the lives of others.
Envy’s greatest danger is that it requires a lack of faith in God to survive in our hearts. This is why the cure for envy that we see in the proverbs is not one of self-control, or following your own heart. The cure is one of trust in God. In his commentary, Derek Kidner, points out that we must look up – fear the Lord, and look ahead – surely there is a future.
Our union with Christ allows us to do both of these faithfully, just as Jesus did. We fix our eyes on Christ. We look forward to the blessed hope of a future with him. When we understand all that we have in Christ, there is never a reason to envy anyone, especially the wicked. What does anyone on this Earth have that you don’t already have in Christ? We must ask ourselves all the day, whose life do I really want? Christ’s life or some rich and famous person’s life? Christ’s life or my best friend’s life? Christ’s or my sibling’s life?
When we want Christ’s life more than anything, we can start by trusting that we already have it! It is ours by grace through faith. And if God has already given us Christ’s spiritual life, can we trust that God has also given us the best earthly life for living out Christ’s spiritual life? We can and we must, or else envy will be knocking on the door of our hearts waiting to devour us as it did Cain.
You: Who do you envy? Whose life do you wish you had?
You in Christ: How does our union with Christ allow us to look up and look forward.
Christ in you: How would envy dissipate in your heart if you truly believed that you share Christ’s life?
Pray: Father, keep my heart from envy and make me happy with the life you have given me, both spiritual life and the earthly life I have now, which is the best life for me. Amen.
To Live is Christ 