“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s” (Ex. 20:17).
We come now to the last of the series. We have completed the circle, and end just where we began. We say that we end just where we began; for the first commandment says, “You shall have no other gods before Me,” and in Col. 3:5 we read that covetousness is idolatry.
The Infinite Circle of the Law
The law of God is a complete circle, beginning and ending in God; or, rather, having neither beginning nor end. God inhabits eternity, and the circle of His law encompasses the universe. There is nothing in heaven or earth that does not come within the circle. Its range is unlimited. “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law [literally, “in the law,” that is, “within the range, sphere or jurisdiction of the law”]: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Rom 3:19).
Going Outside the Law
What is sin?—“Sin is the transgression of the law.”
What does “transgression” mean?—It means “a going across.” Sin, therefore is the act of going across God’s law.
But when one transgressions,—goes outside the bounds—God’s law, where can he go? Ah, that is a pertinent question. There is no piece for one to go outside of God’s law, except to go out of the universe, that is, to cease to be. “The wages of sin is death.” “Sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
This can be made apparent in another manner. The law of God is His life, flowing in an endless stream from His throne. Now wherever the word of God has free course, there is perfect life. If we allow ourselves to be simply channels for the river of life, as we are designed to be, the life flowing through us will hold us in life. But what will take place if we put ourselves squarely across the stream? Everybody knows the result of placing any obstacle in the way of a stream of water. The first thing is a damming up of the stream, and when water is dammed up, and becomes stagnant, it breeds death, until the force of the on-coming stream breaks away all the barriers, and the waters flow on again unhindered. But that is the destruction of the thing that placed itself across the current. It is infinitely better to be in the line of life, in harmony with it,—channels for the stream of life,—than to be obstacles to be swept away.
God’s Mercy to Transgressors
You say that there are many people who transgress God’s law, and yet live. Yes there are, and that is one of the greatest marvels of the grace of God. Unbelievers rail against God, charging Him with injustice, because sentence of death is pronounced upon the ungodly; but they forget that the infinite mercy of God is manifested every moment in keeping them in life, to allow them opportunity to come into harmony with it, so that they need not die.
This life is but a span, a moment long as it seems to short-sighted men, it is but the twinkling of an eye to God. We do not at once see the results of the transgression of God’s law, and men fancy that because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, as they reckon time, they can sin with impunity. “He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Prov. 29:1).
Not Imputing Their Trespasses to them
The reason why men who transgress the law do not instantly die, is that God is still in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, “not imputing their trespasses to them” (2 Cor. 5:19). “If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared” (Ps. 130:3, 4). God does not now impute sin to men; but takes it all on Himself. He knows that men are foolish and ignorant, and He has “compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray” (Heb. 5:2). Knowing their ignorance, He does not take them at their word, when they say that they do not wish to be kept within the bounds of His life,—that they wish to be free from its “restraints,” as they call it, and to live their own lives independently of Him. His long-suffering still waits as in the days of Noah; but by and by there will come a day when sufficient light will have shone to enable every one to make a final choice; and then those who deliberately choose to go outside of God’s law, will be taken at their word and allowed to go—where? Where can they go, when God’s law fills the universe, and they go outside? For them there will be no future; they will “be as though they had never been.”
In the tenth commandment, more than in any other, the unity of the entire law is seen. It summarizes all the commandments, even as the first of them does. It takes in the whole duty of man. “You shall not covet.” This precept underlies and is the heart of every commandment. In Rom. 7:7 we read: “I would not have known covetousness (lust) unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.”
Someone says, “I thought lust had to do with the seventh commandment.” So it has, and with every other one as well. Lust simply means desire; and since in the fall the desire of mankind is only to evil, lust has degenerated into evil desire, it makes no difference for what. A desire for anything that is forbidden is lust, and is contrary to the whole law of God. “Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15).
So we see that the tenth commandment strikes at the root of all sin. The Apostle Paul takes it and, makes it the summing up of the whole law. He who keeps the tenth commandment, cannot so much as think of breaking any other; he cannot have the slightest idea to sin.
The Spirituality of the Law
“For we know that the law is spiritual” (Rom. 7:14), and this commandment reveals its spirituality more clearly than any other. Men talk about enforcing the law of God,—about incorporating the divine law into human laws. They fancy that because human laws punish the person who kills another, that they are putting the sixth commandment into effect. They imagine that they are safeguarding the seventh commandment, because there are laws against adultery. It is a very common thing for people to think that they can enforce the fourth commandment. But let them try it with the tenth. How will they succeed?
Well, men have actually been so blindly presumptuous as to try to enforce the tenth commandment. There was only one way, and that was by the Inquisition, invented by the Papacy, which exalted itself to God’s place, and even above Him. Men were tortured to wring out of them the secrets of their hearts, and punished for even the thought that they confessed to having harbored. But nobody but God can find out the secrets of men’s hearts, and He does not have to find them out, because “all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). So no human power or wisdom can ever determine when the tenth commandment has been broken. When the thought of sin, which is forbidden by the tenth commandment, goes so far as to manifest itself, it comes under the head of some of the other commandments. To take your neighbor’s wife is a violation of the seventh commandment; to seize upon his house or goods, is a violation of the eighth.
So we see that this tenth commandment deals with that which is all within one’s own mind, and is simply the drawing out and summing up of the entire ten. It shows the breadth and spirituality of the whole law of God; for as we have previously learned, “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 4:28). It is not necessary that one shall have carried his wrong desire into execution, in order to violate any one of the commandments. “The devising of foolishness is sin” (Prov. 24:9).
The tenth commandment is no more spiritual than any other; but it makes the spirituality of the law more apparent than the others do, in that the violation of it is wholly within one’s heart, out of sight from all human eyes; yet one cannot break any one of the first nine commandments without first breaking the tenth; and as soon as one has broken the tenth, all the rest are broken.
Thus we see the utter futility of all human attempts to execute the law of God, or to punish transgression of it. Such attempts cannot be made except by those who do not have any sort of just comprehension of the law, and the nature of it; and that is why every effort to enforce or execute God’s law results in a perversion of it. It is only a perverted view of the law that men have, who think to take it into their own hands, and so what they enforce is not God’s law, but something directly opposed to it.
This appears when we consider all so-called “Sabbath laws.” They are of course Sunday laws. Men will in the same breath talk about the sacredness of the fourth commandment, and about the necessity of rest for the body one day in seven, and of securing it by legislation in favor of Sunday. But the fourth commandment contains no reference to Sunday, except to tell all men that in it they may labor, and do their own work, and, moreover, the Sabbath of the Lord is not more physical rest, but is spiritual rest,—God’s rest—for God is Spirit.
The tenth commandment, therefore, closes up the circle of the law, and unites the two ends, and then surrounds the circle itself, bidding everybody to keep his hands off from it, and leave God to conduct the affairs of every portion of His universal kingdom, even to putting into us the desires that we ought to cherish.
Covetousness is idolatry. This is indicated in 1 Timothy 6:17: “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.” As you read this, remember the words of Christ: “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Luke 12:15). And then follows the story of the man whose ground brought forth abundantly, and whose barns were overflowing, and who proposed to say to his soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” That man was trusting in uncertain riches, instead of in the living God, who had given him his abundance. Instead of trusting God, whom he could not see, he made a god of that which he could see, and his hands could handle.
The Love of Money
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Tim. 6:9, 10).
Mind, the text does not say that money is an evil, or the root of evil. It is the love of money that works mischief. There have been very wealthy men, who were also patterns of goodness. Job had the testimony from God Himself that he was a good man, yet he was the wealthiest man in the country. But he did not trust in his riches. He was willing to distribute and the cause which he did not know he searched out; and when his wealth was taken from him in a day he was not in the least upset by it. He still trusted in God who had given it, and who was able to care for him without it.
Hoarding Means Poverty
“There is one who scatters, yet increases more; and there is one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty” (Prov. 11:24). It is a law of God’s universe that that which is hoarded up withers away, and that which is scattered abroad increases. It is not money, that is the evil, but the love of it which leads one to hoard it up merely to look at, or as a fancied security against future need. Hoarding up wealth not only tends to poverty, but it is a sign of it. The miser has a constant sense of lack. The old epitaph on a miser who had heaped up thousands, ended thus:—
“Yet this poor man, with all his store,The man of small means, who freely divides what he has with others, is the real rich man. His action shows his recognition of the fact that he is in connection with a boundless store of wealth. A small stream of water constantly flowing is far better than thousands of barrels of it stored up in a cistern.
Died in great want,—the want of more.”