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A Battle Against Covetousness Is a Battle Against Unbelief
What Is Covetousness?
Amazingly, of all sins, covetousness ranks high enough—or low enough—to be explicitly forbidden in the Ten Commandments: “You shall not covet” (Ex. 20:17). There’s a good clue to its meaning in 1 Timothy 6:5–6. It speaks of “people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain.” The word covetousness isn’t used here but the reality is what this text is all about. When 1 Timothy 6:5 says that some are treating godliness as a means of gain, Paul responds in 1 Timothy 6:6 that “there is great gain in godliness with contentment” (RSV). This gives us the key to the definition of covetousness: Covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God. The opposite of covetousness is contentment in God.
When contentment in God decreases, covetousness for gain increases. That’s why Paul says in Colossians 3:5 that covetousness is idolatry. “Put to death . . . what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” It’s idolatry because the contentment that the heart should be getting from God is coming from somewhere else.
So covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God or losing your contentment in God so that you start to seek it elsewhere.
Future Grace
John Piper
In Future Grace, John Piper offers meditations grounded in solid biblical reflection, helping readers defeat the power of sin by banking on the promises of Christ.
Have you ever considered that the Ten Commandments begin and end with virtually the same commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3) and “You shall not covet” (Ex. 20:17)? These are almost equivalent commands. Coveting is desiring anything other than God in a way that betrays a loss of contentment and satisfaction in him. Covetousness is a heart divided between two gods. So Paul calls it idolatry.
Flee Covetousness, Fight for Faith
In 1 Timothy 6:6–12, Paul is trying to persuade and empower people not to be covetous. But let’s be sure that we see how Paul understands this battle against covetousness. He gives reasons for not being covetous in 1 Timothy 6:6–10, which we will come back to. Then he tells Timothy to flee the love of money and the desire to be rich: “O man of God, flee these things.” Instead of giving in to covetousness, he continues, “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness” (1 Tim. 6:11). Then out of that list, he picks “faith” for special attention and says, “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Tim. 6:12). In essence, then, he says, “Flee covetousness . . . fight the good fight of faith.”
In other words, the fight against covetousness is nothing other than the fight of faith in future grace.
The Fight for Contentment Is Faith in Future Grace
When you stop and think about it, that’s just what the definition of covetousness implies. I said that covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God or losing your contentment in God so that you start to seek contentment elsewhere. But this contentment in God is precisely what faith is.
Jesus said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” In other words, what it means to believe in Jesus is to experience him as the satisfaction of my soul’s thirst and my heart’s hunger. Faith is the experience of contentment in Jesus. The fight of faith is the fight to keep my heart content in Christ—to really believe and keep on believing that he will meet every need and satisfy every longing.
Gratitude for Gifts You Are Content Without
Paul said that this was not only a fight to be fought (1 Tim. 6:12) but also a secret that had to be learned: “I have learned in whatever situation I am, to be content. . . . In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need” (Phil. 4:11–12). The force of Paul’s testimony here comes out more clearly if we see why he wrote it to the Philippians. He wrote this section to thank the church for their financial generosity to him. But Paul had been blistered with criticism more than once for allegedly having ulterior motives in his ministry—that he really wanted people’s money, not their salvation (see Acts 20:33; 1 Cor. 9:4–18; 2 Cor. 11:7–12; 12:14–18; 1 Thess. 2:5, 9). So he is skittish about giving any impression that he is eager to get their money.
How does he deflect that suspicion? Twice he says, “Thanks, but . . .” In Philippians 4:10–11 he says, “I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your [financial] concern for me. . . . Not that I am speaking of being in need.” In other words, “my joy in your giving is not because I have lost my contentment.” On the contrary, “I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound” (Phil. 4:12). To deflect the criticism that he is covetous for their gifts, he says that his gratitude for their gifts does not come from discontent. He does the very same thing in the next paragraph.
Contentment is the cause of love.
He praises them for being the only church that has repeatedly sent him support: “You Philippians yourselves know that . . . no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only. . . . Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit” (Phil. 4:15–17). Here again, “Thanks, but . . .” He deflects the accusation of covetousness. In other words, “I am glad you support me but don’t misunderstand. If it sounds like I am seeking your gifts, that’s a mistake.”
Only this time, instead of saying that he has learned to be content without their gifts (Phil. 4:11–12), he says that the cause of his joy is their benefit, not his: “I seek the fruit that increases to your credit” (Phil. 4:17). They are the richer for their generosity, not just Paul. As Jesus says, they have been laying up for themselves treasures in heaven by being generous to the needy (Luke 12:33).
So after his first expression of thanks, he says, “Don’t misunderstand, I’m not discontent” (see Phil. 4:11). And after his second expression of thanks, he says, “Don’t misunderstand, what I really seek is that you be blessed” (see Phil. 4:17). This shows that love is the flip side of contentment. Love “seeketh not her own” (1 Cor. 13:5 KJV). It seeks “the good of [the] neighbor” (1 Cor. 10:24). This is what Paul was doing: “Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit” (Phil. 4:17). Where did this impulse of love come from? It came from contentment: “I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content” (Phil. 4:11). Therefore, Paul says, in effect, “What I seek is not the gift that comes to me in receiving, but the benefit that comes to you in giving.” Contentment is the cause of love.
I Can Do All Things Through Christ, Including Hunger
And where does this contentment come from? Philippians 4:13 gives the answer: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” God’s provision of day-by-day future grace enables Paul to be filled or to be hungry, to prosper or to suffer, to have abundance or to be in want. “I can do all things” really means “all things,” not just easy things. “All things” means, for Paul, “Through Christ I can hunger and suffer and be in want.” This puts the stunning promise of Philippians 4:19 in its proper light: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” What does “all your needs” mean in view of Philippians 4:14? It means “all that you need for God-glorifying contentment.” Paul’s love for the Philippians flowed from his contentment in God, and his contentment flowed from his faith in the future grace of God’s infallible provision.
It’s obvious then that covetousness is exactly the opposite of faith. It’s the loss of contentment in Christ so that we start to crave other things to satisfy the longings of our heart. And there’s no mistaking that the battle against covetousness is a battle against unbelief and a battle for faith in future grace. Whenever we sense the slightest rise of covetousness in our hearts we must turn against it and fight it with all our might, using the weapons of faith.
This article is adapted from Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God by John Piper.
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