The sins which dwell and are active in the heart of man are innumerable and are manifested in the conduct one way or another toward God and man’s neighbour. Many of these sins are particular and outstanding and are exposed and condemned throughout Scripture in the light of the divine law and also the holy gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And through the witness of the Church of God and a faithful gospel ministry men are warned against all manner of sin; and the professed followers of Christ themselves are not excluded from such warnings. The Lord Jesus said to Peter, James and John in the garden, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matt. xxvi. 41). And David in Psalm xix. 12, 13, prays as follows: “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.”
One sin which is not so often heard of or so frequently condemned as others is the sin of envy, although indeed it is mentioned again and again throughout the Word of God. It appears among the list of the works of the flesh in the fifth chapter of Galatians as follows “… envying, murders, drunkenness, revellings and such like …” This sin has been defined as an evil “grief at the sight of another’s success,” and also “hatred toward another on account of their prosperity.” And Cruden describes it as “discontent at the excellence of another.” Alexander Smith Paterson, in his work on The Shorter Catechism, in dealing with: What is forbidden in the Tenth Commandment? writes as follows: “By envying or grieving at the good of our neighbour, we are to understand a repining or grudging at his prosperous circumstances, or any superior privilege which he possesses above ourselves. The advantages which he may have over us, and which may excite repining, envying, and grieving or grudging, are such as these:—gifts, graces, relations, wealth, honour, pleasure, etc. But to such as acknowledge an overruling Providence, these things will be no occasion to sin.”
We are counselled by the Word of God to beware of this sin as in Galatians, Chapter v. 26—”Let us not be desirous of vain-glory, envying one another,” and in James, Chapter v. 9, —”Grudge not one against another;” and again in Colossians, Chapter iii. 5—”Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth; inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” The reader may discern here that these passages are related intimately to those to whom these respective Epistles were written; and that means, in other words, that Christian believers were and are now addressed with regard to envy. To follow this point out let us look to the First Epistle of Peter, in which we are told that the Epistle is addressed to the “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ . . .” (Chapter i. 2). Then in the second chapter at the beginning the elect are admonished as follows—”Therefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby . . .” So we see that envy is one of the “weights” to be laid aside if the Christian is to grow in grace and to run the race set before him as he ought while “looking unto Jesus.”
The sin of envy turns to hatred and malice toward the object of it as we see from the record of its evil workings in the Holy Scriptures, if not subdued and mortified by divine grace in the heart of the believer, and as it may be cherished in the breast of the ungodly.
There are two conspicuous and well-known cases which we will cite from the Bible, in which envy knew no bounds when it turned to hatred and malice.
The first is to be found in the history of Joseph. “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours. And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.” That was but the beginning of the outgoings of their envy. They had not a good word to say to Joseph or of him. Here we find a mark of this sin in the conduct of men. He was their brother and had not harmed them by word or deed, nevertheless they hated him. Later they were of the mind to slay him. This is envy at work. But ultimately they decided to sell him into Egypt to rid themselves of the brother whom their father loved more than they. (See Genesis, Chapter xiii). And the Holy Spirit in Acts tells us that, “The patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him.” In the light of the blessed fact that God was with Joseph, we should see what a miserable work envy is as practised against such as godly Joseph.
The second case is that connected with the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us first glance at the successive reactions of the chief priests and the Pharisees after the Lord Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead and manifested a wonderful measure of the glory of God. In the Gospel of John we read that many of the Jews believed in Jesus and then went and told the Pharisees what things Jesus had done in connection with Lazarus. “Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.” (John, Chapter xi. 45-47). Now we may pause here and note that these ruling Jews recognised and were forced to admit that Jesus was doing miracles, and that He was a more excellent and superior person than any of themselves on that account. This much they perceived albeit they were spiritually blind and unbelieving as to His divine Person. This stirred up envy in their wicked hearts, as we are told later—”Then from that day forth they took counsel together to put Him to death.” (verse 53). This desire to put Jesus to death was begotten of the malice and hatred arising from the terrible sin of envy. This godless and evil spirit actuated the chief priests right on till the time when they “… bound Jesus, and carried Him away, and delivered Him to Pilate.” (See Mark, Chapter xv. 1 and 10). Pilate questioned Jesus, and the chief priests accused Him of many things. Jesus answered nothing and Pilate marvelled at this. Then the matter of the release of Barabbas, the murderer, or of Jesus arose. And the multitude of the people desired Pilate to do as he had ever done unto them, that is, to release a notable prisoner. Then Pilate put the following question to the multitude, not to the chief priests in particular, viz. “Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?” Now we are told why he put this question to the multitude—”For he knew that the chief priests had delivered Him for envy:” (verse 10). Pilate recognised then, as he did all along, that the chief priests could not prove their charges against Jesus, and even as a man of the world he saw in their conduct the evidences of envy as far as this evil is recognisable by men among men. Poor Pilate was overwhelmed by the vehemence and clamour of men filled with envy against the Lord of glory, and committed the terrible act of delivering Jesus to be crucified. And when we think of these things, we ought to consider how heinous and dangerous is the sin of envy.
But God is able to make His grace abound in the experience of the chief of sinners, so that where sin abounded, grace shall much more abound. Herein there will be charity and “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not . . .” (1st Corinth., Chapter xiii. 4).