Why Are Some People Envious?

When he saw them come into the room, Bob hated John almost immediately. John came with Courtney: tall, blond, legs that went all the way down to the ground. On top of that, she was tan and had really nice teeth. What did John have, other than Courtney, that Bob didn’t? Bob had a really good job, a nice home, a very cool car and wavy hair. What did God think he was doing giving Courtney to John? Didn’t God get it? Bob was everything John was and deserved someone like Courtney. But she liked John, not Bob. And Bob envied John.

Let’s talk about that envy thing for a minute. Envy is a longing for something someone else owns, has (like a quality of life), or might have. Envy might be a discontent with what one has himself, but it is usually unrelated to what, Bob’s case, he actually has. Envy might be discontent, but often it is something all its own.

Sometimes envy desires what someone else has, but it also might simply be a desire that person not have what they have or be who they are.

Bob is an envious person. It isn’t just that he envies from time to time, he envies all the time. In fact, if you talked with him about it, he would say, “some people envy, I am an envier. It is part of my DNA. I identify as an envier.”

Where did this envy thing come from? If you were to watch Bob, you would see his eyes change when John and Courtney came into the room, you would see the “wheels whirling around in his head,” you could almost see him deciding to envy John. From this you might conclude that he chose to envy John. But Bob would deny this, saying that he has always envied other people the things they had and who they were. He can’t remember a time when he didn’t envy what other people had. His mother tells stories of Bob seeing other boys with toys and crawling over to them and forcefully taking their toys. Then, when his mother explained to him that the other boy had it first, Bob would throw a tantrum until he got what he wanted. She would also recount how after getting his way, he would often carefully set the toy down and go back to whatever he was doing before he saw the other boy with the toy. He didn’t even want the toy. He just didn’t want the other bot to have it. As soon as Bob was able to see that others were having a good time with what they had, he was not happy that they had what he didn’t have and when he grew competent to do something about it, he did.

Someone might say Bob came to this station in life because his parents were enviers or that because of the way they treated him as a young boy, he became an envier. But Bob’s parents loved and continue to love one another and Bob. They were and are very gracious and generous to everyone around them. They did give in to Bob when he threw his fits, but on the whole Bob was just envious. His parents were kind and sweet and raised him to be a good boy. Bob was just an envier.

Perhaps it was his historical context. Maybe he was very poor as a child and didn’t have much so when he saw someone with things he didn’t have the financial wherewithal to purchase, he veered into envy. But his parents were not only nice folks, they were also upper middle class in their finances. Bob lived in a nice home, had nice things and didn’t lack in anything that other kids had. He just wanted what they had or sometimes simply didn’t want them to have what they had.

Another reason people give for envy is that perhaps Bob was physically weak. Maybe he envied others because he had physical shortcomings. Nope. Bob was always a big boy for his age. Most people thought he was two years older than he actually was. In high school, Bob was on three teams and was the MVP of two of them and captain of the third. He was a national merit scholar and a Rhodes Scholar. When full grown he was 6’4” and weighed a very fit 225 pounds. His picture had been on the cover of the local chamber of commerce magazine because he was particularly good looking. Abilities and giftedness weren’t the reasons Bob envied others.

It appears that the only thing left is his genetics. Was Bob built or wired to be an envier? Well, maybe, but there is no scientific evidence that people have genes for envying. I haven’t even heard about anyone looking for a gene for envying. No one, that I know of has ever even considered it. And even it is genetic, he is still condemned for envying and for being an envier.

But, if being envious isn’t a choice, isn’t something Bob’s parents created in him by how they treated him, wasn’t something that developed in him over time (he’s always been an envier), wasn’t created by his social or life context, and it was or wasn’t due to his genetic makeup, where did it come from?

There may be some other explanations that I haven’t explored. For instance, we might wonder about groups of enviers, or was Bob molested by an envier or by someone who was an anti-envier, but at the end of the day. Bob simply envies. He is an envier.

Oddly enough, the Bible has a lot to say about envy. For example, in the book of Galatians it says,

“Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:19–21).

Envy is among the list of things that are produced by the flesh. The flesh is that element in the world that wars against the Spirit of God (cf. Gal 5:16). It is part of the world that entered the world when Adam first sinned in the Garden. It is that part of man that needs to be cut off in order to live in the presence of God. It is the thing that dies when someone comes to Christ and becomes a Christian.

What this means is that before someone is a Christian they envy as a natural course of who they are. In other places the membership in the flesh is talked about has having an evil heart. The heart is the seat of what we think, do, and say. Here’s one example from Mark,

“And He [Jesus] said, ‘What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man’” (Mk 7:20–23).

Envy isn’t on this list, but you can see others in both lists. The point is that before someone comes to Christ, they envy by nature (and one or more of others on this list and others). It is what is in their heart. It is the fruit of their being “of the flesh.” Bob is thus an envier because he is born an envier. Being an envier is who he is, a subset of being of the flesh.

We should notice that at the end of the Galatians passage, Paul says, “those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21). This means that while Bob is an envier he is also being held responsible for choosing to envy. There is no distinction between envying and being an envier. He is/was born in the flesh (this is all tied to Adam’s sin in the Garden), he was born with an evil heart, and he is responsible for who and what he is.

This sounds like a horrible and unjust situation and it is, but it isn’t the end of the story.

Up until now Bob hasn’t fought against being an envier. In many ways he enjoys being an envier. The Bible acknowledges that sin is pleasurable (Heb 11:25). But suppose one day he ran into a Christian who told him that unless he turns to Christ and away from envy and his being fleshly, he will spend eternity in Hell. Suppose further, that he embraced the thought that he wanted to stop being envious—it was driving him nuts and he felt like he was in bondage to his sin (which he is) and wants to stop. What can he do? What can be done?

The Great News is that God, who created this whole deal, created a solution to the dilemma. You’ll remember, from the Mark passage, that Jesus mentioned being defiled. What you may remember from your days in Sunday School is that God is Holy and pure. This means that he can’t/won’t come in contact with anything that is defiled. So, in order to come to God, we need to be cleansed from our defilement. The only way for this to happen is for us to be given a cosmic shower. But our fleshliness is also something that has earned us death. We have been what is reprehensible to God and because it was all against God has earned us death. So, God sent Jesus to die in our place and it is as we identify with him in his death, essentially dying to ourselves, that God applies Jesus’ death to our account. God raised Jesus from the dead and when he did, he raised all those who would be found “in” him. Being found in him requires our death and his resurrection applied to us.

When we believe that this was done for us, and we believe it, it is applied to us and to our status before God. We call this justification. But God also does a work in us. He transforms our hearts so that we are no longer enemies of God, but we are children and friends of God. We now have fellowship with God, and he lives in us. As a result, because we were changed, and he lives in us, we are being changed. And this change sets us free from being envious.

Bob can be set free from his being an envier by becoming a Christian. He can stop being an envier by becoming a lover. Instead of giving folks dirty looks because of what they have (even if the dirty look is only inside his head), he can thank God for the gifts he has given to others and rejoice with them in the grace they have received.

Does this mean that after Bob becomes a Christian he will never be tempted to envy again? No. It means that whereas Bob envied as an expression of who he was, now he will be tempted to envy as a Christian. As a Christian he can envy, but it will be as someone for whom sin is not controlling him. Envy will no longer be normal for Bob. There will be no sense in which envying is acceptable to Bob. He has left that world and lives in another completely different world. And he does so as a completely different person.

But wait, there’s more: not only will envy not be the air that Bob breaths, the more and longer he overcomes the temptation to envy, the less it will be a part of his life. He will be free from envy and there will undoubtedly be a time when instead of being tempted to envy, he will be free in such a way that he will be able to help those who are still enslaved to the bondage of envy.

There are many, these days, who believe that if someone isn’t actually acting out on their desires, they can’t be condemned for those desires. But you’ll notice that envy is a sin that doesn’t always have an outward action related to it. Bob was envying John without ever doing anything outward at all. In fact, no one, except Bob (and God), knew that Bob was envying John. But Bob was still condemned for his envy. He was still an envier.

Coming to Christ meant that Bob needed to renounce his envying in all its manifestations. More than that he needed to renounce the fact of his being an envier. Without this he couldn’t have said that he had died, taken up his cross, and followed Jesus. He would still be in his sins and in bondage. There are no sins that one is allowed to harbor or covet. All must be laid at the feet of the cross. It is a lie and a damnably false gospel to preach/teach anything else.

Bob could not be an Envying Christian: thinking it in his head, but not practicing it. An Envying Christian is a contradiction in terms and a lie.