Saturday
Saturday
Commandments 8 and 10
You shall not steal.
Exodus 20:15
You shall not covet.
Exodus 20:17
You shall not steal. The prohibition of theft presupposes that citizens have a right to hold private property and that a distinction needs to be drawn between what is mine and what is yours. Otherwise an ordered, just, and stable society would be impossible. Moreover, what is prohibited is more than the straightforward stealing of money or property; it includes all forms of dishonesty and cheating, tax evasion and customs dodging, working short hours, overcharging, and underpaying.
You shall not covet. The tenth commandment is particularly important because it transforms the Decalogue from a civil code into a moral law. We cannot be prosecuted in court for covetousness, since covetousness is not an action but an attitude of the heart. In fact, covetousness is to theft what anger is to murder and lust is to adultery.
The prohibition of covetousness speaks loudly to the consumerism that has engulfed the Western world today. Yet Jesus told us to beware of covetousness, and Paul pointed us instead to a life of contentment, simplicity, and generosity. For like the Israelites in the wilderness, we are pilgrims traveling to the Promised Land, and we will be wise to travel light.
The Ten Commandments are an exposition of what it means to love God and our neighbor, and they expose and condemn our sin. As Paul confesses, he would never have known what sin was if the law had not said, “Do not covet” (Rom. 7:7). Similarly, Luther called the law a mighty “hammer” to crush our self-righteousness; it is in this sense that the law is our “schoolmaster” to bring us to Christ (Gal. 3:24 KJV). When C. H. Spurgeon, the famous nineteenth-century London preacher, was only a teenager, he had a profound sense of his sinfulness. It was not that he had been guilty of any particular sins, but he said, “I met Moses” carrying the law, and it condemned him and showed him his need of a Savior.
For further reading: 1 Timothy 6:6–10