Why is "You shall not covet" in the Ten Commandments?

Now the law, as it ought, proposed to them a perfect obedience, even (what is in fact alone such) the perfect obedience of the heart. "Thou shalt not covet." It is evident that, if God was entering into relationship with man, He must look to the heart. "Thou shalt not covet." To act otherwise would be to justify the hypocrite. The law was thus given. It was a holy, just, and perfect law, which declared what man ought to be, in order to please God, and to have life eternal. If God was pure, holy, and just, man must be so to be happy. But mark here, if the law described what man ought to be, it did not at all declare what God was, except that He was just, and would punish the sinner. It is the gospel which shining, while it fully recognises this justice and the perfection of the law, reveals what God in grace is to him who transgresses it. We shall speak of it presently. Here let us follow our subject. The law, which required perfect righteousness and obedience in man, had been given - to whom? To man already a sinner? What can a perfect law do (and the law of God must be such) for a sinner? Condemn him in convincing him of his sin. Was it the law which was in fault? Quite the contrary: it was its holiness and righteousness which did thus. It was the necessary result of a perfect law given to a sinner. A rule gives neither life nor strength; it requires certain things, it gives nothing.

But the Law came, bringing with it all the weight and sanction of Divine command. The smooth current of the hitherto unchecked human will became thus suddenly arrested in its course by the peremptory opposition of the will of God. The effect of this was, not to change the native disposition of the human will, but, by shedding in the light of Divine truth upon the conscience, to disclose to the soul, thus awakened to the fear of God, the real character of that will as contrasted with the holy will of God. Old things now receive new names. That which had before been the free and uncontrolled choice of the natural will, harmless, moreover, in the mind's natural judgment, because not yet referred to God as the standard of its quality, becomes now a lust forbidden by the Law of God. "For I had not known lust, except the Law had said, 'Thou shalt not covet.'" There is no, mention made in the apostle's argument of acts of transgression. The question of sin is argued, not in the open court of man's judgment, but in the secret chambers of the heart. The fact that the Law contains in its expression anything repugnant to the will of man, is clear proof of the variance of the human will from that of God. Man thinks and feels, and wills, and acts, not to God-ward as his object and his end, but self-ward. He is the centre of his own thoughts. He acts naturally as if he were independent of Him who created him. This is sin. Sin is the name given by the Spirit of God to the course of the human will, when its measure and direction are gauged by the Law of Divine commandment. The single commandment in the garden of Eden acted thus, when the lie of the tempter had aroused the independent action of the human will. Adam's will, coming into contact with the expressed injunction of God, revealed sin in the form of transgression. It is the secret conscience (and not external acts), that is in question in the present argument. "I had not known sin but by the Law," is the general expression of the judgment of the inner man as to the effect of the Law upon the conscience as the discoverer of sin. Desires which had slumbered undisturbed by temptation, and which lay forgotten or unknown upon the low ground of the heart, suddenly awoke and moved when the voice of God, as of a stranger, was heard saying in the Law, "Thou shalt not covet." The very utterance of the will of God is the suggestion of sin to the heart of fallen man

But remark that in the details of the commandments the characteristic is prohibition. "Thou shalt not" — if we except the fourth, and even in that "keeping the sabbath" means the abstinence from all work — is the essence of the whole. This fact has an important bearing upon the second point to be considered — the object of the law. These ten commandments were the standard of God's requirements from Israel. They had voluntarily undertaken obedience to His voice, and to keep His covenant as the condition of blessing. In response to this the Lord revealed through Moses what He required. A standard therefore was erected by which it could be easily ascertained, even by themselves, whether or not they were obedient to God's word. By these commandments therefore He came to prove them, that His fear might be before their faces that they might not sin. (v. 20.) But He knew what was in their hearts, though they might be ignorant, and hence the giving of the law really had for its object the bringing to light what was in His people's hearts. This accounts for the prohibitive form of the commandment. For why should it be said, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet, unless the tendency to all these forms of sins was found within them? The apostle Paul explains this in Rom. 7. "I had not known sin," he says, "but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law, sin was dead." (vv. 7, 8.) The lust was in the heart before the law came, but not being forbidden he could not know it as lust; but immediately the commandment said, Thou shalt not lust, it sprang into the light, and the opposition of the heart to God was made manifest. The law therefore entered, as the apostle elsewhere says, that the offence might abound (Rom. 5:20); i.e. to make the offences known. They were committed before; but they were not seen as offences until they were forbidden. Then their nature could no longer be concealed, and all might understand that they were transgressions of the law of God.

The law set before man what his work was to be; grace brings before us the work of God. The law proposed blessing for man on the ground of obedience, but there was a curse pronounced upon the disobedient: "Cursed is every one who continues not in all things written in the book of the law to do them." And we read, "If a man keep the whole law, and offend in one point, he is guilty of all." One sin will prove the man who commits it to be a sinner, as one apple will prove the tree upon which it has grown to be an apple tree. By the law is the knowledge of sin. If the law went no farther than to say, "Thou shalt not steal," many a man could take the place of being righteous; but it says, "Thou shalt not covet," and there every man is detected. Paul says, "I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." He found out that the law took account of what was deeper than the outward act. It was not only that he was not to steal, he was not to lust after things that were not his. Therefore the law was a ministration of death and condemnation: "sin revived, and I died."

Verse 7 refers back to verse 5, which had said the motions of sins were by the law. Does this infer that the law is sin? Far be the thought. It is “the strength of sin” (1 Cor. 15:56), that is, its stern prohibitions only stirred man's evil nature to more determined sin and rebellion, and sin became the stronger in its defiance of God. Is the law to blame for this? Certainly not: man's evil nature is to blame. But, as Paul says, “I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, “Thou shalt not covet.” Thus the law exposes sin in all its horror. Law commands me not to covet, and I see my evil nature assert itself because of the very prohibition. Can I then deny that I am a sinner?

But of all the commandments the tenth is the one that most surely brings conviction and a sense of the death sentence into the soul, if it be honestly faced. We find the Apostle Paul saying, "I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet" (Rom. 7:7); and he goes on to say, "When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." We all know that fallen human nature is such, that the fact of anything being prohibited stirs up a desire for that very thing. Quite possibly, before the prohibition reached us, the thing was not even in our mind; but, reaching us, the thing was presented to our mind, and at once the covetous desire was there, and we realized we were dead men in the sight of the law.

In the tenth , then, God legislated against not only evil things but against the desire for evil things, and this makes it so death-dealing for the awakened conscience. It was in keeping with this that the Lord Jesus removed the weight of the law against both murder and adultery from the act to the desire and impulse that prompts the act, when He gave His Sermon on the Mount, reported in Matthew 5. Hence also the warning against covetousness, which the Lord uttered, in Luke 12; and the statement of the Apostle Paul, "Mortify therefore … covetousness, which is idolatry" (Col. 3:5).

"What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Yea, I had not known sin but by the law; for I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." (Rom. 7:7) He does not say that he would not have had "lust." No; but merely that "he had not known it." The "lust" was there; but he was in the dark about it until the law, as "the candle of the Almighty," shone in upon the dark chambers of his heart and revealed the evil that was there. Like a man in a dark room, who may be surrounded with dust and confusion, but he cannot see ought thereof by reason of the darkness. Let the beams of the sun dart in upon him, and he quickly perceives all. Do the sunbeams create the dust? Surely not. The dust is there, and they only detect and reveal it. This is a simple illustration of the effect of the law. It judges man's character and condition. It proves him to be a sinner and shuts him up under the curse. It comes to judge what he is, and curses him if he is not what it tells him he ought to be.

The last commandment strikes, not at the things people do or say, but at the thoughts of their hearts, "You shall not covet." To covet is to crave something that another has. Though one may not steal from another, yet only the craving for his possessions is sin. Paul focuses on this one law in Romans 7:7, where he clearly shows that he would not have considered covetousness as sin unless the law had declared this. Who has not been guilty of such desires? Nor can we get rid of this covetous attitude unless the Lord Jesus works in our hearts by new birth, causing us to willingly judge our motives and seek to live by wholehearted faith. Then, instead of being envious of others, we shall know how to unselfishly "rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep" (Rom.12:15). We shall be glad if others are blessed even if we are deprived, and this, not because the law commands not to covet, but because the grace of God is working in our hearts. It is the grace of God that teaches us "that, denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age" (Tit.2:11). The law told people to live in such a way, but it was unable to teach us, as grace does.

The tenth law strikes, not only at outward actions, but at the motives of the heart. Who can stand before a prohibition like this, “You shall not covet”? One who honestly tries to keep this law will find himself in a conflict such as Romans 7 describes, beginning with verse 7 of that chapter, — a struggle with his own determined sinful nature. Just the very desire to have what someone else has is here shown to be sin. How clearly therefore does the law teach people that they are desperately in need of One who can deliver them from this bondage of sin! But Israel has been slow to learn such a lesson.

The two tables of stone, "the tables of the covenant," were also in the ark. On the tables were written the ten commandments, God's righteous demands of what man should be both towards Himself and towards his neighbour. Alas! no man had answered to the divine commands. Even the Apostle Paul who could not be convicted by men of having broken them, for he wrote, "touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless" (Phil. 3:6), has to say, "I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet … but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died" (Rom. 7:7-9). The very best under the law are convicted by the commandment, Thou shalt not covet. There was not found a man who loved the Lord his God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself.