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Part 6 of 10
Kingslayers Series
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Envy is defined as resenting God's goodness in other people's lives while ignoring his goodness in mine. It begins with our eyes—an "evil eye"—and is fundamentally different from other sins because it starts out bad and simply stays bad.
Unlike lust or anger, which may initially offer some twisted pleasure, envy offers nothing but poison from the beginning. It's an absolute affront to God's sovereignty and goodness. When we envy, we're essentially saying: "How come she got blessed? How come he got favored? What were you thinking, God? What about me?"
Envy is hostile to any blessing received by anyone else. It eats us up when someone gets a discount we didn't receive, gets invited somewhere we weren't, or achieves something we didn't. Social media has become a breeding ground for envy, as we compare our everyday lives to everyone else's carefully curated highlight reels.
Olivia Rodrigo captured this feeling in her song about jealousy: "I kind of want to throw my phone across the room cuz all I see are girls too good to be true with paper white teeth and perfect bodies. Wish I didn't care I know their beauty is not my lack but it feels like that weight is on my back."
The psalmist Asaph was honest about how comparison was tearing him apart. In Psalm 73, he writes:
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I almost lost my footing my feet were slipping I was almost gone for I envy the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness... Did I keep my heart pure for nothing? Did I keep myself innocent for no reason? I got nothing but trouble all day long. Every morning brings me pain.
Then he realizes: "My heart was bitter and I was all torn up inside."
Notably, we tend to be most envious of people who are most like us—those in our same season or competing in the same arena. Engineers envy successful engineers, not chefs. Moms envy other moms. Teachers envy teachers. Kings envy kings.
The people of Israel, envious of other nations with kings, demanded a king from the prophet Samuel. God warned them through Samuel about all the ways a king would change their lives, but they persisted. God told Samuel to give them what they wanted, and Samuel found a young man named Saul—handsome, tall, humble at first, and seemingly perfect for the role.
But power corrupted Saul. He began to see himself as the man. He disobeyed God, rebelled against Him, and turned away from the Lord. Some of the saddest verses in Scripture come from 1 Samuel 15, where God says:
I'm sorry that I ever made Saul king for he has not been loyal to me and has refused to obey my command.
Samuel wept all night when he heard this. At just thirty years of age, Saul was tall, strong, humble, and full of promise. But after forty-two years as king, he died with all that potential wasted. The King Slayer that took him out was envy.
Saul's successor was a young shepherd named David—the same David who would later be known as a man after God's own heart. David was a musician, poet, and giant-killer who courageously faced Goliath in the valley of Elah.
When the Israelite Army returned home victorious after David killed Goliath, the women of Israel came out to celebrate. They sang:
Saul has killed his thousands and David his ten thousands.
This made Saul very angry. He thought: "They credit David with ten thousands and me with only thousands? Next they'll be making him their king!" From that moment on, Saul kept a jealous, evil eye on David.
In Saul's mind, David transformed from humble hero to dangerous threat. Saul noticed something terrifying: the Lord was with David, but had turned away from Saul. David continued to succeed in everything, and Saul became even more afraid.
Saul's envy spread like wildfire. All Israel and Judah loved David because he was successful. His own son Jonathan became David's best friend. His daughter Michal fell head over heels in love with him. They adored David.
When Saul realized that the Lord was with David and that his own daughter loved him, he became even more afraid and remained David's enemy for the rest of his life. Saul spent his remaining years trying to kill David—all because of envy.
Envy may seem like a lesser sin, but it is far from harmless. The New Testament lists envy alongside deceit, drunkenness, orgies, hypocrisy, slander, stealing, and murder. Few of us would place envy and murder in the same category, yet God does. If envy goes unchecked, it will take you out with devastating effects.
It's impossible to be an envious person and a healthy person at the same time. Envy chips away at your insides. Your peace disappears, then your contentment, then your gratitude, then your joy. When joy is gone, your strength is gone. Worry, anxiety, and spinning thoughts rush in to fill the void.
They rob your sleep, tighten your nerves, and your body begins to break down—heart disease, headaches, backaches, joint aches, knots in your gut, hypertension through the roof.
Proverbs 14:30 says:
A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.
Envy throws our lives out of proper balance and screws up what should really be important to us. We start running at an insane pace just to keep up with (or get ahead of) the fictional Joneses.
Solomon, David's son and a king himself, wrote in Ecclesiastes 4:4:
Most people are motivated to success by their envy of their neighbors, but this too is meaningless—it's like chasing the wind.
We all know how this plays out. If a coworker works sixty hours a week, we work eighty. If their kid plays in two soccer leagues, ours plays in three. If they're getting a new kitchen, we're getting a kitchen and bathroom. We just keep running and striving while real life passes us by.
There's an old story about two steamboats racing on the Mississippi River, constantly jockeying for position. One finally ran out of coal, so they started throwing boxes of cargo into the furnace to keep winning. They won the race but burned up their cargo.
God has entrusted you and me with precious cargo: wives, husbands, kids, friendships, ministries. Envy can cause us to burn it all up just to win some stupid mythical race.
More relationships are wrecked by envy than by almost any other thing. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote:
What's causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don't have so you scheme and kill to get it. You're jealous of what others have but you can't get it so you fight and wage war to take it away from them.
King Saul had everything: he was the tallest, best-looking, most powerful man in Israel. When David won his incredible victory over Goliath, Saul initially invited him to live in the palace and become part of his royal family. But envy took over and wrecked everything.
Envy leads us to compete for another person's affection, time, and recognition. It makes us keep score. I can remember being a nineteen-year-old basketball player sitting on the bench, thinking I should be playing. Internally, I would root for the guy in my place to fail—to turn the ball over, to shoot an airball, maybe even roll an ankle so the coach would put me in.
That's what envy does to relationships. It's hard to be a good teammate, a good friend, or a good family member when envy is running the show.
One of the truly tragic things about envy is that it routes us down even more destructive paths. Envy loves partners—it invites greed, lust, gossip, slander, anger, and pride to join forces with it.
James 3:16 says:
Where you have envy and selfish ambition, you'll find disorder and every evil practice.
Envy was the very first sin in the garden when Satan messed with Adam and Eve's contentment. That sin passed to their son Cain, who became envious of his brother Abel and murdered him, wasting his own life. The primary motive behind the crucifixion of Jesus was envy—even Pilate recognized it.
Proverbs 27 asks:
Anger may be cruel and wrath overwhelming, but who can survive the destructiveness of jealousy?
There is no win in comparison. If you compare yourself to others, one of two things will happen: you'll find someone better than you (leading to inferiority and fanning the flames of envy) or you'll find someone worse than you (leading to unhealthy pride).
Galatians 6 says:
Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given and just sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
I love Josh Howerton—he's phenomenal, humble, smart, a great leader, dynamic preacher, awesome husband and dad, young, good-looking, with biceps the size of my thighs. But God didn't call me to be Josh. He didn't call me to be Steve Stroope, Billy Graham, or the Apostle Paul. He called me to be me—a bald-headed preacher with a beautiful wife and an ugly golf swing.
God will hold me accountable for the talents, abilities, and opportunities He placed in front of me, nothing more and nothing less. He just wants to help me become the best version of me. There's simply no upside to envy.
1 Corinthians 13 says:
Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy.
Without God's love in our lives, we fall into three traps:
Plastic praise: "Yeah, she looks great, but I bet she's using Botox. She's a wonderful mom, but have you seen her house?"
Mean motives: Always questioning other people's motivation. "Sure, he's successful, but he's probably scamming somebody. Their church is growing, but they must be watering down the gospel."
Condescending compliments: Minimizing what others have. "Hawaii's nice, but have you been to Turks and Caicos?" "That's a nice truck, but I read on J.D. Powers they're not very reliable."
Instead of minimizing and criticizing, we're commanded as followers of Jesus to:
Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.
The second half of that verse is easier—it's natural to comfort someone in pain. But we must learn to do the first part too, to genuinely rejoice with other people even when their blessing didn't happen to us.
You might say, "That's hard. That's not my nature." And it's not mine either. But the Bible says if anybody is in Christ, they are a new creation. The Holy Spirit can change us. He can slay that green-eyed monster that lives within us and remind us in the moment to genuinely rejoice with the good fortune of others.
Galatians 5 says:
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let's not become conceited, provoking, and envying each other.
If we stay in step with the Holy Spirit, if we genuinely listen to Him throughout the day, He will enable us in the moment to respond with loving comments: "I'm so thrilled you got the promotion." "I'm so excited you're getting married." "I'm really happy you had a baby." "It's so cool you made Varsity." "I'm so glad you got that scholarship." "I really love your new place."
Things you genuinely mean—rejoicing with those who rejoice without a hint of envy.
Remember: envy is resenting God's goodness in other people's lives while ignoring his goodness in mine. So stop ignoring His goodness in your life. Count your blessings. Develop an attitude of gratitude on a daily basis, thanking God for what He has given you.
See what it does to the envy inside you.
Philippians 4 is one of the greatest chapters in the entire Bible, full of good stuff. When you reflect on God's goodness in your own life, gratitude begins to displace envy.
Paul writes in Philippians 4 from a prison cell where he was unjustly incarcerated simply for following Jesus:
I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
Notice Paul says "I have learned" contentment. How do you learn anything? You practice. You practice gratitude, and through that practice, you learn contentment. If envy is an evil eye, then gratitude is what corrects our vision.
Ellen Vaughn writes in her book Radical Gratitude:
Radical gratitude is powerful, provocative, life-changing. It's like a pair of glasses that gets progressively sharper—the more we thank, the more we see to be thankful for. Gratitude is the lens that reveals God's incredible grace at work, and it is the key to tangible, everyday joy.
Start to notice. Start to count. Learn to look at your life through the lens of gratitude.
The Hebrew people pray what they call the Eighteen Benedictions—the word "bena" in Latin means good, and "dictions" means words. So these are simply the good words, or blessings. Every day they would stop throughout their day and thank God for what He had given them. They would pray things like:
They prayed these benedictions because they realized that God was a benevolent benefactor—the source of everything good. They understood they were simply the beneficiaries of God's good gifts.
David writes about this in Psalm 103:
Praise the Lord, O my soul, all my innermost being praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul and forget not all of His benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things.
The more I contemplate that passage, the more I realize I don't deserve anything good from God. But He is a super-generous benefactor, and I am simply the beneficiary. So I'm not going to compare my life, my money, my looks, my talents, my stuff with other people. And I'm not going to worry about my volatile 401k or the rising cost of healthcare because I already have amazing benefits.
Throughout the Old Testament, you see the nation of Israel stopping to stack up rocks to create altars as places of remembrance for what God had done in their lives. As families traveled through the countryside, they might come upon a broken-down pile of stones, and a child would ask, "What is that?" This gave parents the opportunity to tell the story: Tell me about God's goodness. Tell me how faithful God has been.
When we stop stacking stones, we stop telling stories of God's goodness. I'm not suggesting you build a stone altar, but consider these alternatives:
One powerful way to develop a heart of gratitude and escape the comparison trap is to put yourself in service to others.
If you struggle with envy over other people's homes, work in a homeless shelter for a while. Go on one of our global mission trips. Spend a few Saturdays working in the food pantry and see if your perspective doesn't start to change.
If you look at others and think, "If I just had that body, then I'd be somebody," volunteer at a nursing home. Serve at our prom for folks with disabilities. This shifts your eyes off yourself and onto the needs of other people and onto the goodness of God.
Let's resist comparisons. Let's respond in love to other people. Let's reflect on the goodness of God. Let's stay humble, let's stay grateful, and let's walk in step with the Holy Spirit.
When envy tries to rear its ugly head, the Holy Spirit of God will help you and me slay this king-slayer before it slays us.
