Envy
Some well-grounded thoughts from Doug Wilson and then some wacko comments from me:
And There Slain
When envy has you by the throat, what can you do? It might appear to you in virulent forms, or it might seem almost invisible—camouflaged nicely to fit in with what you have come to call the principle of the thing. Envy is one of the hardest sins to admit, and it is one of the most widespread. So if you struggle with it, or you think you might be struggling with it, what do you do?
Standing opposite to the sin of envy is the grace of gratitude. Thanksgiving for all things, and particularly thanksgiving for the gifts that God has given to others, especially the others you are tempted to envy.
But it is all very well to say gratitude is opposed to envy. How to feel grateful? Is there a magic switch somewhere? No, no magic switch, but there is a gospel. There is an answer. When Jesus died on the cross, the object of sinful envy and hatred, He was crucified in order to be the very death of envy—and He was.
This is the only salve for this wound. This is the only thing that a sinner can do about the perpetual craving to be somewhere else, to be someone else. When you look to Jesus Christ on the cross, you are someone else—I have been crucified with Christ, Paul says, and I no longer live. If you are going to be someone else, be—by faith—the someone who was flayed for sin. Through your baptism, see your identity with the one on whom all the vain desires of men were placed, and there slain.
Doug Wilson is great value on basic holiness, hammering home all the fundamental virtues we often pretend to have moved beyond in our Christian journey. Seldom do we hear anyone preach on envy or gratitude, yet these two factors seem to me now to be inherent in all sin and holiness.
Envy is the bitter spring of many sins, starting with catty comments at Christmas right up to genocide. Envy is fundamentally Adamic. Gratitude is fundamentally Christian. Gratitude not only sees through false glory; it understands that true glory is more than it can currently bear.
What’s the positive side? Mortification is a daily process, but it is a means to an end. It is joyous because of what it obtains. Because of Jesus, death is not the “end.”
Gratitude still desires the world, but in God’s time and for the sake of others. Beyond the cross, there is glory set before us as there was before Him. The vain desires of men are slain there–and resurrected. Sinai dies and shines again with better glory as the Sermon on the Mount.
When someone is more talented than you, is effortlessly more popular or beautiful, or earns more than you do, suffers less sorrow or even struggles less with sin, in gratitude you rejoice and thank God just as much as if they were you. Unlike envy, gratitude perceives the body of Christ, that every star is different for a good reason: greater glory.
