Plan and Desire⤒🔗

What is the tenth commandment all about? There is an opinion out there that I have to interact with before giving — in my opinion — the correct answer.

Very often people reason as follows: in the previous commandments, various desires have already been condemned. Whoever exegetes the seventh commandment well condemns not only adultery but also looking at a woman lustfully (Matt. 5:28). And when researching the eighth commandment, not only is theft mentioned but also the love of money as the root of that evil (1 Tim. 6:10). And what is greed other than desire for money?

But when such desires have already been condemned in previous commandments, why does the tenth commandment add, “You shall not covet”? Has that not become superfluous?

To give a satisfying answer to this question, Calvin¹and others distinguished between planning and desire. You can have desires that become a plan with which you want to harm the neighbour. Such desires do not remain within the heart, but make themselves known outwardly. He who desires another woman will make attempts to obtain her, and the one greedy for money schemes to get more money through all kinds of fraudulent means. In such cases man’s will completely agrees with a desire. He not only dreams of another woman or great riches, but wants to have those.

However, there are also desires that remain inside and never come out. Someone can desire another woman without ever attempting to let her know this. Such a desire can be very short lived. It can also be a longer inward struggle. But in either case, this desire does not have to lead to a plan to realize a desire. Not everything that lives in a person comes out.

There are thus stages in desiring. One can suddenly become subject to an evil desire. He can then start to cultivate this desire. He can then start to justify his desire and begin to plan to fulfill this desire. And finally, people can act on the desire. I have mentioned here four stages that are often encountered in the literature.

So what does the tenth commandment deal with? Calvin and others argue that this commandment is especially about the first two stages. The tenth commandment would then forbid the evil desires that are hidden in our hearts and are staying there.

Often it is added that government and church cannot punish these desires because they are a case of the heart and never show up. The government can punish murder and the church can censure adultery, but God goes deeper because he knows man’s heart. He comes with this tenth and last command as a judge who knows the depths of our hearts and condemns even the “slightest thought or desire contrary to any of his commandments” (LD 44.113).

You Shall Not Covet….←⤒🔗

It seems to me that this explanation of the tenth commandment is not entirely correct. I do not deny that the commandment judges mankind’s heart. Yet where Calvin and others begin in their explanation of the tenth commandment is where I would prefer to end. We have to, as with other commands, pay attention to the literal and direct meaning of the tenth commandment and then push through. We will arrive, like Calvin, at the deepest inner meaning; but only at the end of our argument. For when we begin with the literal text of the tenth commandment we will soon notice that it is not only the “inner” but also the “outward” being of man and society that are rocked by desires.

There is in the tenth commandment a word that is most often translated “desire,” but can be translated a bit more exact. We translate along with Prof. Lettinga and others: “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, etc.” When we covet something, we are out to get what we long for. This longing has already become a plan (Calvin!) to get what we want as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

I give a number of examples of the use of this word in the Bible. After the fall of Jericho, Achan coveted a beautiful Babylonian robe, silver, and gold, and took it all into his tent (Josh. 7:21). “Coveting” here means very concretely that Achan could not keep his hands off the attractive stuff.² So in Micah’s days there were people who set their minds on a field, and then stole it (Micah 2:2). “Coveting” is here clearly not only an inner affair, but incudes the plan to actually obtain the desired goods in their hands. We read that the Israelites were not allowed to covet the gold and silver of the idols they would find in Canaan. “Coveting” here once again means that they were not allowed to take any of this gold or silver for themselves (Deut. 7:25).

We find another clear text in Exodus 34 where Yahweh promises Israel that no one shall covet their land (when they remain faithful) (v. 24). It is clear that no one will covet the land of the Israelites and (thus) try to take it away. Perhaps the surrounding peoples do desire to have the land deep down in their hearts, but it will not turn to a “coveting,” so that they advance with their armies and stretch out their hands towards the land of milk and honey.

In summary we can state: whoever covets his neighbour’s house, wife, cattle, or possessions cannot keep his hands to himself. He will act on his desire to obtain what he desires. This is the first meaning of the tenth commandment. The desire meant therein not only burns inwardly; it is a blazing fire. We can therefore argue that the “coveting” of the tenth commandment is between thought and deed. ³The deed has been condemned in previous commands, especially “You shall not commit adultery” and “You shall not steal”. In the tenth commandment light is cast on the restless heart and the steps man takes to enact the plan cooked up in his heart. The commandment is about more than only the thought. The desire wants to be satisfied.

Judging the Heart←⤒🔗

What we have discussed makes us a bit more careful to repeat that government and church cannot punish sins against the tenth commandment since these are all inward. Someone has rightly compared the heart with the boardroom of a company. This room is not always open to everyone, but once in a while certain things will seep out. Decisions made behind closed doors do not stay there, and so judgment can be made about these decisions by looking at the outcomes.⁴

This is also the case with our judgment about the heart of man. The judging will not be complete, and will have many errors. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7), meaning we often judge very superficially, rashly, or even haughtily, so that the word of Jesus turns against us: “Do not judge or you too will be judged” (Matt. 7:1). Yet in all of this we are often still called to make a judgment about motives of the heart.

I will give a few examples on the basis of the text of the tenth commandment. It reads, “You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife.” What misery it gives in a marriage when someone no longer desires his own wife because he is filled with longing for another woman. Even when he denies the facts, his wife will sense that something is wrong. He is no longer as dedicated to her or the children as he used to be; he is often away from home and uses transparent excuses for this. Even though she does not know what is going on in the “boardroom” of the heart, she knows enough to understand that there is another woman in the background. Perhaps it never leads to a divorce, but even without this one can make a huge mess out of marriage and family life. Passions can burn between thought and deed while never reaching their goal. But whatever is brewing in man’s heart becomes so obvious and the damage to society becomes so enormous that a tenth commandment is necessary to impress on us these sins and miseries.
“You shall not covet your neighbour’s land.” Whoever investigates how many wars have been waged throughout history out of the desire to enlarge territory will understand what lived and continues to live in the hearts of kings, emperors, dictators, and their advisors. It is God who ultimately judges the hearts; but we too know what is happening inside people on the basis of the tenth commandment when we see the ravages caused by them in the world. The gas chambers of Auschwitz and other concentration camps of the Second World War revealed the plans of Hitler and his cronies. The airplane hijackings by the Palestinians reveal their hearts’ desire to annihilate the Jews out of Israel. But larger than the misery caused to the actual victims of these acts of terror is the price they force the world at large to pay for their intense desire, namely, a fear of millions, permanent tension in international politics, and an increase in safety measures, which are more reminiscent of a state of war than a situation of peace.
Adultery and murder are bad, but the road to these two, even if the destination is never reached, disrupts society even more. Considering the terrible disasters they cause, it is for good reason that there is a tenth commandment in which the desires of mankind are treated as a separate theme.

Don’t Run After Your Desires←⤒🔗

A minister has plenty of material for a sermon on the tenth commandment without even mentioning the deep, hidden desires, of which Calvin and our Heidelberg Catechism speak. The latter has to happen as well, but it is good to start with the literal text of the tenth commandment to open the eyes of people to the enormous power and influence of desire in the life of man and in his world.

Sin crouches as a desire at the door, God told Cain, and he commanded him to master it (Gen. 4:7). Yet more often than not, desires rule us. I am thinking about jealousy, which has been such a huge factor in desire ever since Cain. Our house is smaller than our neighbour’s, our wife is less attractive than other women, our profession is lower on the scale of importance than that of our friends and acquaintances, etc. etc.

What an unrest jealousy brings into our lives! There are no limits. As in the parable of Nathan, one can become jealous about the lone little lamb in the neighbour’s possession even when one’s own herd is well provided for. Jealousy makes man blind to all that he has and limits his vision to the one thing he does not have. The commandment stands as a sentinel against this kind of coveting. We can express the meaning of the commandment with the words of the apocryphal book Jesus Sirach, “Do not become a slave to your desires” (18.30). Do not chase things that are not yours, for you will only make a mess of your life and the lives of others. “Envy rots the bones” (Prov. 14:30).

Keep an Eye on Your Freedom←⤒🔗

So why is it that we are always chasing our desires? It is because we are not firm enough in our faith regarding the words that introduce the tenth commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” Also the tenth commandment wants to keep us in the freedom we have in Christ. We do not have to chase after our every desire, because we can live in our own skin, in the house we have now, with the wife or the husband God has given us, and in the profession we currently have.

Of course, we can strive for a change that would be an improvement. Injustice needs to be fought. This, however, is about the mark we wear in our life. It should be godliness paired with contentment. We do not need more, we do not need different. A French exegete of the Ten Commandments⁵puts it very clearly: your own house is the nicest for you, your own wife the most beautiful for you, your own job the best for you.

We do not need anything different nor more, because God has accepted us in Christ the way we are and with the things we possess. We can have peace with that. Therefore: “Do not chase after your desires,” for when we do that we remain troublemakers.