Put to death what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (Col. 3:5)

The Greek word Paul uses here for covetousness is pleonexia (Strongs 4124), which signifies not only greed or avarice, (which we would expect) but extends it to include such things as fraudulency and extortion. That would be serious enough in its own right, but he goes on to liken it to eidōlolatria (Strongs 1495), which means the ‘worship or service of an image,’ and +which he pleads with his beloved friends to flee from. (1 Cor. 10:14)

How could any of us who walk with the living God fall into the trap of worshipping or service something so much less than God? The very thought is shocking – yet it was to believers that Paul was writing, and to believers that John concluded his first epistle with a strong exhortation to keep ourselves from idols. (1 John 5:21) The truth is that we can only too easily become overconfident and careless, and give away to almost anything or anyone the place that rightfully belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

And so Paul makes the perhaps surprising connection between covetousness and idolatry. We are probably more familiar with the warnings against covetousness found in the Tenth Commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, or his ox, donkey – (or their BMW, conservatory, diamond necklace . . .) or anything that belongs to your neighbour.” (Ex. 20:17)

The Hebrew word translated here as ‘covet’ is chamad (Strongs 2530). It literally means to ‘delight or take pleasure in something’ or to ‘desire it’ as well as to covet it. It first appears in Scripture in the delightful description of the ‘trees that [are] pleasing to the eye’ in the Garden of Eden. But things move on when Eve, seeing that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to ‘desirable for obtaining wisdom’ succumbs to the devil’s temptation to take and eat it. (Gen. 2:9, 3:6)

Eve coveted the fruit, and exchanged the desire to serve and obey the Lord for the desire to serve her own fleshly wants – an idolatrous act that was to have the most disastrous consequences. Her action demonstrated exactly the connection that Paul makes between the two sins. He took a reference to the tenth commandment – the one which, he admits, had ‘found him out’ – and circled back to the second: ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.’ (Ex. 20:4; cf Rom. 7:7-8) And that is itself summed up in the first commandment: ‘You shall have no other gods before Me’ (Ex. 20:3)

Real pleasure and enjoyment are gifts that can form a highly effective shield that keeps our joyless adversary at bay, as CS Lewis shows him realising for himself in his brilliant Screwtape Letters.

‘Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever-increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. It is more certain; and it’s better style. To get the man’s soul and give him nothing in return-that is what really gladdens our Father’s heart. And the troughs are the time for beginning the process.’

May the Lord help us to take note and to heed, lest we allow our pleasures to stoke desires to the point where they become soulish and even idolatrous. No wonder Paul warns his Colossian friends that covetousness and its fellow evil desires and practices are of the flesh, and as such cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. Worse, they actually bring about the wrath of God. (Col. 3:6, cf Rom. 1:18-25)

It was the expectation of pleasure in eating a tasty fruit, together with the desire for wisdom that led Eve into sin. Yet which of us in one way or another have not desired some such? Wisdom is to be sought, and combined with influence, riches, honour or authority, might actually bring about much good.

But if we find our desires becoming so all-consuming that they dim our devotion to the Lord, and distract us in our discipleship, let alone descend into greed and avarice, becoming doorways to fraud and extortion, then we are heading into very serious storms. True wisdom lies in keeping things in check, and remembering to run all that we are doing past the Lord as we go along to make sure that He is happy with all that we are doing and desiring. CS Lewis is once again brilliant in showing how these things manifests in practice, as this extract from Screwtape’s eleventh letter demonstrates.

It behoves us, then, not to rush too swiftly past the warnings in Scripture, as if they do not apply to us. Hear, for example, the thunder reverberating in James’s warning against loving the world too much: ‘Don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?’ (Jas 4:4) ‘Everything in the world,’ his fellow apostle John adds, ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – comes not from the Father but from the world.’ In fact, he goes so far as to say that ‘if anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.’ (1 Jn. 2:15)

This is very strong language indeed – as it needs to be, because we are so good at enclosing ourselves within the framework of our needs and wants. When we see our brothers and sisters apparently consulting their own pleasure and convenience rather than seeking to lead lives of loving service, we might be very quick spot their error. But should not our next response be to examine our own souls? What may we be exchanging for wisdom or pleasure, not to mention power and influence?

Talk to the Lord about the things you love to do, and to which you devote time, energy and attention. Are any of these pleasures tilting over into strongholds? Or causing you to take inappropriate ‘shortcuts’ to develop them more? Is there any root of avarice at work in your heart in this respect? Or are you simply grateful for genuine downtimes and enjoyment, and making full use of them to recharge your batteries and to express your gratitude to God for giving them to you to enjoy!

Oh Lord, have mercy on me, have mercy. Show me any area in which I have made and served an ‘idol’ instead of You, and the resolution to confess and renounce it. Give me discernment in my pleasures and longings, so that You, Yeshua, may be the beginning and end of all my desires, and the only One before whom I bow. Holy Spirit, help me guard my heart, mind, body and soul from any form of idolatry, so that I might serve You alone, and make You known, the true living and true God. Amen.

With thanks to John Piper for the inspiration this post brought.
See also this article.