40 Days of Prayer

True Spirituality

  

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's."  Exodus 20:17 ESV

(Taken from Francis A. Shaeffer, The Law and the Law of Love)

We do not find true spirituality by keeping a list of dos and don'ts which has as its purpose to make us appear holy. Nor is it found in rejecting that same list in order to live a life we want reasoning that we are above such things. True Spirituality comes face to face with the whole Ten Commandments and all that is included in them. I am also face to face with the Law of Love, the fact that I am to love God and I am to love my fellow men. The climax of the Ten Commandments is in the tenth commandment, "You shall not covet."  The commandment not to covet is an entirely inward thing. It is an intriguing factor that this is the last command God gives us in the Ten Commandments and thus the hub of the whole matter. We break this last commandment, not to covet, before we break any of the others. Any time that we break one of the other commandments of God, it means that we have already broken this commandment. Paul expresses this in Romans 7:

"What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died." Romans 7:7-9 ESV

He does not mean that he was perfect before. What he is saying is, "I did not know I was a sinner; I thought I would come out all right because I was keeping these outward things and getting along all right in comparison with other people." But when he opened the Ten Commandments and read that the last commandment was not to covet, he saw he was a sinner. Coveting is the negative side of the positive command, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ...and You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:37, 39). Love is internal. It might have external manifestations but love itself will always be internal. Coveting is always internal. It also has external manifestations. To love God will all our heart, mind and soul is to not covet against God; and to love our neighbor as ourselves is to not covet against them. 

True spirituality desires the deeper life of the positive command. True Spirituality is even more: it is a positive inward reality that "Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20) with a positive outward result in the fruit of the Spirit, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Gal. 5:22).

May Grace Redeemer always be about seeking the deeper life, to love God with all our hearts, minds, and souls and to love our neighbors as ourselves.