The Hidden Wound of Envy

… how its wickedness is hidden, and that its origin is to be traced to the devil. He gives examples of envy from the Old Testament, and gathers, by pointing to particular vices, that envy is the root of all wickedness. With good reason, then, hatred of a brother was forbidden, and not in one place only, but by Christ and by his apostles. Finally, urging the love of one’s enemies from God’s own example, he argues against the sin of envy by holding up the rewards set before the practice of love.

To be jealous of what you see to be good, and to envy those who are better than you, seems to some people, dear brothers, a slight and trivial wrong. Because it is thought trifling and of no account, it is not feared; because it is not feared, it is despised; because it is despised, it is not easily avoided. So it becomes a dark and hidden ruin, and since it is never noticed in time for a careful person to guard against it, it quietly wears away minds that are off their guard. [b]

But the Lord told us to be careful, and charged us to keep watch with anxious attention, so that the enemy — always watching, always lying in wait — should not creep unnoticed into our hearts and blow a flame up out of the sparks, making the smallest things into the greatest. Then, while he soothes the unguarded and the careless with a milder air and a softer breeze, he stirs up storms and whirlwinds and brings on the wreck of faith, the shipwreck of salvation and of life. So, dear brothers, we must be on our guard. We must strain every power to drive the enemy off with anxious, wide-awake watchfulness as he rages and aims his darts at every part of us where we can be struck and wounded. This is what the apostle Peter warns and teaches in his letter, when he says, “Be sober and watch, because your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”

He goes around every one of us. Like an enemy laying siege to people shut up inside a city, he inspects the walls and tests whether any stretch of them is less solid and less reliable, so that he can break in there and reach the inside. He puts seductive shapes and easy pleasures in front of the eyes, to destroy chastity by the sight of them. He tempts the ears with beautiful music, so that the hearing of sweet sounds may loosen and soften Christian strength. He provokes the tongue with insults. He goads the hand, by galling injuries, into the recklessness of murder. To make a man a cheat, he sets dishonest profits in front of him. To take his soul captive by money, he piles up ruinous hoards. He promises honors on earth in order to rob a man of the ones in heaven. He makes a show of false things in order to steal away the true. And when he cannot deceive in secret, he threatens openly and plainly, holding out the terror of violent persecution to overpower God’s servants — never at rest, never anything but hostile, cunning in peacetime and savage in persecution. [d]

So, dear brothers, against all the devil’s deceiving traps and his open threats, the mind should stand drawn up and armed, as ready to beat him off as he is ready to attack. And since the darts that come at us in hiding are the more frequent, and his more secret throwing of them wounds us more severely and more often precisely because it is less noticed, let us be alert to recognize these too, and drive them off. Among them is the evil of jealousy and envy.

Anyone who looks closely at this will find that there is nothing a Christian should guard against more, nothing he should watch more carefully, than being taken captive by envy and spite — so that no one, tangled in the blind snares of a treacherous enemy, with brother turned by envy to hating brother, should be destroyed by his own sword without knowing it. So that we may gather this up more fully and see it more plainly, let us go back to its spring and its source. Let us consider where jealousy comes from, and when and how it begins. An evil that does this much harm will be easier to avoid once we know both where it comes from and how large it is.

From this source, at the very beginning of the world, the devil was the first both to perish himself and to destroy others. He had stood in the dignity of an angel; he had been accepted and loved by God. But when he saw man made in the image of God, he broke out into jealousy with spiteful envy — not throwing another down at the prompting of his jealousy until he had first been thrown down by jealousy himself, a captive before he took captives, ruined before he ruined anyone. While at the urging of jealousy he robbed man of the gift of immortality that had been given him, he himself lost what he had been before. [e]

How great an evil it is, dear brothers, that brought an angel down, that could cheat and overthrow greatness so high and so bright, that deceived the one who deceived! From then on envy has raged on the earth, because the man who is about to perish by jealousy obeys the one who ruined him and copies the devil in his jealousy. As it is written, “But by the devil’s envy death entered the world.” So those who are on his side copy him.

This is where the first hatreds of the new human family began; this is where the horror of a brother killing a brother began, with the unrighteous Cain jealous of the righteous Abel, the wicked man hunting down the good man with envy and jealousy. The fury of envy carried that act of wickedness through to the end, so that neither love for his brother, nor the size of the crime, nor the fear of God, nor the punishment that follows sin counted for anything. The man struck down unjustly was the first man to show what righteousness looks like. The man who met with hatred had never learned how to hate. The man killed in defiance of God did not fight back as he died. [g]

Esau’s hostility to his brother Jacob came from jealousy too. Because Jacob had received their father’s blessing, Esau was set alight by the firebrands of jealousy into a hatred that hunted him. Joseph, too, was sold by his brothers, and the reason they sold him came out of envy. When he told them, in all simplicity, as a brother to brothers, about the good future he had been shown in dreams, their ill will broke out into envy. And when King Saul hated David, hunting him again and again to kill him — an innocent man, merciful, gentle, patient in his humility — what set him off but the spur of jealousy? When Goliath had been killed, and so great an enemy routed by God’s help and favor, the astonished people burst out in praise of David with shouts of acclaim; and Saul, out of jealousy, worked himself into a fury of hatred and pursuit.

Rather than count them one by one, let us look at the ruin of a whole people who perished once for all. Did the Jews not perish for this reason, that they chose to envy Christ rather than believe him? They ran down the great works he did, they were blinded and deceived by jealousy, and they could not open the eyes of their heart to know the things of God.

Thinking about all this, dear brothers, let us fortify our hearts, dedicated as they are to God, against so destructive an evil, with alertness and courage. Let other people’s deaths keep us safe; let the punishment of fools give health to the careful. And no one should suppose that an evil of this kind is confined to one shape, or held inside narrow limits. The damage jealousy does has many forms and breeds fast, and it spreads wide. It is the root of all evils, the spring of disasters, the nursery of crimes, the raw material of wrongdoing. Hatred rises out of it; ill will comes out of it. Jealousy fans greed, because a man cannot be content with what is his own while he sees someone else with more. Jealousy stirs up ambition, when a man sees someone else raised higher in honors. [j]

When jealousy darkens what we can see, and brings the hidden workings of the mind under its command, the fear of God is treated with contempt, the teaching of Christ is neglected, the day of judgment is not kept in view. Pride puffs a man up; cruelty makes him bitter; treachery makes him break faith; impatience shakes him; discord runs wild; anger burns hot. And a man who has come under an alien power can no longer hold himself in or govern himself. By this the bond of the Lord’s peace is broken. By this brotherly love is violated. By this the truth is corrupted and unity is split. Men plunge into heresies and schisms when priests are run down, when overseers are envied, when a man complains that he was not the one ordained, or refuses to put up with someone else being placed over him. And so the man who is arrogant from jealousy and warped by envy kicks back and revolts, set in anger and spite against not the man but the office.

But what a gnawing worm of the soul it is, what a plague-spot on our thinking, what rust on the heart, to be jealous of another man, either for his goodness or for his good fortune — that is, to hate in him either what he has earned or what God has given him. To turn other people’s advantages into your own injury. To be tortured by the good fortune of admired men. To make someone else’s glory your own punishment, and, so to speak, to set an executioner against your own chest, to bring the torturers into your own thoughts and feelings so that they tear at you with pangs deep inside and beat at the hidden corners of the heart with the hoof of ill will.

For such people no food is a pleasure and no drink can be cheerful. They are always sighing and groaning and grieving; and since the envious never lay their envy aside, the heart it has taken hold of is torn without pause, day and night. Other evils have their limits: whatever wrong is done is over once the crime is complete. In the adulterer the offense stops when the violation is done. With the robber, the crime comes to rest when the killing is done. Having the loot puts an end to the thief’s greed for it. A finished swindle sets a limit to the cheat’s wrong. Jealousy has no limit. It is an evil that goes on and on, a sin without an end. The greater the success of the man who is envied, the hotter the envious man burns in the fires of jealousy.

Hence the threatening face, the scowl, the pale complexion, the trembling lips, the grinding teeth, the raving words, the insults with no bridle on them, the hand ready for the violence of murder — and even when it has no sword for the moment, still armed with the hatred of a mind out of its senses. And so the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms, “Do not be jealous of the man whose way goes well for him.” And again, “The wicked man will watch the righteous man and will grind his teeth at him. But God will laugh at him, because he sees that his day is coming.” The blessed apostle Paul marks these people out and points to them when he says, “The poison of asps is under their lips, and their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are quick to shed blood. Ruin and misery are in their paths, and they have not known the way of peace; nor is the fear of God before their eyes.” [m]

The harm is far smaller, and the danger less, when the body is wounded with a sword. The cure is easy where the wound is out in the open; put the dressing on, and the visible sore is quickly brought back to health. The wounds of jealousy are hidden and secret, and they will not take the remedy of a healing treatment, because they have shut themselves up to suffer blindly in the hiding places of the conscience. [p]

Whoever you are, if you are envious and spiteful, look at how cunning, how harmful, how hateful you are to the people you hate. And yet you are no one’s worse enemy than your own. Whoever it is you hunt down with jealousy can get away and escape you. You cannot escape yourself. Wherever you are, your adversary is with you; your enemy is always inside your own chest. The harm you do is shut up within you. You are tied and bound with links of chain you cannot get yourself out of. You are a prisoner under the tyranny of jealousy, and no comfort will help you. It is a relentless evil to hunt down a man who belongs to the grace of God. It is a disaster with no cure to hate the man who is happy.

And so, dear brothers, the Lord took thought for this danger, that no one should fall into the trap of death through jealousy of his brother. When his disciples asked him which of them would be the greatest, he said, “Whoever is least among you all, that one will be great.” With that answer he cut off every kind of envy. He pulled up and tore away every cause and occasion of gnawing envy. A disciple of Christ must not be jealous; he must not be envious. Among us there can be no contest for high position. It is out of humility that we grow to the greatest things; we have learned the way to be pleasing to God. [q]

And finally the apostle Paul, teaching and warning that we who have been lit up by the light of Christ, and have escaped from the darkness of a life lived in the night, should walk in the deeds and works of the light, writes and says, “The night has passed and the day is coming near. So let us throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk decently, as in the day: not in wild parties and drunkenness, not in lust and loose living, not in quarrels and jealousy.” If the darkness has gone from your heart, if the night has been scattered out of it, if the gloom has been chased off, if the brightness of day has lit up your senses, if you have begun to be a man of light — then do the things that belong to Christ, because Christ is the Light and the Day.

Why do you rush into the darkness of jealousy? Why do you wrap yourself in a cloud of spite? Why do you put out all the light of peace and love in the blindness of envy? Why do you go back to the devil, whom you renounced? Why do you stand where Cain stood? [s]

That a man who is jealous of his brother and hates him is guilty of murder, the apostle John states in his letter, saying, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has life remaining in him.” And again, “The man who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness even now, and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” Whoever hates his brother, he says, walks in darkness and does not know where he is going. He is going to Gehenna without realizing it, in ignorance and blindness. He is hurrying into punishment, going away, that is, from the light of Christ, who warns us and says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” And the man who follows Christ is the one who stands in his commands, who walks in the way of his teaching, who follows his footsteps and his paths, who copies what Christ both did and taught. This is what Peter also urges and warns, when he says, “Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example so that you should follow in his steps.”

We ought to remember what name Christ calls his people by, what title he gives his flock. He calls them sheep, so that their Christian innocence may be like a sheep’s. He calls them lambs, so that their plainness of mind may copy the simple nature of lambs. Why is there a wolf hiding under the clothing of a sheep? Why does a man who falsely claims to be a Christian bring disgrace on the flock of Christ? [u]

To take on the name of Christ and not to go the way of Christ — what is that but making a mockery of the divine name, and deserting the way of salvation? For he himself teaches that the man who keeps his commands is the one who will come to life, and that the man who hears his words and does them is wise, and further, that the man who both does and teaches this way is called the greatest teacher in the kingdom of heaven. What has been preached well and usefully will then do the preacher good, if what his mouth says is filled out by the deeds that follow. But what did the Lord press on his disciples more often, what did he charge them more strongly to keep and observe among his saving counsels and heavenly commands, than that we should love one another with the same love with which he loved his disciples? And how does a man keep either the peace of the Lord or the love of the Lord, when jealousy gets in and he can be neither peaceable nor loving?

So too the apostle Paul, when he was pressing the value of peace and love, and stating and teaching firmly that neither faith nor giving to the poor — nor even the suffering of a confessor or a martyr — would do a man any good unless he kept the requirements of love whole and unbroken, went on to say, “Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy.” By that he plainly teaches and shows that whoever is patient and kind, and free of jealousy and bitterness, is the man who can hold on to love. [w]

And in another place, when he was urging that a man who has already been filled with the Holy Spirit and made a son of God by heavenly birth should attend to nothing but what is spiritual and divine, he lays it down and says, “And I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to people of the flesh, as to infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, because you were not yet able to take it; and even now you are still not able. For you are still of the flesh. Since there is still jealousy among you, and quarreling, and fighting, are you not of the flesh, and walking as men do?”