HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 31, 2025 – I need to premise this article with the reminder that this blog is for born-again believers. By “born-again believers”, I mean people who’ve been converted by God into disciples of Jesus. I mean people who have God’s Holy Spirit in them, not worldly spirits. That’s what I mean by “born-again believers”. If you’re not born-again, this article is not for you.

If you are born-again, please do read on, though it’s possible that you won’t like what you read. Consider this your fair warning. Still, it was written especially for those who won’t agree with the teaching, and I hope they read through to the end, anyway, and pray on it.

As for those of you who will agree with what you’re about to read, the Holy Spirit in me greets the Holy Spirit in you!

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Eve was the first to covet, and she did so in the Garden, being tempted by Satan to want more knowledge than God had given her. Every form of coveting since then is a replay of Eve’s.

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We live in an age when coveting is so deeply entrenched in our everyday activities, we no longer recognize it as sin. All loans, including mortgages and credit cards, are coveting. What is a loan except something you’ve been given access to (for a price) that you don’t need and haven’t earned? How are loans different from Eve wanting more knowledge than she needed or was owed? If you do need something—genuinely need it—you won’t have to borrow to get it, because God will provide it for you without your having to borrow or even to ask. Borrowing is a sure sign of the sin of coveting as well as an indicator of weak faith.

I can already hear the excuses – “how else am I going to afford a house in this market??!!”, “but I only use my credit card to get points!!! I pay it off every month”, “it’s just such a convenience to have everything on one card”, “I never use my overdraft; it’s only there if I need it”, and so on. But the truth is, if you have a mortgage, you’re coveting. If you use credit cards, you’re coveting. If you have an overdraft or other line of credit, you’re coveting. You might not know that you’re coveting, it might not seem to you that you’re coveting, and you might not agree that you’re coveting, but you are coveting.

At the same time, you’re also making of yourself a borrower and of someone else a lender, which is tempting God. Scripture advises us not to borrow or lend, which means not only that we should not borrow or lend ourselves, but also—and equally importantly—that we shouldn’t make borrowers or lenders of others.

And worst of all – it means that you’re ungrateful for everything God has given you free and clear. Essentially, when you borrow, what you’re saying is: “I’m not happy with what God has given me. It’s not enough. I deserve more.”

Which is pretty much what Satan said just before he fell.

I warned you that some of you wouldn’t want to read this. Coveting has been so normalized that even we born-again believers do it without thinking. But coveting is also something by God’s Commandment that we dare not do. So, if we are doing it—even unknowingly—we need to stop.

As always, Jesus is our example of how not to covet. We know he didn’t have any business with usurers (the bankers of the day) because Judas Iscariot was in charge of the group’s money bag. We also know that Jesus operated on the “just in time” philosophy of satisfying needs, relying fully on God to provide for him and his followers. This was made clear in the feeding of the thousands when all they had in the cupboard was a few loaves and fishes. As I’ve written here before, Jesus was no prepper. His faith in God to provide what he needed when he needed it is our gold standard on how not to covet.

What we perceive as our needs are often just wants, and God, in his longsuffering patience, lets us roll with that confusion for a while. But when he sees that we’re open to learning the difference between wants and needs, he’ll help us differentiate between them, though what we do with that knowledge is still up to us. We’re free to keep coveting, if that’s what we want to do, just as we’re free to kill, steal, or commit adultery, but none of those activities are advisable and they all come with heavy spiritual penalties, especially for born-again believers.

If you’re born-again and reading this and you have some kind of loan or line of credit, including a mortgage or credit card, you know what you need to do. Notice that I said “need” to do, not “want” to do, because you’re likely not going to want to give up what you consider your right or convenience. Whether or not Jesus owned property, we don’t know (because it’s not mentioned in scripture), but we do know that he didn’t borrow money to buy property, because he rented places or slept rough. And that was Jesus, our Lord and God’s Messiah. Why should we think we deserve more than Jesus?

The world prods us, mainly through advertisement and cultural norms, to want more than we need or have earned. We’re constantly being hounded to replace things that aren’t yet worn out or to get the latest model when we only just a few months ago got the previous latest model. Unsolicited offers of credit cards show up in the mail daily. Students are encouraged to get student loans. New immigrants are ambushed upon arrival by banks urging them not just to set up savings and checking accounts, but to get credit cards and all forms of loans without any background or credit checks. Coveting has been normalized in the West because greed is now our cultural value and norm. Wanting more than what you need is a sign of ambition, and unbridled ambition is good (or so say the ungodly).

But the only ambition that has any value in God’s eyes is the ambition to do God’s will. That’s why God gave us ambition in the first place, and that’s the only ambition we should have as born-again believers.

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We’re no different than Eve in the Garden of Eden when we want what we don’t need or haven’t earned. Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread, not for a McMansion in the suburbs or a platinum credit card. John the Baptist advised the soldiers: “Be content with your wages.” Anything beyond that comes from the devil.