A Study on Love: Part XL

Exodus 20:17

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

Deuteronomy 5:21

"You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

James 4:1-3
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

Coveting is not loving.

Covet (verb):

• To desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others.
• To feel immoderate desire for that which is another's.
• To long for inordinately or unlawfully; to hanker after (something forbidden).
• Wish, long, or crave for (something, especially the property of another person).

1st Corinthians 12:27-31
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.

-Eagerly desire the greater gifts... covet the greater gifts. Hunger for doing the better things that God has planned for you. So long as you have love, then everything is good. Without love, the gifts are useless. That's what the Bible says... Johnny Out.