Envy: The Disease and the Cure
“A sound heart is the life of the flesh; but envy the rottenness of the bones.” — xiv. 30.
object is sometimes so situated that you can see it better by looking away from it to the surface of a mirror opposite than by attempting to look directly upon itself. If you want to know what is meant by a sound heart, look over to the other clause, and learn that envy is the rottenness of the bones. Soundness of heart is generous love to a brother, kindled there by Christ’s love to us: “Love one another as I have loved you.” When that grace of the Lord is transferred to a disciple, and written by the Spirit so deeply upon the fleshly table within, that it can be read by the passer-by on the man’s outer life, the new creature is sound at heart and vigorous in action. “Perfect love casteth out fear” in relation to God, and envy in relation to fellow-men.
Among the many diseases to which the living body is liable, some are much more appalling and repulsive than others, though not more deadly. Perhaps there is not one of all the ghastly host that casts a deeper shadow of dismay before it over a human spirit than rottenness in the bones. The very conception of it in the imagination is enough to send a cold shudder through the frame. Such is the tried word chosen by the Spirit to designate envy, an evil disease which is endemic among mankind. Like other diseases that affect the spirit rather than the body, its nature is such that they who are most deeply tinged by the infection are least alive to the danger. To arouse the envious out of their indifference, that ailment of the soul is named after one of the most frightful maladies that preys upon the human frame, and wastes its life away. New creatures in Christ Jesus, if the spiritual life be in healthful exercise, dread every tincture of envy felt working within them as they would dread the symptoms of incipient caries in their bones.
Envy is called a passion; and passion means suffering. The patient who is ill of envy is a sinner, and a sufferer too. He is an object of pitjT. It is a mysterious and terrible disease. The nerves of sensation within the man are attached by some unseen hand to his neighbours all around him, so that every step of advancement which they make tears the fibres that lie next his heart. The wretch enjoys a moment’s relief when the mystic cord is temporarily slackened by a neighbour’s fall; but his agony immediately begins again, for he anticipates another twitch as soon as the fallen is restored to prosperity.
No species of sensitive pleasure can be greater or purer than that of the convalescent when the disease has been cast out, and he walks forth without pain to breathe the fresh air, and look on the green fields again. Those who have long pined in disease, and been at last delivered, relish most keenly the blessing of health. Such is the delight of being delivered from the tormenting presence of envy, and emerging into love. It is the sensation of renewed health when rottenness has been purged out of the bones. They who are led into love walk at liberty. It is a large place. Your path would never be crossed, and your person never jostled, although all the world were beside you there. As to the room that is in him and about him, a disciple is, according to his capacity, like his Lord.
But the cure of envy, as it is wrought by the love of Christ, is not only a deliverance from pain; it is, even in the present world, an unspeakable gain. That man will speedily grow rich who gets and puts into his bag not only all his own winnings, but also all the winnings of his neighbours. Whenever love like Christ’s takes possession of a man, and drives the rottenness from his bones, the capital of his enjoyment is increased by all his own prosperity and all the prosperity of others. His peace, according to the simple and sure imagery of Scripture, is like a river. A river that follows its own course in solitude does not grow great. The Nile, contrary to the analogy of other great streams, flows more than a thousand miles without receiving the waters of a single tributary; the consequence is, that it grows no greater as it courses over that vast line. Other rivers are every now and then receiving converging streams from the right and left, and thereby their volume continually increases until it reach the sea. The happiness of a man is like the flow of water in a river. If you enjoy nothing but what is your own, your tiny rivulet of contentment, so far from increasing, grows smaller by degrees, until it sinks unseen in the sand, and leaves you in a desert of despair; but when all the acquisitions of your neighbours go to swell its bulk, your enjoyment will flow like a river enriched by many affluents, growing ever greater as life approaches its close. It is some such river that makes glad the city of our God. Envy will be unknown there. “Faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” Charity is very pure, and very great. When the rottenness that mingled with it shall be all cast out, and charity without spot or wrinkle shall be the element of heaven, the redeemed will be the happy inmates of a happy home. If there were no envy, but only love — if each should count and feel his neighbour’s good to be his own gain, this earth would already be a heaven.
To have constituted the world so that envy is as rottenness in the bones, and love is felt like the glow of health permeating the frame, is a glory to the world’s Maker. Every sensation of glad enlargement enjoyed by a loving heart, at the sight of a neighbour’s prosperity, is a still small voice, announcing to him who hath an ear, that God is good; and every pang that gnaws the envious, like rottenness in his bones, is the same word, God is good, echoed unwillingly back from the suffering of sin.