1 Peter 2:1 - Therefore, put away all envy.

Envy is a slippery sin. Right when you think you have your hands around it (in order to kill it), it rears its head in some other way in your life, unabated. Kinda like a whack-a-mole game. The grass is always greener elsewhere, and there’s always something in someone else’s life to measure ours against. But when we read “put away all envy” in the Bible, it’s very matter-of-fact, right? Just do it. Simple! Or is it?

What complicates matters is that envy — like all sin, really — is a “heart sin.” We can be told to look non-envious, but it’s another thing altogether to say, “Manufacture a non-envious heart; don’t be envious.” That’s much more difficult. You might even say it’s impossible. Especially when we consider it says “all” envy, not just some. What we really need is a heart transplant rather than a call to modify our existing one.

Fortunately for us, there’s more to the Christian story than this verse. Rather, it’s embedded in a field of related truths that don’t come to us in the form of a command, but in the form of good news. And we don’t have to look very far. In 1 Peter 1, which serves as the soil that chapter 2 grows out of, we read that we have been chosen by God, sprinkled with Jesus’s blood (v. 2), born again (v. 3) and given such a wondrous salvation that the angels in heaven long to look more deeply into it (v. 12).

It’s only when I consider these things, when I believe that in Christ I have all that I’ll ever need, that my tight grip around wanting other peoples’ perfect lives begins to loosen. That’s the irony, in fact — battling envy is best done not by trying to battle envy, but by believing the gospel. Yoda might say, “There is no try, only do.” But Star Wars platitudes aside, the biblical version is much better: “Don’t try so hard or you’ll just sink, but focus on Jesus’s sacrificial love for you and you’ll be able to walk on water, or, in this case, not envy as much as you used to.”

CHRIS WACHTER / LEAD PASTOR