A while back I came across a scientific study that followed 18,000 people over 10 years, from 2010 to 2018. Researchers wanted to understand the long-term consequences of envy in people’s lives. What they found confirms something God’s Word had already told us centuries earlier.
Two kinds of envy
The study identified two forms of envy. On one hand, benign envy: what we feel when we see someone else progress or achieve something, and it motivates us to also work hard and grow. On the other hand, malicious envy: what appears when we see someone with a nice car, a house, or money, and instead of rejoicing we think, “why does he have it and I don’t?”
The researchers found that most of the envy present in society isn’t the benign kind — it’s the malicious kind. And those who showed more envious patterns had, years later, higher rates of mental illness, depression, poverty, and were less likely to have grown financially or received a promotion.
Science is confirming what God’s Word already told us from the beginning.
The tenth commandment
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Exodus 20:17
This commandment isn’t only about not stealing — it’s about not desiring in our hearts what belongs to someone else. I can see a neighbor with a nice car and react in two very different ways: I can ask, with resentment, “why him and not me?” — or I can genuinely rejoice and think, “how good that God has blessed him.” That difference is precisely envy.
We live in a consumer society, constantly bombarded by clothing, car, and technology brands competing for our attention. Many of those brands literally make their living by making people feel a certain status. But God’s Word is clear: you shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor — nothing at all.
The business of envy
There’s a saying that captures the problem well: all comparison is the death of joy. When we compare ourselves to others, we almost always do it to lament what we lack — a lower salary, a worse car — and we stop seeing all the blessings God has actually given us.
A clear example of how this envy gets cultivated is a 2005 Mercedes-Benz ad campaign literally called “Envy.” The message was simple: buy this car, and your neighbor will envy you. Many luxury brands have used this same strategy for decades — they don’t just sell a product, they sell the status of being envied. That’s why car and phone models change every few years, even when the previous one still works perfectly fine: what’s really being sold isn’t function, it’s status.
From a Christian perspective, that kind of message is openly unbiblical: I shouldn’t buy something so my neighbor will feel envious of me.
Love does not envy
“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up.”
1 Corinthians 13:4
This verse has two sides. First: if I love my neighbor, I won’t feel envy when I see him prosper — instead, I’ll rejoice with him. Second, and just as important: if I’m the one with the car, the house, or the watch, I shouldn’t use it to boast or make someone else feel inferior. Having good things isn’t the problem; using them to provoke envy in others is.
The apostle Paul also warned the church in Corinth about this sin within the community of faith itself:
“…lest there be contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, backbitings, whisperings, conceits, tumults.”
2 Corinthians 12:20
Envy doesn’t stay outside the church — it can creep in among brothers and sisters too. Paul lists it, alongside other serious sins, among the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21, warning that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Laziness and envy go hand in hand
Scripture connects envy to another problem: laziness.
“The soul of a lazy man desires, and has nothing; but the soul of the diligent shall be made rich.”
Proverbs 13:4
The lazy person is exactly the one who looks at the neighbor’s car or house and wants it, without being willing to put in the effort it took to earn it. Proverbs 24 describes that man’s field overgrown with thorns and nettles, and warns that his poverty will come “like an armed man.” We don’t stop to ask whether the person who prospered did so by working three jobs or through years of sacrifice — we simply feel envious.
Paul was just as direct with the church in Thessalonica:
“If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.”
2 Thessalonians 3:10
When we pray with envy in our hearts
The apostle James explains why some of our prayers go unanswered:
“Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.”
James 4:1-3
It’s worth asking: when I pray for a better job or a better salary, what do I actually want it for? To serve others and help those in need — or simply to have a bigger house and a better car to show off?
The antidote: contentment
Neither science nor God’s Word offers any benefit to envy. The study mentioned at the start found no advantage whatsoever — economic or emotional — for envious people. And Scripture is even clearer: envy is a work of the flesh that keeps us from inheriting the kingdom of God.
The biblical antidote isn’t having more than the neighbor — it’s learning to be content with what God has given us.
“For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.”
1 Timothy 6:7-8
One day we’ll be in eternity, where there will be no cars, no gold watches, no luxury brands. All that will remain is what we did with what God entrusted to us here on earth.
