Envy

Envy is the sorrow or resentment a person feels at another’s good — another’s prosperity, advantage, or standing — and Scripture treats it not as a small character flaw but as a mark of unrenewed life that damages both the envious person and the community around them.

The vocabulary behind the term carries a range. The Greek word usually translated “envy” (phthonos) is the narrower term, while zēlos can mean either zeal or jealous rivalry depending on context, which is why English versions sometimes render it “jealousy” and sometimes “envy.” Scripture places envy in its vice lists without softening it: Romans 13:13 sets strife and jealousy among the behaviors believers are to put off; Galatians 5:19–21 lists envy among the deeds of the flesh and warns that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s Kingdom; 1 Peter 2:1 tells readers to put away all envies along with deceit and hypocrisy; and Titus 3:3 describes life before conversion as living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. First Corinthians 3:3 treats jealousy and strife among believers as evidence that they are still fleshly, and 1 Timothy 6:5 places envy inside the “constant friction” that surrounds corrupt minds who suppose godliness is a means of gain.

Scripture also shows how envy works outward. James 3:14–16 ties bitter jealousy and selfish ambition to boasting and lies, and says that where these are, “there is confusion and every evil deed”; James 5:9 warns against grumbling against one another because the judge stands at the door. Psalm 37:7 addresses a related form of the problem — fretting over the man who prospers in his way and makes wicked plots happen — and answers it not with analysis but with rest and patient waiting on Yahweh. Against all of this, 1 Corinthians 13:4 gives the positive counterpart: “Love doesn’t envy.”

Christian traditions have read the term differently in emphasis. In Catholic teaching, historically shaped by Gregory the Great’s listing of envy among the capital vices and by Aquinas’s definition of it as sorrow at another’s good, envy is a capital sin directly opposed to charity. Many Reformed and Protestant readings locate envy primarily under the tenth commandment’s prohibition of coveting and stress it as a sin remaining even in believers, which is one way of reading the jealousy Paul addresses at Corinth. Eastern Christian teaching commonly emphasizes envy’s destructive, murderous trajectory and its association with the evil one. A further difference concerns Psalm 37: some read it as a pastoral reorientation of desire away from the prosperity of the wicked, others as a wisdom-shaped prohibition of envy as such; and some traditions distinguish envy sharply from emulation or zeal, treating the latter as a legitimate spur to good.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.