Harmful to Your Health

Pr 14:30 ¶ A sound heart is life to the body, But envy is rottenness to the bones.

Doctors pretty well agree that taking care of yourself before you get sick is better than having to go to a doctor because you made yourself sick. And science has proved that stress actually lowers your body's ability to fight off disease.

An envious person will always suffer stress, because he'll always see someone who has something he wants. In the church, it could be a position of leadership that the envious person feels he should have. My own observations confirm that handing positions to these people in order to placate them is like handing territory to Adolf Hitler. After a while, he always wants more. Eventually, the person's ever-growing envy pushes him into positions he cannot handle, or it reaches the point that people are willing to fight him in order to keep him from getting more.

Job's friend, Eliphaz the Temanite, had observed that "... wrath kills a foolish man, And envy slays a simple one." Job 5:2 In addition to health problems, envy can push a person into foolish actions that get him into trouble.