Exodus 20:1-17
The Ten Commandments
1 And God spoke all these words:
2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 "You shall have no other gods before me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 "You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
13 "You shall not murder.
14 "You shall not commit adultery.
15 "You shall not steal.
16 "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
Romans 7:7-25
Coveting is a Sin and We Struggle with Different Sins
7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." 8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.
11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Hebrews 13:8
Jesus the Same
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
The question that I read about often is where does morality come from?...Morality is an argument that supports that there is a God...But non-believers believe that morality can just happen...So where do you personally think that morality came from?...You might say they came from man...But every man has his own thoughts on sin and some sins you would not know about unless they were written about in the Bible...
The Bible is God's Word...The Bible is Holy, Righteous, and Good...The Bible is Spiritual...God's Word helps us lead an abundant life...And in the Bible, we are introduced to God's Ten Commandments in Exodus...And we learn that coveting is a sin...Coveting, as a sin, is written about in the Ten Commandments...Thou shall not covet is our tenth commandment...St. Paul says if not for God's Word he would not know what coveting was, if not for the law and the Ten Commandments...St. Paul personally believed that God showed him why coveting was wrong and that came from the Ten Commandments...The wrongfulness of coveting had came from God's Word, years before St. Paul was on earth...Coveting was and is a sin...And we, like St. Paul, learn about coveting and sin in the Ten Commandments and much more about sin in the Bible...
So we might ask about coveting and sin and why is coveting considered wrong and a sin?...For coveting to be wrong, St. Paul, as stated earlier, had to get this idea from somewhere or Someone...And St. Paul says he learned that coveting was wrong from the Bible...So the question of what we think of coveting had to come from a Source...Unless you believe that coveting and sin just happened out of the blue one day...And if I expand that then I might say that coveting and all morality comes from a higher Source than just me or just one man...Morality was with God in the beginning, and remains the same yesterday, today, and forever...But many non-believers object and say there are many explanations of morality that do not depend on God....I personally do not know what these explanations are...What is your objection for coveting being bad morality, or do you consider coveting alright?...
There are different sins throughout the Bible...Being disobedient to God is a sin, which was what Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden...And if you believe in God, then you believe in sin and you believe the tenth commandment is a sin...If you are not a believer in God, then coveting is not a sin...And neither is being disobedient to God, because you do not believe in Him...In fact, there can be no sins without believing in God...A non-believer might describe coveting, if he or she would want to, as bad behavior...But they would not have to if they do not believe in God...They could just say that coveting their neighbor's wife is just a behavior they have, that is personal to them...If there is no God, what would that matter, which would make coveting alright if we have no God...God is a Moral God...But God makes right and wrong a morality issue, just as God is moral and gives us His Ten Commandments in Exodus...To further this, any sin is alright, if you do not believe in God in the sense that God is not your Judge, but you are your own personal judge or you can name the ones that you want to make your judge, like your family or your friends...If you believe this then you personally have made
coveting neither right nor wrong, because your personal view of coveting your neighbor's wife, might not line up with the next persons definition of coveting...So it is up to each of us to say what coveting is or isn't if there is no God..
So we need God, in the sense, to show us what is right and what is wrong...We need God to show us what the different sins are like coveting our neighbor's house, wife, female servant, or anything our neighbor owns and we don't...Without God there are no sins of the world...The world is the world and that is all there is to it, if there is no God...There is no Source of Goodness without God...The good virtues of life like goodness, righteousness, love, and doing the right things as one lives are fruits of the Holy Spirit, and are fruits of God...Without God,man is in control of all the rights and the wrongs of the world...