“You shall not steal." - Exodus 20:15 (ESV)
The eighth commandment forbids stealing or carrying away. The command is simple enough. To steal is to take something that belongs to another and not intend to return it.
The Nature of the Eighth Commandment
This command is explicitly reiterated in the New Testament (e.g., Eph. 4:28). In that context, Paul sets stealing opposite of sharing. It is understandable to see sharing as the polar opposite of stealing. Whereas stealing is taking or carrying away what does not belong to you, sharing is taking what you have and giving it to others.
The contrast becomes even starker if we frame these two opposites in terms of living for God through Christ. On the side of stealing, there is the taking for oneself of something that does not belong. To steal is to imply a profound statement about one's authority over another. There is a transgression of the bounds of what is proper, true, and fitting. To steal is to tell a lie about what is mine and what is yours. Suffice it to say that stealing and living for God through Christ do not mix.
It is engaging, in a way, to think how little there seems to be to say about stealing. It is one of the more straightforward commands. We should not take what is not ours. We should recognize the profound arrogance in the decision to decide for ourselves what will happen to someone else's property. We could discuss some of the ticky issues related to stealing, such as taking workplace paperclips for personal use or taking extra long breaks and so stealing company time. Those are valid discussions and can be fruitful for analysis. But this article is going in a different direction.
While on the one hand stealing implies ownership and property rights, on the other hand, we should remember that everything we have ultimately belongs to God. Stealing is a kind of rearranging of resources that God has already put in place. It is telling God we do not agree with his decisions and that we are going to take it upon ourselves to correct the situation.
God makes clear that heaven and earth are his (Gen. 14:22; Deut. 10:14). This means that anything we have is more God's than ours. There is nothing we can own to which God does not stake a higher claim. Of anything I own, then, I am more accurately a steward than an owner.
This is perhaps where the affront of stealing becomes most clear. If we conceive of ownership as a kind of stewardship, then we see stealing as fundamentally an offense against God first and someone else second.
The Eighth Commandment Today
Scripture has various instructions related to how God's people ought to think of their possessions, and none of them encourage stealing. Now, the reader of this article may not be characterized by stealing, but is that because you are marked by these biblical virtues, or despite the fact that you are not? Consider the following examples:
"In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” - Acts 20:35 (ESV)
"Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need." (ESV) - Ephesians 4:28 (ESV)
These two verses help us understand how to think about stealing and what we should do instead. In Acts, our perspective is reversed. We tend to believe that blessing is something that comes with possessing things. There is goodness, utility, and benefit in something, and so we want it. If it comes to it, we might steal it because we believe it would do us good and bring us blessings. But Jesus turns that around. It is more blessed to give than to receive. That means that there is a greater blessing in giving to someone than there is in keeping it for myself. Why is this? It is likely because the ability to give speaks to surplus, abundance, and a heart willing to share from it. On the other hand, receiving speaks to want, need, or lack. We want to live from surplus, able to share with others. When we have given, we still don't lack, and we have helped someone else. That is a blessed experience.
The Ephesians passage is similar. It also calls us to share. Paul sets stealing opposite labor and honest work. Stealing is associated with a kind of laziness, dishonesty, and self-seeking, none of which is good. Stealing, then, in this passage, may be viewed as only the leading edge of an assortment of sins.
When we think about the prohibition against stealing and consider the biblical exhortation to generosity, sharing, and hospitality, some might jump to the conclusion that everything should be shared by default. That is, everything should belong to everyone, and there should be no owners of anything. But this is a wrong idea.
The most basic reason that we should not abolish ownership of things is that Scripture assumes ownership. If everything is shared, nothing is. If everything is shared, then no one owns anything, and so nothing can be shared. It is an ideal without any real substance. For us to be generous, we have to have something to be generous with. To be able to share, we have to own something to share. The prohibition against stealing cannot be converted into a prohibition against ownership at all, because that would take the commandment and make it unnecessary. The reality of ownership that the command assumes would no longer apply, and the command would be irrelevant. Stealing would no longer exist because everything would be mine and everything would be yours. If everything if everyone's, then everyone is really no one's.
If not stealing, then what should characterize people who are learning to live for God through Christ? Generosity. Sharing. Hospitality. Instead of hoarding, there should be sharing. Instead of taking, there should be giving. Instead of stealing, there should be gifting. This is a godly thing to do, because it is just like what God does for us through Christ. In not stealing, we are not simply prohibited from a certain activity. We are called to follow in the same path that Christ himself walked, and to treat others in a way that parallels God's treatment of us.