TEN YEARS GONE: Understanding Envy (Revised)

 Producing the Fruits of the Kingdom

First Friday, February 26, 2016 - Revised Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.

— Matthew 21:43

Envy has always fascinated me because it rarely announces itself honestly. Very few people wake up in the morning and say, "I'm envious." Instead, it disguises itself as criticism, resentment, sarcasm, or a quiet satisfaction when someone else's success begins to unravel. It has a way of convincing us that we are simply being objective, when in reality we are grieving someone else's blessing.

Once I began noticing that pattern, I started seeing it all through Scripture. Cain could not rejoice over Abel's offering. Joseph's brothers could not bear their father's affection for him. King Saul watched David's popularity grow until admiration became fear and fear became hatred. Even the religious leaders who opposed Jesus seem to have been threatened by a goodness they could neither control nor imitate.

Perhaps that is the true danger of envy. It doesn't simply want what another person has. It quietly wishes they no longer had it.

That realization has made me think differently about Jesus' words concerning the Kingdom. He says it will be given to people who produce its fruits. He does not speak first about possessing the correct title or occupying the right position. He speaks about fruit. Something living. Something visible. Something that grows over time.

What, then, are those fruits? As I grow older, I find myself returning to the same list again and again: love, mercy, purity, generosity, humility, justice, righteousness, faithfulness. We spend so much energy arguing over which of those virtues matters most, when the New Testament seems remarkably content to say, "Yes. All of them."

It's not either-or.

It's all of the above.

When those qualities begin to appear in someone's life, people usually respond in one of two ways. Some are inspired and quietly begin growing in the same direction. Others become uncomfortable. That is the moment when envy whispers that it would be easier to pull another person down than to grow ourselves.

I sometimes wonder if that is the more important question for me—not whether society is losing its way, but whether I am producing the fruits of the Kingdom. Am I becoming more patient than I was a year ago? More generous? More forgiving? More capable of rejoicing when someone else succeeds? Those questions are harder to answer than political ones because they leave me nowhere to hide.

Perhaps that is why Jesus speaks so often about fruit. Fruit does not appear overnight, nor can it be manufactured by force of will. It grows quietly, season after season, until one day others begin to taste it.

And maybe that is the real opposite of envy. Not merely being content with what God has given me, but learning to delight in the gifts He has given someone else as well.