Covenantal Integrity: Your Neighbor, Your God, and Your Wallet
Introduction: Where the Rubber Meets the Road
The Christian faith is not a set of abstract ideals that we contemplate on a Sunday morning before returning to the "real world." The Christian faith is the real world. It is the underlying grammar of all reality, and it has teeth. It makes demands. Specifically, it makes demands on your calendar, your checkbook, and your behavior in the cul-de-sac. We live in an age that loves grand, sweeping gestures of compassion, usually performed with other people's money and for the benefit of television cameras. But the book of Proverbs is not interested in your sentimental humanitarianism. It wants to know if you returned your neighbor's lawnmower when you said you would.
This is where true religion is tested. It is not in the prayer closet alone, but in the marketplace. It is not just in what you say you believe about the Trinity, but in how you treat the man who lives next door. Our modern world is full of people who claim to love "humanity" while being a thoroughgoing nuisance to every actual human they encounter. The Bible turns this completely upside down. Your love for the invisible God is demonstrated and proven by your practical, tangible dealings with your visible neighbor.
The passage before us is a series of sharp, practical commands that function as a spiritual diagnostic tool. These are not suggestions for a better life or tips for self-improvement. These are the marks of a man who is walking in the wisdom of God. They are the outworking of a heart that has been transformed by grace. If our faith does not make us honest, generous, and peaceable with our neighbors, then we must seriously question whether we have any faith at all. This is where the rubber of our theology meets the road of our daily lives.
The Text
Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your hand to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, "Go, and come back, And tomorrow I will give it," When it is there with you. Do not devise harm against your neighbor, While he lives securely beside you. Do not contend with a man without cause, If he has dealt you no harm. Do not envy a man of violence And do not choose any of his ways. For the devious one is an abomination to Yahweh; But His secret council is with the upright. The curse of Yahweh is on the house of the wicked one, But He blesses the abode of the righteous. Though He scoffs at the scoffers, Yet He gives grace to the humble. The wise will inherit glory, But fools raise up disgrace.
(Proverbs 3:27-35 LSB)
The Sin of the Clenched Fist (vv. 27-28)
We begin with two verses that strike at the heart of our excuses and our covetousness.
"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your hand to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, 'Go, and come back, And tomorrow I will give it,' When it is there with you." (Proverbs 3:27-28)
The first command addresses the sin of omission. Notice the language: "those to whom it is due." The Hebrew here refers to the owner or master of a thing. This is not primarily about discretionary charity; it is about justice. This is about paying a wage you owe, returning a borrowed item, or fulfilling a promise you made. It is something that rightfully belongs to another. To withhold it is theft.
The condition is plain: "When it is in your hand to do it." God has given you the means. The money is in your account. The tool is in your garage. The ability to help is present. To fail to act is to claim for yourself what God intended to flow through you to another. You are damming up the stream of God's providence.
Verse 28 gives us the classic excuse of the procrastinating thief. "Go, and come back, and tomorrow I will give it." This is a soft lie. It is a way of saying no without actually saying no. Why do we do this? Because we like the feeling of having the thing, whether it's money or a borrowed book. We also like the power it gives us. Making our neighbor come back again, hat in hand, reinforces our position of control. But God calls this what it is: a sin. You have it with you now. Give it now. This is the very definition of practical righteousness. As the apostle James would later say, "to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin" (James 4:17).
The Sin of the Scheming Mind (vv. 29-30)
From the sins of the hand, Solomon moves to the sins of the heart and the tongue.
"Do not devise harm against your neighbor, While he lives securely beside you. Do not contend with a man without cause, If he has dealt you no harm." (Proverbs 3:29-30)
To "devise harm" is to plot, to craft, to plow evil in your mind. This is premeditated sin. And the aggravating circumstance is that your neighbor "lives securely beside you." He trusts you. You share a fence. His kids play with your kids. He is not on his guard against you. To plot against such a person is the height of treachery. It is to poison the well of community. In our dog-eat-dog world, this kind of behavior is often praised as "shrewd" or "getting ahead." God calls it an abomination.
Verse 30 addresses the contentious spirit. Some men are just spoiling for a fight. They are quarrelsome, litigious, and always looking for an angle or an offense. They thrive on conflict. The wisdom of God commands the opposite. We are not to be spiritual doormats, the text is clear, "if he has dealt you no harm." There is a time for righteous confrontation. But we are not to initiate strife "without cause." A mature believer knows how to overlook a multitude of small offenses for the sake of peace. He is not thin-skinned. He is not a troublemaker. He is a peacemaker, because he serves the Prince of Peace.
The Sin of the Covetous Eye (vv. 31-32)
Now we get to the motivation behind much of the world's wickedness: envy.
"Do not envy a man of violence And do not choose any of his ways. For the devious one is an abomination to Yahweh; But His secret council is with the upright." (Proverbs 3:31-32)
It is a plain fact of a fallen world that wickedness often appears to prosper. The "man of violence," the ruthless executive, the corrupt politician, the bully, he often gets the results. He has the bigger house, the faster car, the more impressive title. And the temptation for the righteous is to look at his success and feel a pang of envy. "It seems to be working for him."
The command is twofold: do not envy the man, and do not adopt his methods. Do not let your heart covet his position, and do not let your hands imitate his actions. You cannot sanctify the devil's tactics for God's purposes. The ends do not justify the means.
And why not? Verse 32 gives the ultimate reason. The devious man, for all his apparent success, is an "abomination to Yahweh." God is disgusted by his crooked ways. But the upright man has something infinitely more valuable than worldly success. He has God's "secret council." The Hebrew word is sod, which means intimate friendship, confidential conversation. The wicked get the fleeting treasures of earth; the righteous get the friendship of God Himself. To trade the latter for the former is the worst bargain in human history.
The Great Divergence (vv. 33-35)
The final three verses zoom out to show the ultimate destinies of the two paths we have been considering.
"The curse of Yahweh is on the house of the wicked one, But He blesses the abode of the righteous. Though He scoffs at the scoffers, Yet He gives grace to the humble. The wise will inherit glory, But fools raise up disgrace." (Proverbs 3:33-35)
Here is the final accounting. The wicked man's success is a sham. A divine curse hangs over his "house," his entire enterprise and legacy. It is built on sand and will not stand. But God's blessing rests on the "abode of the righteous." It may be a humble cottage, but it is a fortress of divine favor.
Verse 34 is quoted in the New Testament by both James and Peter, which tells us this is a central principle of God's government. God actively resists the proud. He "scoffs at the scoffers." The man who cynically mocks God and His law will find that God gets the last laugh. His rebellion is cosmically absurd. But to the humble, to the one who knows his need and bows before his Maker, God pours out grace. Grace is not for the deserving; it is for the desperate.
And so, the conclusion in verse 35 is inevitable. The wise, who are the righteous and the humble, will "inherit glory." It is their certain destiny, a settled inheritance secured for them by God. But fools, who are the wicked and the scoffers, "raise up disgrace." The verb is active. They don't just stumble into shame; they actively promote it. They lift it up like a trophy, glorying in what should be their shame. Their end is public, self-inflicted disgrace.
The Gospel for Your Neighborhood
As we read these commands, our conscience should sting. Which of us has not withheld good? Which of us has not made a lame excuse, harbored a bitter thought against a neighbor, or envied the success of the ungodly? We are all guilty. We are the ones who deserve the curse, the scoffing, the disgrace.
But this is why the wisdom of Proverbs points us beyond ourselves to Christ. Jesus Christ is the ultimate good neighbor. He is the one who did not withhold good from us, His enemies, but gave His very life when it was "in His hand to do it." He did not say, "Go, and come back tomorrow," but declared, "It is finished," today.
He did not devise harm against us while we lived securely in our rebellion, but He absorbed the harm we devised against Him. He did not contend with us without cause, for He had every cause, but instead He made peace through the blood of His cross. He is the humble one who endured the scoffing of men to receive the grace of God, and He is the wise Son who now inherits all glory.
Because of Him, we who were fools can be made wise. We who were proud can be humbled and receive grace. We who were cursed can be blessed. Our obedience to these commands, therefore, is not how we earn our salvation. It is how we live out the salvation we have already received. Because God has been so generous to us in Christ, we can now be generous to our neighbor. Because we have been brought into the "secret council" of God, we have no need to envy the fleeting success of the violent. Our glorious inheritance is secure, and so we are freed to love, to give, and to make peace, right here, right now, with the person who lives right next door.