The Appetite of the Damned Text: Proverbs 21:10
Introduction: The Diagnostic of the Heart
The book of Proverbs is a book of spiritual anatomy. It dissects the human condition with a razor sharp scalpel, laying bare the motivations, desires, and ultimate destinations of the righteous and the wicked. It does not deal in vague pleasantries or sentimental fluff. It gives us the unvarnished truth about the way the world works because it gives us the truth about the One who made it work that way.
In our modern therapeutic age, we have been taught to think of evil as a malfunction, a societal disease, or a psychological hiccup. We are told that nobody is truly wicked; they are just misunderstood, or victims of circumstance, or insufficiently funded. The solution, therefore, is more education, more government programs, more sympathy. But the Bible, and Proverbs in particular, will have none of it. It tells us that wickedness is not an external problem but an internal appetite. It is a craving, a deep seated hunger of the soul.
This proverb is a diagnostic tool. It shows us two things. First, it reveals the internal state of the wicked man, what he loves and what he longs for. Second, it shows the inevitable external consequence of that internal state, how his corruption necessarily spills out onto his neighbor. The wicked man is not wicked by accident. He is wicked on purpose, because his soul desires it. And a man who is at war with God cannot simultaneously be at peace with his neighbor. To understand this is to understand the foundational problem of the human race, a problem that no amount of social engineering can fix. Only a new heart can fix it.
The Text
The soul of the wicked craves evil;
His neighbor finds no favor in his eyes.
(Proverbs 21:10 LSB)
The Internal Engine of Wickedness
We begin with the first clause:
"The soul of the wicked craves evil..." (Proverbs 21:10a)
The word for soul here is nephesh. It refers to the whole person, the seat of his appetites, his desires, his very being. And the text tells us that the nephesh of the wicked man has a driving hunger, a craving, for evil. This is not a momentary lapse or a slight miscalculation. This is the engine that drives him. Evil is not something that happens to him; it is something he wants.
This is a direct assault on the modern conceit of the essential goodness of man. Our culture operates on the assumption that people are basically good, and that if you just remove the external pressures, their innate goodness will shine through. The Bible teaches the precise opposite. The unregenerate heart is not a blank slate, nor is it a beautiful garden with a few weeds. It is a viper's nest. Jeremiah says the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick (Jer. 17:9). Jesus says that out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander (Matt. 15:19). The problem is not the environment; the problem is the heart.
The wicked man craves evil. He enjoys it. He finds a perverse pleasure in rebellion against God's created order. He chafes at moral constraints the way a wild animal chafes at a leash. He wants what he wants, and he wants it now, and God's law is an intolerable obstacle to his gratification. This craving can manifest in a thousand different ways, from the petty tyrant in an office to the bloodthirsty dictator of a nation. It can be the gossip who delights in tearing down a reputation or the pornographer who profits from defiling God's gift of sexuality. The specific expression of the evil may vary, but the underlying appetite is the same. It is a soul that is oriented away from God and toward self, and because it is oriented toward self, it is oriented toward chaos and destruction.
This is what the doctrine of total depravity means. It does not mean that every unbeliever is as outwardly vile as he could possibly be. It means that sin has corrupted every part of him, his mind, his will, and his affections. His very soul is bent toward evil. He does not need a tutor; he needs a savior. He does not need a behavioral adjustment; he needs a heart transplant.
The External Consequence
The second clause of the verse shows us where this internal craving inevitably leads.
"His neighbor finds no favor in his eyes." (Proverbs 21:10b)
Theology always has social consequences. What a man believes in his heart about God will always determine how he treats the man next door. Because the wicked man's soul is set on evil, his relationships with others will be a disaster. He is a black hole of self-interest, and his neighbor is simply a tool to be used or an obstacle to be removed.
The phrase "finds no favor" means he shows no grace, no kindness, no mercy. His neighbor is not seen as a fellow image bearer of God to be loved and served, but rather as a pawn in his own game. If the neighbor can help him get what he wants, he will feign friendship. But the moment the neighbor becomes inconvenient, or stands in the way of his evil craving, he will be discarded without a second thought. The wicked man is a user. He is a taker. His relationships are purely transactional.
This is why you cannot build a stable society on a foundation of wickedness. When a critical mass of people have souls that crave evil, the social fabric disintegrates. Trust evaporates. Contracts become meaningless. The rule of law is replaced by the rule of the powerful. Everyone is looking out for number one, which means everyone is at war with everyone else. The neighbor finds no favor because in a world governed by the wicked, there is no favor to be found. There is only raw, self-serving power.
We see this writ large in our own culture. We are told to celebrate self-expression and personal autonomy as the highest goods. But what happens when one person's autonomous desire clashes with another's? What happens when my craving for evil requires me to trample on your rights? The result is a society of perpetual grievance, envy, and strife. The neighbor finds no favor because the very concept of "neighbor" has been replaced by "competitor" or "oppressor." When you abandon God's law, which commands you to love your neighbor as yourself, you are left with the law of the jungle.
The Gospel Cure
This proverb paints a bleak picture, and it is meant to. It is a diagnosis of a terminal disease. The soul of the natural man craves evil, and the result is a world filled with broken relationships and cruelty. If this were the end of the story, we would be in a hopeless situation. But this is precisely where the gospel of Jesus Christ shines with such blinding brilliance.
The gospel does not offer a program for managing our evil cravings. It does not give us seven steps to being nicer to our neighbors. The gospel announces that God has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. He has provided a radical cure for the sickness of our souls.
On the cross, Jesus Christ took upon Himself the full weight of our evil cravings. He bore the penalty for every selfish thought, every cruel word, every act of rebellion that ever proceeded from our wicked hearts. He became the ultimate neighbor who found no favor in the eyes of wicked men, so that we, who were His enemies, might find favor in the eyes of a holy God.
And the cure does not stop there. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God performs the heart transplant that we so desperately need. He takes out the heart of stone that craves evil and gives us a heart of flesh that craves righteousness (Ezekiel 36:26). He gives us a new nephesh, a new set of desires. He reorients our souls toward Him. The Christian is one who, by the grace of God, has begun to crave holiness. The desire is not yet perfected, and we still struggle with the remnants of our old cravings, but the fundamental orientation of the soul has been changed.
And because the internal engine has been replaced, the external consequences begin to change as well. Because we have found infinite favor in the eyes of God through Christ, we can begin to show favor to our neighbors. We can love them not because they are useful to us, but because they are made in the image of God and because Christ has commanded us to. We can forgive them when they wrong us, because we have been forgiven an infinitely greater debt. The gospel creates a new kind of community, a community where neighbors find favor in one another's eyes, because they have all found favor in the eyes of God. This is the church. And this is the only hope for a world full of souls that crave evil.