“You shall not steal.”
— Exodus 20:15
The Eighth Commandment begins with a foundational affirmation of something most people take for granted: the right of personal property. When God says “you shall not steal,” He is implicitly saying that there is such a thing as yours and mine, and that the things God has entrusted to you through your labor and His blessing have a legitimate owner, and that taking them without permission is wrong. This is the biblical basis for free markets, for private property, for the dignity of work and its rewards.
But the commandment simultaneously reminds us of something we are prone to forget: everything ultimately belongs to God. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). You did not make yourself. You did not create the raw materials of your talent or the context in which your work has produced results. God did. Everything you have is a loan from the One who owns it all. You are not an owner; you are a steward. And a steward’s job is to manage what belongs to someone else with faithfulness and integrity.
Stealing, then, is not merely taking what is someone else’s. In the deepest sense, it is failing to be faithful with what God has entrusted to you. It can look like shoplifting. It can look like padding an expense account. It can look like the twenty percent of work hours that research tells us the average employee spends on personal business at the employer’s expense. It can look like tipping poorly on a Sunday after church, stealing dignity from someone who served you. It can look like taking credit for another person’s idea. Theft wears many faces.
Zig Ziglar said it simply: “Like the things money can buy, but love the things money cannot buy.” Work hard, earn honestly, enjoy what God gives you. But hold it all loosely, because it was never yours to begin with. And let the abundance that God has placed in your hands flow generously outward, because generosity is the opposite of theft, for it gives rather than takes.
Are you taking what belongs to someone else? Or are you giving what belongs to God?
YOU OWN NOTHING AND STEWARD EVERYTHING. LIVE WITH THE INTEGRITY THAT TRUTH DEMANDS.
