The Seven Deadly Sins (ca. 1620) – Envy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One of the most frustrating things about being married is simultaneously one of the best. You know what I’m on about: being told my annoying habits.
Here are some of mine: the way I accelerate, the way I laugh, places I choose to park the car, the way I manage my diary, places I choose to shop, the way I brake, the way my face looks when I’m thinking…I could go on. The fact that I leave the tap dripping every so often, the way I run from one end of our flat to the other, the time I leave for work in the morning, the time I get back from work, the location of my office, the nature of my work, the way I tell people about my work…ok, I’ll stop now.
It’s definitely annoying being told, ‘you sound mean when you laugh,’ but it’s also definitely good, because without being told that I’d never know I sound mean when I laugh, so would never be able to correct it.
Now, this is all very nice and a bit of fun but something that’s always slightly worried me is: what if there are sins in my life that I don’t know about so have never addressed? Well, good news for me – someone’s compiled a list of every Bible sin, very specifically, separated into heart, mouth and body sins (i.e. sinful thoughts, words and deeds). I hope he doesn’t mind me pasting it here:
| Heart Sins | Mouth Sins | Body Sins |
| Evil thoughts | Deceit / lying | Sexual immorality |
| Coveting / Jealousy | Slander | Theft |
| Wickedness | Quarreling | Murder |
| Sensuality | Strife | Adultery |
| Envy / greed | Dissensions | Orgies |
| Pride / arrogance | Divisions | Drunkenness |
| Foolishness | Reviling | Sorcery |
| Impurity | Foolish talk | Fits of anger |
| Idolatry | Corrupting talk | Swindling |
| Enmity | Crude joking / obscene talk | Homosexuality |
| Rivalries | Without self-control | Abusive behaviour |
| Grudges | Brutality | |
| Bitterness / wrath | Without self-control | |
| Clamour | ||
| Malice | ||
| Worldly passion | ||
| Evil desire | ||
| Loving self | ||
| Loving money | ||
| Not loving good | ||
| Loving pleasure, not God | ||
| Disobedient to parents | ||
| Ungratefulness | ||
| Being unappeasable | ||
| Heartlessness | ||
| Being treacherous | ||
| Being reckless | ||
| Worship of demons & idols | ||
| Being cowardly | ||
| Being faithless | ||
| Without self-control |
By committing this little table to memory and/or keeping it accessible, it should be possible at any given moment to quickly analyse an action and spot if it’s sinful or not. Simples!
This also means that might be things that you, or others, are doing that you’re judging unfairly…maybe we need to repent of that!
And to underline this let’s just remind ourselves that all of our sins, known or unknown, are forgiven in Jesus Christ!
That table, by the way, is taken from Julian Freeman, and the original article’s well worth a read.
