Taking Off Stealing to Put On Laboring (1)

Ephesians 4:28 declares, Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. Here is the third of five sins that can easily creep back into the Christian’s life.

The negative consideration is found in the words, Let him that stole steal no more. The Greek behind both stole and steal is klepto (English, “kleptomania”) and “emphasizes the secrecy, craft, and cheating involved in the act of stealing” (in contrast, lestes “includes the element of violence”). In other words, it’s not armed robbery, rather burglary.

At first this might seem to be an odd admonition; after all, would a Christian secretly steal? Well, Paul’s admonition must again be viewed in light of the society of that day. As commentator Albert Barnes points out, “Theft, like lying, was, and is, almost a universal vice among the heathen . . . Hence as the Christian converts at Ephesus had been long addicted to it, there was danger that they would fall into it again.” William Barclay adds that theft was rampant in that day and most “common in two places, the docks and above all in the public baths. The public baths were the clubs of the time; and stealing the belongings of the bathers was one of the commonest crimes in any Greek city.”

Additionally, many believers then were slaves. Since slaves were often not well cared for, a lot of pilfering from the master went on. In fact, Paul wrote Titus and told him to admonish Christian slaves not to “purloin” (2:9-10). The Greek (nosphizomai) was applied by ancient Greek writers to the embezzlement of public treasures, and therefore means “to embezzle, keep back something which belongs to another.” This is the word used for Ananias and Sapphira when they “kept back part of the price” of what they sold after they said they would give it all. Some modern translations render it “pilfer” (NASB, RSV), but that doesn’t quite capture the original as well as “purloin,” “to appropriate wrongfully and often by a breach of trust” (Webster).

Citizens of that day, however, not just slaves, practiced petty theft because it was not wholly condemned by popular opinion. The attitude then was much like that of today that says, “Everybody does it,” or “It’s all right as long as you don’t get caught,” or, “They have plenty and won’t miss a little.”

Of course, we’re all aware of what blatant theft is. Our society is full of robbery, burglary, shop-lifting, embezzlement, and the like. In the mid 1990s, the U.S. Commerce Department reported some astounding figures concerning shoplifting. About four million people are caught shoplifting each year, but it is estimated that for every person caught, 35 go undetected. If the estimates are accurate it means that 140 million shoplifting incidents occur. The result is that shoplifting tends to raise prices. Additionally, thefts from hotels and motels reached 500 million dollars a year. Hotel managers count on one of every three guests stealing something. In a recent year, 4,600 Bibles were lifted from New York City hotel rooms.

Certainly no Christian would be guilty of these—or would he? Think a moment of things that few people define as stealing: employees pilfering items from the company, reporting more hours than were actually worked, “hiding” during working hours to avoid work, not paying a debt that is owed, an employer not paying someone fair wages, a false insurance claim, overestimating when bidding on the cost of a certain job, jacking up the price of a repair or service because the insurance company will pay for it, and keeping what a sales clerk overpays you in change. All of that is stealing!

We should also ask, “How often do we steal from God?” We’ll consider that next time.