Don’t take things that don’t belong to you. It’s a simple application of the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12).
But you should know that there are a whole lot of ways to steal that don’t involve taking things by force. Anytime you take advantage of or shortchange someone, or neglect to care for his stuff, you’re depriving him of what belongs to him, and that’s stealing.
Here are a few examples:
Imagine a shoe store has a clerical error. Pricing came from corporate, and one particular shoe model has a decimal point in the wrong spot. It rings up for $10 instead of $100. Realizing that the shoes are dramatically underpriced, one of the workers buys them all up and sells them on the side for $80/pair. He turns a hefty profit and says to himself – “It’s not my fault they made a mistake.”
Imagine that same worker got some instructions from his boss. When there’s nobody shopping in the store, there’s a bunch of cleaning to get done. The boss is not around, and there’s nobody shopping, and the worker says to himself, “Why should I spend the extra effort cleaning? The boss won’t know if there was nobody shopping. I can just say I was busy with customers the whole time.”
Imagine that same worker has to make a trip to the warehouse to pick up a shipment of shoes. He hops in the company van and sees a low oil pressure warning. “Ugh.” he thinks to himself. “If I say something about this, then I’m going to have to do something about it. I’ll just ignore it, and if it breaks the engine – that’s what the company has insurance for.”
Now – this guy is clearly a scumbag. Hopefully you agree. But perhaps you can also see how tempting and easy it is to entertain this kind of thinking: not my fault, not my problem, why should I go above and beyond?
Here’s the basic issue. It’s not so much about simple laziness or struggling with ethical dilemmas. This commandment, like all the rest, really pertains to your heart. And here’s what a sinful heart thinks about what’s good: “I’ll try not to hurt anyone too badly, but I have to look out for myself.”
When looking out for yourself is your priority, it’s easy to justify all kinds of actions.
How about this instead? What if, instead of wanting to do well yourself, you wanted everyone else to do well? What if, instead of wanting to get ahead yourself, you wanted others to get ahead? What if you wanted others to be more successful, richer, happier, more secure, healthier, wiser, more comfortable than you?
That kind of thinking won’t get you very far in this world. But that’s no matter – this world won’t be here forever. If you spend your whole life trying to get far in this world, it’ll all be a waste in the end.
God’s Kingdom, however, will be forever. And this is God’s thinking: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
That’s what makes this commandment glorious. It’s not just about the basic, obvious “keep your hands off other people’s stuff.” It’s about loving the way God loves and the way you were meant to love – selflessly. For all the good there is in the world, nothing is better than that.