The Good We Could Have Done: Stealing From God And From Our Future
"You shall not steal." — Exodus 20:15
Most of us assume we’re doing just fine with the eighth commandment. We haven’t shoplifted. We haven’t skimmed money from work. We haven’t slipped anything into our pockets that didn’t belong to us. By all outward appearances, our hands are clean.
But what if “You shall not steal” presses far deeper than petty theft? What if God is after something much more searching than basic honesty at the register?
The Westminster Larger Catechism does not allow us to keep the commandment at arm’s length. It teaches that the eighth commandment requires “a lawful calling, and diligence… and an endeavor, by all just and lawful means, to procure, preserve, and further the wealth and outward estate of others, as well as our own.” Those verbs matter. Procure. Preserve. Further. This commandment is not satisfied by what we refuse to take. It demands something of what we actively do.
In other words, God does not merely forbid theft; He commands stewardship. The eighth commandment calls us to handle everything entrusted to us with care, industry, and purpose.
YOU OWN NOTHING
Biblical stewardship begins with a truth that strips away every illusion of autonomy: you own nothing. Nothing in your house, nothing in your wallet, nothing in your calendar ultimately belongs to you. Everything you possess has been loaned to you by God, and you hold it as a manager who will one day give an account.
When God gives you income, property, time, strength, skills, and opportunity, He does so with expectations. He expects cultivation, not neglect. Preservation, not waste. Growth, not stagnation. Use, not storage.
Jesus makes this painfully clear in the parable of the talents. The condemned servant did not run off with his master’s money. He did not gamble it away. He simply buried it. He avoided risk, avoided effort, avoided responsibility. And for that, the master calls him “wicked and slothful.”
The verdict is unmistakable. Failing to use what God gives you is not neutrality—it is theft. When we let God’s gifts sit unused, we rob Him of the fruit they were meant to produce, the good they were meant to accomplish, and the glory they were meant to return to Him. We steal tomorrow by wasting today, and God names it decisively as both wickedness and laziness.
Knowing this, Scripture does not merely forbid active theft; it condemns passive theft as well. We are bound to labor at improving our stewardship of every talent God has given us, lest our negligence itself become an act of robbery against Him.
Below are just a few examples of how this can happen in our lives.
EVERYDAY HIDDEN LARCENY
OUR BODIES
God gave us one body to carry us through our entire earthly life. Yet we feed it garbage because it’s convenient, deprive it of sleep to meet deadlines, refuse it movement and call that rest, poison it and call that relief. Scripture says your body was bought with a price and made a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. When we neglect it, we steal from God who dwells within us, from our family who needs us present and strong, from the church that needs our service, and from the future that depends on our endurance.
OUR TIME
God gives each of us exactly 168 hours every week—no more, no less. Those hours are not ours to burn thoughtlessly. They are given to be spent deliberately and accounted for honestly. And yet how many of them disappear into glowing screens, endless feeds, and entertainment that leaves nothing built, nothing learned, and nothing left to pass on? How many days and nights have vanished uselessly from our record while the Scriptures remains unopened, children wait for our attention, the Kingdom of God still not built in our town, and our neighbors remaining strangers? In this way, wasted time is stolen time—from God, from others, from our own soul, and from the good we could have done in the mission God has given us.
OUR SKILLS
God equips each person differently: with unique minds created to think in distinctive ways, hands meant to build and work in various spheres, voices meant to communicate to specific peoples in specific ways, and with the myriad of diverse abilities God has given us that He intended us to use for blessing. Yet, how many times have we buried those gifts under excuses? We stop improving. We lose motivation. We accept mediocrity. We confuse laziness and stagnation with rest and contentment. In doing so, we rob the world of the good we could have done and the people we were meant to become.
OUR POSSESSIONS
The homes, vehicles, assets, tools, and equipment we think we own do not actually belong to us. They are gifts from God, placed under our care for a season, and we are required to steward them faithfully. At a bare minimum, this means that nothing entrusted to us exists merely to serve our own comfort, but is meant to be pressed into the service of God Himself. Go one step further, and it becomes clear that everything we rightly manage has a distinctly Godward use—a way it can be employed for His glory and for the increase of joy in Him—if we are willing to think carefully and act intentionally.
Your car, for example, is not simply transportation for your private errands. It is a means by which you bring your family to worship, open your life to hospitality, serve the saints, and show up reliably to the work God has assigned you. When you neglect it—ignore oil changes, postpone repairs, run it into the ground through carelessness—you are not just being lazy; you are diminishing your ability to serve others and forcing future costs onto yourself and your family.
Similarly, your home is not just a place to retreat from the world. It is meant to be a place of refuge, hospitality, stability, and formation. When you maintain it well, you protect your family, welcome others without embarrassment or hazard, and create a space ordered for peace rather than chaos. When you neglect it—letting repairs pile up, systems decay, and disorder reign—you steal comfort from your family and push tomorrow’s burden onto someone else.
And the same principle applies to everything else under your care. Tools are meant to build and repair, not rust in corners. Skills are meant to be sharpened, not shelved. Resources are meant to circulate, not stagnate. Yet when our minds drift from Godward purpose, neglect inevitably follows. We skip maintenance, ignore problems, and allow decay—not because we lack time, but because we lack intention. Or worse, we turn these gifts inward, using them exclusively to serve our own convenience and pleasure rather than the ends of Christ.
Neglect is never neutral. What we refuse to steward deliberately, we end up misusing by default.
OUR FINANCES
Whether God has given you much or little, He calls for wisdom. Your bank account is not merely a buffer against inconvenience or a tool for personal indulgence. It is a mechanism for provision, generosity, foresight, and kingdom advance. Money maintained wisely allows you to give freely, respond quickly to real needs, avoid enslaving debt, and support the work of the church. Money handled thoughtlessly narrows your obedience, shrinks your freedom, and leaves you unable to act when God presents opportunity. Yet we spend without thought, save nothing, refuse to plan, live beyond our means, finance pleasure with debt, and ignore obligations we’ve promised to meet. That kind of carelessness steals from your future, from your family’s security, from creditors who trusted you, and from kingdom work that could have been funded.
OUR MARRIAGES
Marriage is a living picture of Christ and His church, designed to be cultivated deliberately, not assumed to run on autopilot. Yet many allow it to deteriorate through sheer inattention. We stop pursuing our spouse. We stop listening carefully. We stop planning time together. We speak curtly, grow impatient, and justify emotional distance as exhaustion. We pour creativity, energy, and attentiveness into work, hobbies, and screens, then come home and offer our spouse whatever is left over.
The daily disciplines that sustain love—kind words, physical affection, shared prayer, intentional conversation, repentance, forgiveness—are quietly abandoned. Small irritations go unaddressed until they harden into resentment. Romance is treated as optional. Faithfulness is reduced to mere physical presence. And all the while, we tell ourselves nothing is wrong, even as the marriage slowly withers.
This kind of neglect is not harmless. A neglected marriage steals from your spouse the love, attention, and devotion you vowed before God to give. It steals from your children the stability and joy they were meant to witness. And it robs the watching world of a clear, embodied picture of Christ’s faithful love for His church.
OUR CHILDREN
Children are not accessories to adult life; they are an inheritance from the Lord, entrusted to parents for deliberate cultivation. Yet many quietly surrender that responsibility to schools, screens, peer culture, and endless entertainment. We outsource instruction, assume neutrality where none exists, and allow hours of unfiltered influence to shape our children’s loves while we remain passive.
We are too tired to open Scripture with them, too busy to pray with consistency, too distracted to notice what they are absorbing, repeating, and imitating. We know what shows they watch, what games they play, what content keeps them quiet—but not what fears trouble them, what lies they believe, or what virtues are being formed or eroded in their hearts.
This neglect is not benign. It steals from children the guidance and discipline they need to walk in wisdom. It leaves the church with believers poorly formed and easily swayed. And it withholds from God the faithful worshipers He entrusted to us to raise, teach, and train in His fear.
OUR VOCATIONS
God places people in their vocations by providence, not by chance. Every job—whether public or hidden, prestigious or overlooked—is a station of stewardship assigned by Him. Yet many labor with divided hearts, offering minimal effort while expecting maximal reward. We grumble about our tasks, drag our feet, watch the clock, cut corners, and justify mediocrity where diligence and excellence are plainly within reach.
This posture is not merely unprofessional; it is unfaithful. It steals from employers who pay for honest labor, from customers who deserve quality work, and from our own growth by dulling skill and discipline. Over time, it constrains our provision, weakens our witness, and shrinks the inheritance—financial, moral, and vocational—that we might otherwise pass on to our children.
OUR RETIREMENT AND LEGACY
God gives resources not merely for personal consumption, but so that others may flourish through them. Yet in modern American life—especially in the retirement years—those resources are increasingly treated as private spoils to be exhausted rather than tools to be deployed. Closets overflow with unused excess while real needs remain untouched. Food is wasted. Money accumulates without purpose. Gospel work scrapes by while accounts sit untouched, justified by vague appeals to “security.”
Worse still, many approach the final decades of life with an openly consumptive mindset. Savings built over a lifetime are deliberately burned off in a rush of travel, entertainment, upgrades, and leisure—not as a measured enjoyment of God’s gifts, but as a kind of moral entitlement. I worked hard. I earned this. I owe nothing to anyone now. The goal is not faithfulness, generosity, or legacy, but to die having spent it all—money, time, energy—on oneself.
The same logic governs how time is spent. Decades of wisdom, skill, and experience that could be poured into children, grandchildren, churches, and younger men and women are instead surrendered to trivial pursuits. Days are filled, not with discipling, mentoring, serving, or building, but with endless distraction—activities that leave no trace, bear no fruit, and bless no one. Life’s final chapters are spent collecting comfort rather than investing significance.
This posture is routinely defended as prudence or “finally enjoying life,” but Scripture renders a far more sobering verdict. It is selfishness. It is a kind of hoarding - of wealth, of years, of hard-won capacity— refusing to pass on what God entrusted for the good of others. And hoarding, when it withholds the good we have the power to do, is theft before God, stripping future generations of provision, the church of potential stability and strength, and the kingdom of the fruit that could have been borne if the gifts of a lifetime had been poured out wisely rather than consumed selfishly.
A CALL TO FAITHFULNESS
When rightly understood, the eighth commandment is not a narrow rule about stealing wallets. It is a sweeping demand for faithful stewardship of everything God places in our hands. It confronts our comfort with mediocrity and exposes negligence for what it truly is.
Measured this way, none of us stand innocent. We have all squandered time, dulled gifts, neglected responsibilities, and mishandled resources. We have stolen from God, from others, and from our own future through carelessness and sloth.
That realization should humble us. It should drive us to repentance. We must confess not only what we have taken, but what we have failed to tend. And we must do so with confidence, because the gospel speaks directly to our failure here.
Jesus Christ is the faithful steward we never were. He wasted no moment, neglected no duty, and used every gift for His Father’s glory. His perfect obedience is credited to all who trust Him. But the proper response to that truth is not to shrug and say, “Amen—Christ did that for me,” while remaining unchanged. Christ did not redeem us merely to excuse our negligence, but to transform us by His Spirit.
The same Christ who justifies also sanctifies. The Spirit He gives does not merely comfort us with forgiveness; He trains us in obedience, presses us toward diligence, and produces real fruit in real life. To appeal to Christ’s finished work while resisting the Spirit’s ongoing work is not faith—it is presumption.
The call, then, is plain and unavoidable: stop stealing through neglect. Start stewarding with care. Everything you have belongs to God. Live like it does—until the day He returns and asks what you have done with what He placed in your hands.
