Proverbs 21:10 commentary; What the soul of the wicked wants is not the good of his neighbor

10 ¶ The soul of the wicked desireth evil: his neighbour findeth no favour in his eyes.

The soul is the seat of our self identity, the ultimate decision maker in our free will. The flesh, the way in which we know the physical world around us, demands and pleads for whatever it wants and in the most quantities that it can have without any disctinction or understanding but pain or pleasure, but the soul makes the choice (Genesis 34:8; Psalm 63:1; 84:2; Job 7:15 as examples). In the Old Testament, as there is no permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the soul suffers the sins of the flesh as standard operating procedure (Ezekiel 18:4, 20) while under the doctrines of grace, Christ has circumcised our soul from our flesh so that we do not suffer the flesh’s fate (Colossians 2:11-13). Our spirit receives the bounty of what the soul chooses. If the soul chooses Christ the spirit is made alive or quickened as the Bible says (Ephesians 2). If the soul chooses to serve the flesh then it will be consigned to Hell and the eventual lake of fire that Hell itself is consigned to along with death, which is the natural state of all human beings who reject Christ (Revelation 20:14).

The soul of the wicked, the person who knowingly rejects salvation through Christ for our application to the Christian era, desires for evil, hungers for it, and lusts after it. He is not pleased with anything that does not serve Self. His neighbor, whom God has told us to love as he loves his own self, will receive no favor from him except in that the other person also submits to serve the first person’s Self.

Luke 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

A carnal, flesh loving Christian and the wicked who are unsaved cannot love their neighbor as themselves because they are consumed with a love of Self. Many verses tell us what God wants from us, not only as He speaks to the Hebrews but to Christians as well (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 5:43; James 2:8).

Galatians 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

There is a strain running through our political dialogue these days that says that worship of Self is the only just and noble aspiration of man. They disguise this belief of Ayn Rand’s and others with words like “freedom” and “liberty”. It is wickedness. Just as the foolishness and wickedness of thinking that the purpose of government is not only to level the playing field so everyone has a fair chance not impeded by tyranny or a deliberate denial of opportunity by the powerful but that government (the rest of us) is responsible for making all outcomes beneficial for everybody the wickedness of believing that while you live in this society and incur the benefits and privileges pursuant to it you have no obligation to anyone other than to your own Self, your own ambitions, and to the accumulation of your own material goods for yours and your family’s benefit is also evil.

If you want no government move to Somalia. If you want government to be your daddy find a country like Andorra or some place where there are few people. Both sides in our country are wicked and have nothing to do with God. In neither side is there freedom. One side is ruled by rich and powerful men working in collusion with power and money hungry politicians to enslave you. The others side is just the reverse of that. In others words, as the saying goes, “Under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under socialism, it’s the exact opposite.”

The soul of the wicked will do nothing for his neighbor that does not have to do with serving himself. God’s ways are perfect. Man’s ways, without the God of the Bible rather than their own imagination, are simply counterfeits and corruptions of something said in God’s word. Marx ripped off Acts 2:45 and 4:35 and context. Many on the right wing have focused on Matthew 20:15 by ripping it out of its context and the meaning of the parable. Neither one of them regard Matthew 22:36-40 in its entirety. Both the left and the right, on the street level, are just shills for the powerful in government and private industry, repeating the talking points they’ve been handed by the news media and demogogues on either side, and serving their masters. They may think of their motives as pure and their ideas as good but without the Holy Spirit’s guidance and the words of God as their guide and the source for their authority all they can do is create evil and tyranny, being enslaved themselves while proclaiming their freedom.

The ultimate justice that a government of men without Christ will dispense is injustice. The ultimate welfare that a government of men without Christ can offer will be poverty. The ultimate opportunity that a government of men without Christ can provide will be slavery. Americans have chosen their masters on the right and on the left and, in spite of the sound bites on TV, neither side has chosen the God of the Bible, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. The soul of the wicked desires only evil.