Every sin is the perversion of the good.  Envy often demonstrates this truth.  Envy is our tendency and desire to pull down or put down anyone who is exceptional.  At times there is an aspect in our attitudes toward others that looks for the worst in people.  If we cannot find it, we will seek to create it in them, often by projecting onto them our own wrongs, weaknesses, and sins.  Henry Fairlie has suggested that the gossip column is our cultural symbol of envy.   We suggest that a good person must have a seamy side.  When a good deed is done we wonder aloud about the ulterior motive of the person.  We conclude that a successful business person must be cheating somebody.  An accomplished professional must have connections.  We suggest that doctors and lawyers entered their professions for the money.  We conclude that no one would do what they do to be of help to people because we certainly wouldn't do that.         

Thomas Aquinas suggested that envy is sorrow for another's good.   Frederick Buechner puts it this way, "Envy is the consuming desire to have everybody as unsuccessful as you are."

Envy is sorrow at another's success and joy over another's misfortune.   The envious person's face turns sad and bitter when another has good fortune and smiles when another fails.  Envy causes one to conclude that what misfortune happened to another served him right or she got what she deserved.  Envy turns Paul's instruction upside down (Rom. 12:15) when he said for us to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.  When we are ruled by envy we weep with those who rejoice and rejoice when others weep.  Dorothy Sayers has written of envy, "It begins by asking, plausibly:  Why should not I enjoy what others enjoy? And it ends by demanding:  Why should others enjoy what I may not?  Envy is the great leveler: if it cannot level things up, it will level things down."   
Envy is professional jealousy as Aristotle suggested.  He said, "Envy is worst among equals, those who are like you in class, knowledge, and stature.   In the biblical story of Joseph, it was as Joseph began portraying himself as superior to and ruling over his brothers that they began to plot to kill him.  It wasn't until David went into battle and was successful that Saul eyed him.  It was after Cain sensed Abel being successful and acceptable that he plotted to destroy him.  Parents develop the nursery for envy when they favor one child and withhold blessing from another.  Sibling rivalry involves the hankering after blessing given to others and disparaging the blessing given to us.
           
Envy was ruling in the life of Caiphas the High Priest and in his Sanhedrin colleagues when they held their hearing for Jesus.  Here is an example of professional envy carried to the ultimate extreme.  Jesus had become popular and powerful with the common people.  He had gained a following, but he did not have accepted rabbinic training.  I suspect that the lack of training was not so much the issue as was his popularity and his willingness to cut through accepted traditions for the benefit of the people that got Jesus in trouble with the religious professionals.  Had he not gained a following and become so popular, the religious leaders would not have bothered with him.   However, as Matthew (27:18) and Mark (15:10) tell the story, it was because of envy that the chief priests handed Jesus over to Pilate.

Matthew (20:15) told the story of the master who hired workers throughout the day and promised to pay each one the same amount of wages.  At the end of the day those who had worked all day were angry at the master and envious of those who worked only one hour for the same pay as they had received.  The master asked them, "Is your eye evil because I am good?  Are you envious because I am generous?"  The Bible portrays envy as a sin of the eyes and describes the envious as evil eyed.  Dante identified those who were guilty of envy in Purgatory as having eyes sewn shut with iron thread.
           
The tongue is a favorite tool of envy.  Giotto, an artist and friend of Dante, painted envy with large ears to catch any hint of a rumor or scandal and a serpent tongue to poison a person's reputation.  What a horrible, accurate image of envy!  

Green is the color often associated with envy.  Green of complexion is associated with sickness, unless you’re Shrek.  Envy is a form of emotional and spiritual gangrene that eventually will kill us.   Envy as spiritual gangrene turns us green because it makes us sick.  The color green may be beautiful and lively in plants, but it is a sickening and deadly sign in any human complexion where it appears.  The grass is greener on the other side of the fence.   The greenness begins to be reflected in the face of the envious person, and it is the sign of a sickness and sin that destroys and crucifies.   Green is a mixture of blue and yellow.  When a person does not get the proper amount of oxygen he turns blue.  If a part of the body does not have proper circulation, it turns blue.  Jealousy is associated with the color yellow perhaps because it is like bile that poisons the physical system if it is not properly eliminated from the body.   Envy blocks the circulation of God's grace because the envious person wants the grace of God for himself but is not willing to allow God's grace to flow through him to others. Thus envy turns a person green because it blocks the flow of grace which, like oxygen, is essential for our survival, and envy retains the poison of jealousy within a person's life.  This colorful description of envy may help us know what envy is.
           
Envy may not be illustrated on every page of the Bible, but there are few situations in the biblical stories in which the element of envy is absent.  The most graphic illustration of the destructiveness of envy is Jesus’ crucifixion. When Jesus was crucified, Matthew and Mark described the work of the Sanhedrin in handing Jesus over to Pilate with these words, "For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up" (Matt. 27:18; Mark 15:10).   

           
Envy is a death sentence and results in crucifixion.  It crucifies another person, and more subtly it crucifies the one who is envious. Crucifixion was a horrible way to die.  It was a torturous approach used to make a stern, strong statement against the life and action of the person being crucified.  Civilizations have sought a variety of horrible methods to deal with those who have been horrible and destructive citizens.  Redemption is seldom of interest or an avenue pursued by the culture.  Literal crucifixion involves nailing a person to two pieces of wood and leaving him there until his life has drained from him.  We use a variety of methods to nail people figuratively and leave them to let life drain from them.  Often the incentive for such crucifixion is envy.  What we fail to realize or do not want to admit is how envy destroys us when we are envious. 

We admit more readily how envy destroys the one who is envied because we can identify situations when we have felt the envy of another.  We can recall the sensation that we had at the time that another person wanted us, not just out of the way, but out of life.  Often envy causes one person to project blame, fault‑finding, or weakness onto another.  Envy comes from insecurity that a person has about herself.  An insecure person may detect quickly a like weakness in another person or project his own weakness onto that person and then proceed to tear down the other person's life or reputation because of the perceived threat.  Envy destroys another person because I am afraid that her success or accomplishment will destroy me.  Envy fuels our efforts and methods to get rid of another person. 
     
Envy is an ultimate form of selfishness because envy is a claim by me that I should have received what God has given to another.  The Israelites learned early in their pilgrimage how wrong and destructive envy was.  The tenth commandment in a sense summarizes the previous five commandments which have to do with relationships between people.  Originally the tenth commandment probably was very brief, a stilted translation being, "No covet" (Ex. 20:17).  Later, interpretation was added to this commandment suggesting that no one was to seek for himself what rightfully belonged to another, including land, animals, or spouse.  To seek that which belonged to another was to destroy not only the relationship but was to destroy the life of another.  That is what envy does.  It seeks to destroy another so she cannot enjoy what rightfully is hers.  It is a contorted and distorted view of life suggesting God was wrong in giving gifts to the other person.  Had God been thinking clearly, God would have given all of those things to me.  Envy makes a mockery of another person whom God has created, and it makes a mockery of the grace and graciousness that God has shown to another human being.
   
Envy seeks to take or absorb the grace of God for oneself but denies the same grace to others.  The irony is that to block the flow of the grace of God through us to others is to deny ourselves the grace of God.  Envy crucifies the person that I envy and eventually it crucifies me.  Envy also crucifies God in the process because it declares null and void the grace of God that is offered to others and that is offered to me.  Envy blocks the flow of the grace of God, the source of health and wholeness for all of us.   
           
 What should we do when we turn green with envy?  The first thing we can do is identify envy in ourselves.  Toward whom do I feel envious?  When does envy begin to stir in my being?  Why is it there?   

The next step is to confess our envy to God.  By naming the sin to God is a means of gaining control of envy rather than envy controlling us.  The sin of envy is our way of seeking to deny the goodness of God to others.  It is ultimate selfishness.  Envy is our way of saying that we deserve the grace of God but others do not.  Frankly, nobody deserves God's grace, but to receive the grace of God for ourselves, and then, to refuse to allow it to flow through us to others is the epitome of arrogance and sinfulness.  Confessing our sins of envy to God gives our sins to the only One who really can deal with them properly, adequately, mercifully. 
           
Having identified our sins of envy and confessed them to God, we will discover ourselves being cleansed by the grace, mercy and forgiveness of God.  Perhaps then we will experience the words to Titus as descriptive of us.

We were slaves to passions and pleasures of all kinds.  We spent our lives in malice and envy. . . .  But when the kindness and love of God was revealed, God saved us.   It was not because of any good deeds that we ourselves had done, but because of God’s own mercy that God saved us, through the Holy Spirit, who gives us new birth and new life by washing us (Titus 3:3‑6, TEV).
           
When we turn green we can be sure that we have a sickness deep in our beings. We do not have to carry through with the destruction that envy causes. We can identify our sins of envy and confess them to God.  The amazing grace of God will flow to us and through us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.  With confession as the treatment for us when we turn green with envy, the prognosis of healing is 100%.  Only the Great Physician can give us those kinds of odds in favor of healing and wholeness                         

Notes

1.  Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins Today, (Washington, D. C.:  New Republic Books, 1978), p. 64.
2.  Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking:  A Theological ABC, (San Francisco:  Harper and Row, 1975), p.20.
3.  Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos, (New York:  Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1949), p. 77.
4.  Aristotle, Rhetoric II, 10, 1387b‑22.
5.  Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Canto XV.