The Seventh Commandment

After our own persons and our spouses, our earthly possessions are what we hold most dear. God intends to protect these as well. He has commanded that no one damage or diminish what belongs to their neighbor. "Stealing" means nothing other than acquiring someone else's property through dishonest means. The word covers every method, across every line of business, by which one person profits at another's expense. Theft is a widespread and universal vice, yet it is taken so lightly and dealt with so rarely that it has grown completely out of control. If every person who steals, yet bristles at being called a thief, were actually punished, the world would quickly be emptied of people, and there wouldn't be enough executioners or gallows to keep up. As I said, we must understand stealing as far more than picking pockets or breaking into safes. It also includes taking advantage of others at markets, in shops, in grocery stores, hotels, restaurants, and factories: in short, anywhere that business is conducted and money changes hands for goods or labor.

Let me put this in plainer terms for ordinary people, so we can see just how widespread this problem really is. Theft happens when a servant, male or female, is unfaithful in their duties and causes harm that could easily have been prevented, or when they are simply indifferent and careless out of laziness, negligence, or outright malice, making life harder for their employer and doing so deliberately. I'm not talking about honest mistakes or accidental oversights. Through this kind of behavior, a servant can quietly cost an employer fifty, a hundred, or even more dollars over the course of a year. If someone else had stolen that same amount in secret, they would have been hanged for it. Yet the servant walks around bold and insolent, and no one dares call them a thief. The same is true of craftsmen, laborers, and day workers, nearly all of whom act recklessly and seem to think their only goal is to cheat their employers as much as possible. On top of that, they are lazy and unreliable in the work they actually do. People like this are worse than common burglars. Against a burglar, you can use locks and bolts, and when one is caught, the law can deal with them. But no employer can protect themselves against this kind of insider dishonesty. No one dares to look at these workers with suspicion or accuse them of theft. In fact, the employer would sooner accept a direct financial loss than risk the accusation. These are neighbors, close friends, people living under the same roof, the very ones an employer trusts and relies on, and they are the first to rob him blind.

The same dishonesty runs rampant in the marketplace and in everyday commerce. In trade, people deceive one another with inferior goods, false measurements, rigged scales, counterfeit money, clever manipulation, shrewd financial tricks, and persuasive lies. And beyond outright fraud, people steal simply by overcharging and exploiting those who have no choice but to deal with them.

Who could possibly catalog every form of fraud? In short, theft is a universal art, the largest guild on earth. Look at the world across all its professions and you'll find it is one vast den of thieves. There are even men you might call gentleman-robbers, land-grabbers, and highway bandits who operate on a scale that makes the common safe-cracker or petty pickpocket look insignificant. These men sit in seats of honor, bearing titles like "great lord" and "honorable, pious citizen," all while robbing and stealing under the cover of respectability.

In fact, we might as well leave the small-time individual thieves alone if we could only bring the great and powerful arch-thieves to justice, the ones who keep company with princes and rulers. These men plunder not just a city or two each day, but all of Germany. Indeed, if justice were ever truly served, what would become of the chief protector of all thieves, the holy See of Rome, along with all her associates, who has dishonestly seized the treasures of the world and holds them in her grip to this day? This is simply how the world works: the man who can steal openly and on a grand scale walks free and secure, collecting honors from other men, while the small, cunning thief who commits only a minor offense must suffer punishment, serving as a prop to make the powerful look godly and respectable by comparison. Yet those powerful thieves should understand that before God they are the greater criminals, and He will punish them exactly as they deserve.

We have already shown just how far-reaching this commandment is. It is genuinely necessary, then, to keep it in front of the lower classes of society, explaining it to them and restraining their reckless behavior. The wrath of God must be held constantly before their eyes. This kind of preaching is aimed more at villains and criminals than at Christians, though one might argue it belongs more properly to the judge, the prison warden, or the executioner. Let everyone understand, then, that he is obligated, under penalty of God's displeasure, not to harm his neighbor or take advantage of him in any business transaction. But beyond that, he is faithfully to protect his neighbor's property and advance his interests, especially when he is being paid to do so.

Whoever deliberately ignores God's commandment in these matters may persist in that course and slip through the law's fingers, but he will not escape God's punishment. He may carry on his defiance and arrogance for a long time, but eventually he will end up a vagrant and a beggar, overtaken by every kind of calamity and misfortune. Now, it is the duty of you servants to care for the property of your master and mistress, which is the very reason you receive your food and wages. Instead, you go your dishonest ways, collecting your pay like thieves while expecting to be treated with the respect of noblemen. There are many such people, insolent toward those they serve, unwilling to lift a finger to protect their employers' interests. But take care: what will you gain from it? When you have a household of your own, God will repay you with every kind of misfortune. Where you have stolen or caused harm, you will pay for it thirty times over.

The same principle applies to tradespeople and day laborers. We are forced to endure their insufferable arrogance today. They carry themselves like aristocrats when spending other people's money and act as though they're entitled to whatever they demand. Let them keep cheating others for as long as they can. God has not forgotten His command. They will be repaid in kind for how they have treated others. He will not allow their prosperity to last; it will surely wither away. They will not find lasting success in life, and they will never build anything of lasting value. If our government were properly ordered, such reckless behavior could be effectively curbed, as it was in the time of the Romans, who dealt swiftly with such offenders and made examples of them for others.

A similar fate awaits those who turn the open marketplace into a venue for extortion and theft, where the poor are cheated every single day. New and ruinous price schemes are constantly being devised. Everyone abuses the market in whatever willful, arrogant, and defiant way suits them, as though it were their personal right to charge any price they please with no one able to stop them. Let them continue their cheating, their extortion, and their greed. We trust in God, who will, once they have filled the measure of their wrongdoing, pronounce His curse on them. Their stored grain will rot, their harvest will fail, and their livestock will die in the stall. For every dollar dishonestly gained, their entire wealth will be consumed by decay, and they will never live to enjoy it.

We see it every day: nothing gained through theft or dishonesty ever leads to lasting prosperity. How many people exhaust themselves chasing wealth, working day and night, and never grow a dollar richer? And even when wealth does accumulate, the person who holds it will face disasters that rob him of any enjoyment and prevent him from passing it on to his children. But we ignore the lesson and carry on without a second thought. So God is forced to teach us ethics through harder means. He allows one civil tax after another to be imposed on us, or a company of soldiers is billeted in our homes, who immediately drain our wallets and empty our safes to the last penny, and then repay our hospitality by burning our homes and farms to the ground, and assaulting and killing our wives and children. In short, however much you steal, twice as much will be stolen from you. Those who gain what they have through fraud and force will suffer the same treatment in return. Since everyone is robbing and stealing from everyone else, God proves Himself a master at punishing one thief through another. Otherwise, what would we ever do for enough gallows and rope to hang all who deserved it?

Anyone willing to receive instruction understands that God has given this commandment and that it deserves to be taken seriously. To those of you who show contempt for us by cheating and stealing, we will yield. We will endure your arrogance and forgive it, as the Lord's Prayer teaches us to do. We know that the righteous will not go without, and that the greatest harm you do falls on yourselves. But take care how you treat the poor, and there are many of them right now. When someone comes to you who depends on a daily wage just to survive, and you heartlessly squeeze what little he has and turn him away when he deserves your compassion, he will leave in grief and desperation. Because he has no one else to turn to, he will cry out to heaven. I say it again: be as careful about this as you would be about facing Satan himself. That cry of distress is no small thing. It carries a force beyond anything you or the rest of the world can withstand. It will reach God, who watches over broken and suffering hearts, and He will avenge the wrong done to them. If you ignore that cry and defy God, think carefully about whose anger you have stirred up. Then, if you still prosper after all of that, go ahead and tell the whole world that God and I are liars.

We have now given fair warning and made our case clearly enough. Anyone who refuses to listen, we will leave to be taught by his own hard experience. But these truths need to be placed before the young, so they learn to avoid the corrupt habits of the crowd, to honor God's commandment, and to stay clear of His anger and its consequences. Our responsibility is simply to teach and to correct by the authority of God's Word. The task of curbing injustice belongs to civil authorities. They should keep a close eye on commercial dealings and regulate them with a firm voice, so that the poor are neither crushed nor driven to take on the guilt of other people's sins.

What has been said so far about the definition of "stealing" is sufficient, but that definition must not be read too narrowly. It applies to every kind of dealing we have with our neighbors. To summarize, as we did with the other commandments: this commandment forbids every conceivable wrong we might do to our neighbor by taking any part of his possessions or interfering with his enjoyment of them. It forbids even consenting to such wrongs, and goes further still by requiring us to prevent them wherever we can. It commands us to add to our neighbor's possessions and to advance his interests, and to relieve him in times of need with both practical help and sound advice, whether he is friend or foe.

Anyone who genuinely seeks good works will find here more than enough opportunity to do what pleases God. And these works carry with them the richest blessings. Whatever we do sincerely for the good of our neighbor will be repaid to us abundantly. King Solomon teaches: "He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord, and his good deed will He pay him again" (Prov 19:17). Here we have the Lord of all wealth. His resources can never run dry, and He will not allow us to go without. We may therefore enjoy, with a clear conscience, far more than we could ever gain through dishonest dealing. Those who have no desire for such blessing will find that they have earned, instead, sufficient wrath and misfortune.