The difference between a gift and a commodity lies in the meaning that attaches to the gift, a meaning which goes beyond the value (the worth) that is attached to the commodity. The meaning addresses some measure of value that adheres to the relationship between the parties rather than the value that adheres only in the material object or service under consideration.
A commodity is material stripped of meaning. Markets are places that facilitate engaging in social relations around commodities, around material stripped of meaning. Commodification entails the stripping away of the meaning of goods to prepare them for exchange in a marketplace.
When advertising kicks in and superimposes some fabricated meaning onto the commodities for sale in the marketplaces it does so after the 'organic' meaning of the goods and services have already been stripped away so that they have been rendered as commodities, which can then carry some contrived, fabricated meaning. That contrived, fabricated meaning is founded in covetousness. To covet is to experience dysfunctional meaning.
The meaning attached to a gift comes from the free bestowal of its value from one person to another. When God relates to mankind in terms of the bestowal of His gifts of grace He is introducing the world's meaning into the system of how the world operates. The world's meaning lies in the world's having been given (gifted) to man by God as a gift to be maintained and used. Meaning is a cultural rather than a natural artifact.
The meaning of the world is as the embodiment of the Old One's love for mankind. Covetousness, on the other hand, is the experience of a sensation that reverses the flow of abundance from giving away, from bestowing on another, to wanting for oneself, to removing from another.
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