Matthew 5:19

Break one of these least commandments.

The perilous harmfulness of little sins

Man is set free from the curse of the law, but not from its authority.

I. Let us consider these minor violations of the moral law as they are considered in relation to the lawgiver himself. The least commandment has the same authority as the greatest. Little sins will soon acquire all the gigantic proportions of the greatest. It is no paradox to say, that little sins are peculiarly offending in the sight of God, because they are little; in other words, because we run the risk of offending Him for what on our own showing we care very little about, and from which we only expect an insignificant return. It would aggravate the venality of a Judge that the bribe was so paltry. The least sin is aggravated by the small degree of temptation by which it is accompanied.

II. The awful danger of these little sins in regard to ourselves. Little sins leave men hardly conscious float they have broken God’s law; great sins stir up piercing thoughts. See the peril of little sins, as they are sure to draw greater ones after them. It is fool’s sport to play with firebrands. The multiplication of little sins show how we need the merit of an infinite atonement. (D. Moore, M. A.)

We learn

I. That all the law of God is binding on Christians (James 2:10).

II. That all the commands of God should be preached in their proper place by Christian ministers.

III. That they who pretend that there are any laws of God so small that they need not obey them, are unworthy of His kingdom.

IV. That true piety has respect to all the commands of God, and keeps them (Psalms 119:64). (Dr. A. Barnes.)

I. Christ does not hereby authorise us to suppose any of His commandments to be little. The meaning is-anything contained under or included in them, though seemingly small to us; as anger, scornful speaking, and reviling is the sin of murder.

II. As little in it, as he accounts of them; that is nothing; they shall be excluded.

(1) Observe the danger of vacating God’s commands.

(2) In any respect.

(3) In any one instance. (Thomas Adam.)

A little sin indicative of a carnal disposition

That an act in itself inconsiderable, may indicate the existing state of feeling, as clearly as one that is more palpable. As the motion of a leaf shows the quarter from which the wind blows as certainly as the agitated branches of an oak, so you may gather any one’s dislike, though he does not strike you, or abuse you, or attempt insidiously to destroy your reputation. Only let him receive you with coldness, and his disaffection is as indisputable as if it were manifest in angry assault … Is it not evident that the man who has brought himself to the perpetration of one fraud, has broken down the only security against the perpetration of a score, lie who can be the oppressor of a few, wants only the means to become the despot of an empire. (C. Williams.)

Avoid the least sin

If we would save the big ship, let us stop the small leak. If we would save the palace from flames, let us put out the spark. (Newman Hall.)

The great evil and danger of little sins

I. What is meant by the “least commandment.” It must not be understood as if one commandment were less necessary to be obeyed than another; God’s commands are all alike necessary.

1. They are all enjoined by the same authority.

2. They are all necessary to be performed in order to eternal life. But when Christ speaks of the least commandment, He alludes

(1) to the corrupt doctrine of the Scribes distinguishing God’s commands into small and great.

(2) Those commandments which are great in respect of the Lawgiver, may yet be least in comparison with other commands of the same law, which are indeed thought greatest. This inequality arises from the inequality of the objects about which they are concerned, our duty to God or man. Sometimes it arises from the latitude that any command hath in it, to our thoughts, words, or actions; a thought is said to be less than an action.

II. What is meant by “being least in the kingdom of heaven.” Either the kingdom of grace, the Church, heaven. Little sins carry great guilt and bring heavy condemnation.

1. This appears in that the least sin is a most high affront and provocation of the great God.

2. It is a violation of a holy and strict law.

3. What a complicated evil every sin is, that the commission of the least makes you guilty of the greatest.

4. The authority of the great God seems more to be despised by the commission of small sins than by the commission of great.

5. Little sins do greatly deface the image of God in the soul. In curious pictures, a little scratch is a great deformity.

6. Little sins have in them ordinarily of temptation, and therefore more of wilfulness.

7. Little sins do maintain the trade and course of sinning.

III. The evil and danger of little sins hath been made apparent: I shall add farther proofs of their aggravated guilt.

1. Little sins usually are the destroying sins.

2. Small sins-what they want in weight, usually make up in number. A ship may have a heavy burden of sands, as well as of millstones; and may be as soon sunk with them.

3. It is very difficult to convince men of the great evil and danger of little sins.

4. The allowance of the least sin is a certain sign of a rotten heart.

5. Little sins usually make way for the vilest.

(1) The devil, by his temptations, nurses up youngling sins, till they arrive at full stature.

(2) Natural corruption is of a growing nature.

6. Little sins are the greatest provocations; murder is a reproach to all; unbelief does not provoke public scandal.

7. Damnation for little sins will be most intolerable-here for such little sins!

IV. Application:

1. If little sins have so much danger, what shall we think of great impieties?

2. Then behold a fearful shipwreck of all the hopes of formalists.

3. What absolute need we stand in of Christ.

4. What cause we have to bemoan and humble ourselves before God.

5. Pray for a tender conscience.

6. Keep alive reverent thoughts of God.

7. Get a more thorough sense of the spirituality of the law. (Bp. Hopkins.)

Little sins accumulate

The devil cannot expect always to receive such returns of great and crying impieties: but yet, when he keeps the stock of corruption going, and drives on the trade of sinning by lesser sins, believe it, corruption will be on the thriving hand, and you may grow rich in guilt, and treasure up to yourselves wrath against the day of wrath, by adding those that you call little sins unto the heap. (Bp. Hopkins.)

Great advancement made in sin by little stages

If Satan prevails with us to go with him one step out of our way, we axe in danger to stop nowhere till we come to the height of all profaneness: he will make us take a second, and a third, and so to travel on to destruction; for each of these is but one step: the last step of sin is but one step, as well as the first; and if the devil prevail with us to take one step, why should he not prevail with us to take the last step as well as the first step, seeing it is but one? Your second sin no more exceeds your first, than your first doth your duty; and so of the rest. (Bp. Hopkins.)

Little sins are often united with great, which together sweep the soul to destruction

As you see in rivers, the natural course of them tends to the sea; but the tide, joining with them, makes the current run the swifter and the more forcibly: so is it with sin. Little sins are the natural stream of a man’s life; that do of themselves tend hell-ward, and are of themselves enough to carry the soul down silently and calmly to destruction: but, when greater and grosser sins join with them, they make a violent tide, that hurries the soul away with a more swift and rampant motion down to hell, than little sins would or could do of themselves. (Bp. Hopkins.)

The need of a sensitive conscience

A tender conscience is like the apple of a man’s eye: the least dust that gets into it afflicts it. (Bp. Hopkins.)