There is a Little Arsonist in our Midst!

The foregoing chapter shows how unprofitable and dead faith is without works. It is plainly intimated by what this chapter first goes upon that such a faith is, however, apt to make men conceited and magisterial in their tempers and their talk. Those who set up faith in the manner the former chapter condemns are most apt to run into those sins of the tongue which this chapter condemns. And indeed the best need to be cautioned against a dictating, censorious, mischievous use of their tongues. We are therefore taught, not to use our tongues so as to lord it over others...to govern our tongue so as to prove ourselves perfect and upright men, and such as have an entire government over ourselves...[and] to dread an unruly tongue as one of the greatest and most pernicious evils. It is compared to a little fire placed among a great deal of combustible matter, which soon raises a flame and consumes all before it: Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!…And the whole body is often drawn into sin and guilt by the tongue. Therefore Solomon says, Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, (Ecclesiastes 5:6). The snares into which men are sometimes led by the tongue are insufferable to themselves and destructive of others. – Matthew Henry