Ten Commandments vs Seven Deadly Sins

The Ten Commandments and the seven deadly sins are often mentioned together, as if they were two versions of one list. They are two different lists with different jobs. The commandments, given at Sinai, tell a community what it must and must not do. The seven deadly sins, worked out by Christian teachers over several centuries, name the habits of the heart from which wrong actions grow.

The seven are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. They are not in the Bible as a list, and the Ten Commandments are not a list of sins to be ranked. But the two lists overlap in revealing ways, and each does something the other cannot.

The short answer: the Ten Commandments are God’s commands in the Bible about actions and loyalties; the seven deadly sins are a later Christian list of the vices that cause other sins. The commandments forbid murder, adultery, theft and coveting; the seven name the wrath, lust, greed and envy behind them. Neither list replaces the other. For the commandments in full, see The Ten Commandments: What Each One Means.

No biblical writer gives the seven. The list grew out of the experience of desert monks. In the fourth century a monk named Evagrius Ponticus described eight “bad thoughts” that attack anyone trying to pray: gluttony, lust, greed, sadness, anger, spiritual boredom (acedia), vainglory and pride. John Cassian carried his teaching to the Latin West in the early fifth century, and Pope Gregory the Great reworked it into a list of seven at the end of the sixth century, with pride as the root of the rest. Later teachers, above all Thomas Aquinas, refined it, and by the late Middle Ages the familiar seven were fixed. They shaped medieval preaching, painting and literature, and Dante organized the terraces of Mount Purgatory around them.

The Catholic Catechism still lists them, and calls them “capital” sins, from the Latin caput, “head,” because they give rise to other sins (§1866). “Capital” here does not mean unforgivable. Catholic teaching has a separate category, mortal sin, defined by the seriousness of the act. The word “deadly” in English has blurred the two.

The nearest the Bible comes to a list of seven is a different one, in Proverbs:

There are six things which the LORD hates; yes, seven which are an abomination to him: arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are swift in running to mischief, a false witness who utters lies, and he who sows discord among brothers.

Proverbs 6:16–19

It is a list of actions, and it includes two commandments by name: shedding innocent blood and false witness. The New Testament has lists of its own, in Galatians 5:19–21 and Colossians 3:5–8. The seven deadly sins gather the same concerns into a teaching tool.

Each of the seven sits close to one or more commandments. Paul states the link in one sentence:

Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Colossians 3:5

The mapping below is a teaching device, not an official one, but the connections are old:

• Pride sits behind the first commandment, since it puts the self in the place of God (What Does ‘No Other Gods Before Me’ Mean?). Proverbs says pride comes before a fall (16:18).
• Greed feeds the commandments against stealing and coveting (What Does ‘You Shall Not Steal’ Mean?). Paul calls covetousness “idolatry” (Colossians 3:5).
• Lust is the root of adultery. Jesus said that looking in order to lust is already adultery in the heart (You Shall Not Commit Adultery: What It Means).
• Envy is coveting with a person’s name on it, wanting what your neighbor has (What Does ‘You Shall Not Covet’ Mean?).
• Wrath leads toward the sixth commandment. Jesus traced murder to anger (Thou Shalt Not Kill — or Murder?).
• Sloth in the old sense is not laziness but a weariness of spirit that cannot rest in God. Aquinas connected it with the Sabbath commandment (Remember the Sabbath: What It Means Today).
• Gluttony has no commandment of its own, but Paul describes people “whose god is the belly” (Philippians 3:19), which again leads back to the first.

Notice what is left out. Honoring parents, the name of God and false witness have no sin of their own on the list. They are fed by several of the seven at once: false witness, for instance, usually grows from pride, envy or wrath. This is one reason the two lists are better used together than compared item by item.

The difference between the two lists is the difference between fruit and root. Jesus taught both:

For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, murders, thefts, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile the man.

Mark 7:21–23

This list includes actions (adulteries, murders, thefts) and attitudes (covetings, deceit, pride, an evil eye). Jesus puts them side by side because one produces the other. James describes the process:

But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin. The sin, when it is full grown, produces death.

James 1:14–15

That is how the two lists work together. The Ten Commandments set the boundary at the point where harm happens: murder, theft, perjury. They are the part of the moral life that other people can see and that a community can protect. The seven deadly sins look further back, at the thought and the habit that lead to the act, which no court can see. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes the commandments to exactly this level.

Each list also has a weakness without the other. The commandments alone can leave a person who has never done any of these things feeling blameless while pride, envy and contempt go unchecked. The seven alone can turn into endless self-examination with no clear lines to hold. Together they cover both outer and inner life.

Christian tradition has long used both lists together, especially in the practice of examining one’s conscience before confession or Communion. The ten ask what you did; the seven ask what drove you to do it. A simple way to use both:

• Start with the ten. Go through them slowly and ask where you have fallen short in action: with God, with your family, with your word, your possessions, your desires.
• Then ask which of the seven was behind it. A lie told to look good is pride. An unkind remark after someone else’s promotion is envy. Naming the root shows you where to work.
• Practice the opposite virtue. Tradition pairs each vice with a virtue: humility for pride, generosity for greed, chastity for lust, kindness for envy, temperance for gluttony, patience for wrath, diligence for sloth.
• Keep the order of grace. Both lists come after the rescue, not before it. The commandments open with “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out” (Exodus 20:2), and the seven are meant to be fought by people already forgiven (see Do Christians Have to Keep the Ten Commandments?).

For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—isn’t the Father’s, but is the world’s.

1 John 2:16

John’s three phrases for what draws us away (the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life) have often been read as a short summary of the root temptations, a forerunner of the seven.

Are the seven deadly sins in the Bible?

Not as a list. The Bible condemns each of them, but the list of seven was developed by Christian teachers: Evagrius in the fourth century, John Cassian in the fifth, and Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth. The closest biblical list of seven is Proverbs 6:16–19, which is different.

What is the difference between the Ten Commandments and the seven deadly sins?

The Ten Commandments are commands from God in the Bible, mostly about actions and loyalties. The seven deadly sins are a later Christian list of vices, or habits of the heart, that give rise to other sins. The commandments forbid murder; the seven name the wrath behind it.

Which commandment does each deadly sin break?

There is no official one-to-one match, but the traditional connections are: pride with the first commandment, greed with stealing and coveting, lust with adultery, envy with coveting, wrath with murder, and sloth with the Sabbath. Gluttony has no single commandment.

Are the seven deadly sins mortal sins?

Not necessarily. In Catholic teaching “capital” means a source of other sins, not an unforgivable one. Whether any sin is mortal depends on how grave the matter is and on a person’s knowledge and consent (Catechism §1857–1859).

Which of the seven deadly sins is the worst?

Tradition names pride as the root of the others. Gregory the Great called it the queen of the vices, and Proverbs 16:18 warns that pride goes before destruction. But the lists do not rank sins by seriousness, and each can do great damage.