The Least of These

Jesus told one story about how people will finally be judged, and it surprises almost everyone who reads it closely. No one is asked what they believed, which church they attended or how often they prayed. They are asked whether they fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and visited the sick and the prisoner.

You have probably heard Christians say the poor brought it on themselves, or that "God helps those who help themselves." Hearing it from someone you love, said with total confidence, is maddening. This lesson shows what Jesus actually said, how the first Christians lived it, and where the other idea came from.

Read it3 min

Near the end of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus describes the final judgment.

He gave his hosts practical advice about whom to invite to dinner.

And he told a story about a rich man and a beggar at his gate.

At the very start of his public life, reading in his hometown synagogue, Jesus chose a passage from the prophet Isaiah to describe what he had come to do.

The world behind the words4 min

The people around Jesus knew poverty up close. Most of Galilee lived on small farms or by fishing and day labor, and one bad harvest or one illness could push a family into debt, then into selling their land, then into begging. The sick, the disabled and widows often had no income at all. Beggars sat at city gates and outside the homes of the rich, exactly where Lazarus lies in the story.

Many listeners had also absorbed a common belief: if you were poor or sick, you or your parents must have done something to deserve it. Jesus' own disciples once asked him about a man born blind, "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" John 9:2. Jesus rejected the question.

Against that background, his teaching was startling. In the sheep and the goats, the king does not say the hungry represent him, or remind him of himself. He says, "I was hungry." Whatever is done to "the least of these" is done to him. And neither group knew it. The righteous are surprised to learn they had served him; the others are shocked to learn they had ignored him. Both were judged by what they did for people who could give them nothing.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus makes the same point from the other side. Apart from Abraham, who appears in the same story, Lazarus is the only character in any of Jesus' parables who is given a name. The rich man is not. He is not accused of cheating anyone. He simply lived in luxury every day while a sick man lay at his gate, and he never crossed the few steps between them.

How it drifted5 min

The first Christians took these words literally, and it showed. The book of Acts describes the early church in Jerusalem selling property so that "neither was there among them any who lacked" Acts 4:34. Three centuries later, the Roman emperor Julian, who had abandoned Christianity and was trying to revive the old Roman religion, complained in a letter to one of his priests that the Christians were winning converts by their charity.

Around the same time, Basil of Caesarea, a bishop in what is now Turkey, built a complex outside his city with lodging for travelers and care for the sick and the poor, one of the early forerunners of the hospital.

Over the following centuries a different idea grew. Helping the poor became tied to a question: did they deserve it? England's Poor Laws turned the question into law. The 1601 Act for the Relief of the Poor distinguished the "impotent poor," who could not work, from the able-bodied, who were to be set to work. In 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act made relief available mainly inside workhouses, harsh places meant to make asking for help a last resort.

By then a popular saying had taken hold: "God helps those who help themselves." It sounds like Scripture, and many people assume it is. It is not in the Bible. The English political writer Algernon Sidney used the line in his Discourses Concerning Government, written in the early 1680s and published in 1698, and Benjamin Franklin made it famous in Poor Richard's Almanack in 1736. The idea behind it has deep roots in Greek fables, not in the Gospels.

The sorting continues. In a 2017 Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation survey, Christians were more likely than non-Christians to say that a person's poverty is generally the result of a lack of effort rather than of difficult circumstances.

What they'll say back3 min

"Paul said, 'If anyone is not willing to work, don't let him eat.'" He did, in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, writing to a church where some members had stopped working, apparently expecting the world to end soon. It was a word to church members who could work and refused. It was never a test to apply to the hungry stranger, the sick or the prisoner before helping them. And it is Paul's instruction to one congregation, not a saying of Jesus, who set no conditions.

"Jesus himself said, 'You always have the poor with you.'" In Matthew 26:11 he said it to defend a woman who had poured expensive perfume on him. He was quoting Deuteronomy 15:11, and the verse he quoted goes on: "Therefore I command you to surely open your hand to your brother, to your needy, and to your poor." Using his words as a reason to stop helping turns them upside down.

Measured against the center2 min

Measured against the center, this is not close, and it is a contradiction, not an add-on. Jesus identified himself with the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner, and said that what is done to them is done to him. He told his followers to invite people who cannot repay them. He named the beggar and left the rich man nameless. A faith that sorts the poor by merit before it helps them has replaced his command with a test he never set.

What you noticed is real. When Christians blame the poor for their poverty, or repeat "God helps those who help themselves" as if it were Scripture, they are not quoting Jesus. They are quoting Benjamin Franklin, and contradicting the one story in which Jesus describes how everyone will be judged.

A keeper1 min

Treat the person who can't repay you as if they were the most important person you will meet today. That is the whole teaching of this lesson in one line, and it works whatever you believe.

It changes small things first: who you invite, whom you notice, whom you sit beside. The person in your life who can do nothing for you is the clearest test of who you are.

You don't need faith to live this. You only need to stop sorting people by what they can do for you. Many people outside any church live this better than the Christians around them, and the people they help know the difference.

Reflect2 min

1. Have you heard Christians say the poor brought it on themselves? How did it sit with you?
2. Before this lesson, did you think "God helps those who help themselves" was in the Bible?
3. Who do you know, religious or not, who treats people who can't repay them well?

Take your time with each one. There is space to write your answers in the book and the PDF.

Practice this week1 min

This week, listen for how people around you, Christian or not, talk about the poor. Notice who gets called "deserving" and who doesn't. If you choose, do one quiet kindness for someone who can't repay you, and notice how it changes the way you see them.

Bring it back1 min

Remember it

Done to me. Matthew 25:40: "Because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." The one test at the judgment is how you treated people who had nothing.

The small one, given the color: one small coral dot low on the page, the only warm color on it. Done to me.

1. In Matthew 25, what six needs does the king name?
   Hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, in prison.
2. Who coined "God helps those who help themselves," and is it in the Bible?
   Algernon Sidney used it and Benjamin Franklin popularized it; it is not in the Bible.
3. Besides Abraham, which character in Jesus' parables is the only one given a name?
   Lazarus, the beggar at the rich man's gate (Luke 16:20).

Show the answers