How Then, Should We Give? Re-Thinking Our Responsibility to Our Poor and Needy Neighbors

The gospel of the kingdom of God has been described as one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.  In his most famous sermon, Jesus declared, “blessed are the poor in spirit because theirs is the kingdom of God” (Matthew 5:3).  To be poor in spirit is to be humble before a Holy God and recognize your desperate need for saving and for a savior.  The gift of the righteousness of Jesus (the bread of life) is the answer to our spiritual poverty. 

But what about material poverty?  What of actual, physical human need for food, clothing, housing and shelter?  As Christians, what should our attitude and actions be towards the poor among us?  Our Creator has a lot to say on that topic also—much of which we tend to easily miss, gloss over or flat out ignore. 

Every human being you meet—rich or poor—is unique and valuable because they are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God.  As such, we are instructed to respect and honor others, even those who are unlike us. Jesus first commands us to love God with everything we have.  Loving God first helps us to understand true love so that we can love others better. Next, Jesus instructs us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  Our neighbors include the poor and needy.  So how should biblical Christians love and serve the poor? Don’t worry. It’s not rocket science, nor is it a secret.  But it may require us to, in obedience, adjust sinful attitudes and change the way that we do things. 

There’s a lot in the Bible about the poor—more than 2,000 verses mentioning the poor and injustice. More specifically, there are more than 100 specific verses about our obligations to help the poor and needy. That is far too much to even begin to discuss here.  So, we will just hit a few of the highlights here to help inform our discussion.

God instructed his people Israel to take care of the poor and needy in their midst by leaving the edges of their crops unharvested so that the poor could eat.  Because the poor would always be with them, in Deuteronomy 15:7-11, God commanded his people give to the poor and needy and promised a blessing if they did: “Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.” Besides forgetting their God and engaging in rampant pagan idolatry, one of the reasons for God’s judgment and the punishment of the those from Israel and Judah taken into captivity is because of injustice to the poor and needy, including their killing, oppression and exploitation (Isaiah 1:15-18, Jeremiah 22:14-16).

During his earthly ministry, Jesus personally and intimately engaged with those in need.  “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed” (Luke 4:18).  Jesus confirmed that the poor are blessed “for theirs in the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).  In fact, he counseled that when we throw parties, we should not just invite our well-heeled friends, for example, those who drive BMWs and whose McMansions are adorned with granite countertops.  Jesus says we should invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” and promises that in so doing, “you will be blessed.”  He adds, although the poor and needy cannot repay us, “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:13-14). 

Later in his ministry, Jesus solemnly warned that his sheep are those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, hang with the sick and visit those in prison (Matthew 25:31-46).   Trust me, we do not want to be goats—those whom Jesus described as ignoring the plight of needy and end up in Hell.  James, the half-brother of Jesus, wrote that the “pure and faultless religion” that God our Father accepts is to “look after orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27). 

While Christians may financially support local churches and other ministries who may feed and clothe the poor domestically and abroad, most individual believers rarely, if ever, personally meet needs in the community directly, engaging needy persons in relationship and in direct service.  In addition, when it comes to the poor and needy here in America and even in many nations around the world, we have mostly involuntarily delegated our personal obligations to the poor to our federal, state and local government via increasingly exorbitant taxation. 

However, this untenable status quo often fills us with feelings of frustration and anger towards our overreaching government and can even result in resentment of the very commands of Jesus to love and serve the poor and needy because we resent the coercive and increasingly confiscatory tax rates we pay to support needy neighbors, as well as government waste, fraud and abuse.   This can even translate to resentment, anger and even lack of love and compassion to the poor and needy.  So, what are some of the barriers to Christians engaging and serving the poor, and how do we begin to overcome them? 

One barrier is the attitude of non-responsibility.  We may believe that our personal obedience to Jesus’s teaching is optional and may also think that we already satisfied our obligations, either in the form of donations to our church or ministry or in the payment of taxes towards the governmental social safety net, which may, in some form, be meeting local needs.  The advent and expansion of the welfare state with its social safety net has significantly undermined our individual and corporate biblical obligations. In a large sense, we have abdicated and sub-contracted our personal responsibility to the poor to our federal, state and local governments.  But when we indirectly give to the poor through the government, coercion is involved and feelings of generosity or compassion may be non-existent. While it is good that the needs of the poor are met to some extent, government assistance is inadequate because it does not meet the relational and transformative aspects of the commands of Jesus.  The bottom line is this: We can’t subcontract love. 

Another barrier is the American idol of comfort and success and our concurrent lack of trust in God.  Meeting the needs of the poor and needy can be very messy.  The poor may be very different from us.  They may wear the wrong clothes, be dirty, or smell bad.  They may be mentally or physically broken, enduring serious mental, spiritual and emotional problems.  This all makes us anxious and more likely to turn away from the poor and needy in disgust rather than towards them in love. It is certainly much cleaner and easier for us to pay others to do the right thing, outsourcing our personal ministry obligations to the “professionals”—church deacons, non-profits, missionaries or even the government.  And, as we idolize our personal success and comfort, we may tightly control our finances, not trusting God as a good father to actually take care of us if we generously help the poor and needy.  We may pray to God to “give us this day or daily bread,” but we may not really trust that God will come through for us if we share what God has provided to us with others. 

Another barrier is the attitude of anger and resentment.  We may be angry at the poor for being poor and for causing so much of our money to be involuntarily confiscated in taxes.  And, after paying confiscatory tax rates and giving to the church, we may think that we have little to nothing left of our income to spend on our family or ourselves.  The current inadequate replacement of us as warm neighbors with cold and distant government bureaucrats or overworked deacons has left many of us with a very bad attitude towards the poor, causing us at times to harbor resentment, anger, bitterness towards the very people we are called to love and serve.  We are safely and securely separated and divided from our poor brothers and sisters enduring both physical and spiritual poverty in our bougie zip codes, gated communities and fancy country clubs.  Satan laughs.  But it’s not funny.  

But such coercion and antipathy are not love.  Indeed, this status quo is far from the Biblical model for several reasons.  First, because the government is a poor substitute for individuals relationally, personally and organically meeting the needs of their neighbors as conduits for God’s transformative compassion and love. Cold, disengaged and distant governments may institutionally provide money and feed the poor, but they cannot do so with authentic relationship, deep love, or even with any particular efficiency. 

If you are rich, and most of us are by worldwide standards, God has specific instructions for us: 

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. (1 Timothy 6:17-19)

Although we are certainly not saved by our good works, we are saved for good works, which God prepared for us to do (Ephesians 2: 8-10).  Meeting the needs of the poor and needy in our community with love and compassion is a powerful way to demonstrate God’s love for our neighbors and earn the right to be heard regarding the gospel of Jesus Christ.  One of the ways we engage in good works and store up treasures in heaven is to love lost people and share the truth with them, including the poor and needy.  Our Christian witness to the Kingdom of God, including effective evangelism and discipleship depend, in a large part, on how we engage the poor and needy with good works in our communities.  Jesus wants each of us to love God with everything we have and to love our neighbors as ourselves (the great commandment).  He also told us to go and make disciples, teaching others to obey all of Jesus’s commands (the great commission), including the obligation to serve the poor and needy. 

So, how then should we give? God wants us to be cheerful, happy and joyful and to give generously, without compulsion, from our hearts.  That can only happen if the people of God step up and reengage the poor and needy in our community and the government gets out of the way.  If God’s people were taking care of the poor and needy from the free overflow of God’s love in our hearts, the poor would be much better served, there would be less need for confiscatory tax rates, and we would have many more opportunities to engage the lost, share the gospel and make disciples amongst our needy neighbors whose hearts have been preparatorily melted by our incarnational love and good works.   The poor would have more opportunities for salvation, transformation, healing, growth and human flourishing.  But we also would benefit personally.  As we love and serve like Jesus did empowered by the Holy Spirit, our hearts and lives are also beautifully transformed as we look and act more like Jesus.

The gospel of the kingdom of God is creation, fall, redemption and restoration.  God has redeemed us from sin and death and is going to make all things new someday.  When we meet the needs of the poor and needy, we have the opportunity show the world what is good, true and beautiful, and we bring foretastes of restoration on this side of heaven.  But this can only happen if we the church and individual Christians stop subcontracting our biblical obligations to the state and if individual believers are willing to get their hands a little dirty for the greater good.  As we engage and love our neighbors, God’s kingdom comes and His will is done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

Personally engaging the poor and needy may be as simple as providing food, clothing or a cup of water to a homeless person in need at a local park.  It may involve volunteering to disciple the poor and needy in jail or women coming out of sex trafficking—and breaking generational curses.  It may be offering to encourage a young mom in a crisis pregnancy to keep her baby at a pregnancy care clinic.  It may be inviting the poor and needy to join you for Thanksgiving. It may even mean that you shelter a pregnant, single mother in your home so that she can give life to her son in a place of love and safety.  People in my tiny church are doing all of these things and much more.  And the results are beautiful.  God is glorified.  The kingdom is advancing! 

God wants to break our hearts for what breaks his.  Perhaps your church could even adopt a section of your city and take responsibility to serve the poor and needy in that specific area. On this side of heaven, the poor will always be with us.  But that is not a bad thing. For the love of God, the promotion of human flourishing, and the sake of the Gospel, let’s spur each other onto love and good works, including changing our broken system for the better—together. 

Action Item:  Study the Bible verses about our Christian obligations to the poor.  Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see and to increase your heart to love your poor and needy neighbors.  Ask God to help you identify your neighbors who are in need with whom you can relationally engage and show love and compassion by meeting an identifiable practical need.  Remember, you are God’s ambassador and He has already prepared good works for you that only you can do (Ephesians 2:10).