|
MATTHEW 25
Haystack Bible Commentary"Stacks and stacks of commentary...."
|
===matthew===
==matthew 25:1-13:
Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
2 Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
3 Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them,
4 but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
5 But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.
6 “And at midnight a cry was heard: ‘Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!’
7 Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps.
8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’
9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’
10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut.
11 “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’
12 But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.’
13 “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.
2 Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
3 Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them,
4 but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
5 But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.
6 “And at midnight a cry was heard: ‘Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!’
7 Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps.
8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’
9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’
10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut.
11 “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’
12 But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.’
13 “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.
==Matthew 25:14-30:
|
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them
15 And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. 16 Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents. 17 And likewise he who had received two gained two more also. 18 But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord’s money. 19 After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 “So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, ‘Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them.’ 21 His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’ 22 He also who had received two talents came and said, ‘Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them.’ 23 His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’ 24 “Then he who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.’ 26 “But his lord answered and said to him, ‘You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. 27 So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. 28 Therefore take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents. 29 ‘For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ |
|
James Boice Files
“ten thousand talents. It is hard to estimate exactly what that was worth, and it may in fact only mean the largest debt conceivable, “ten thousand” being one of the largest common numbers and a “talent” being the largest denomination of currency. However, if we do estimate it in dollars, we derive some interesting results. A talent was seventy-five pounds, so ten thousand talents would be 750,000 pounds. We do not know whether they were talents of gold or silver. But since Jesus is trying to exaggerate the contrast between this great debt and the relatively small debt of verse 28, we may suppose that He was thinking of the greater of the two talents, namely, gold. In troy weight there are twelve ounces to a pound. So we are now dealing with 750,000 times 12, or 9 million ounces of gold. Assuming that gold is selling at about $400 an ounce, we come to a figure of $3,600 million (three trillion six hundred million dollars). That is beyond our comprehension, which is precisely Christ’s point. It is an astronomical debt, entirely beyond this servant’s or anybody else’s capacity to pay.” ― James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus; 1983
First, this parable teaches us that success is a product of our work.
In the book of Genesis we see that God placed Adam in the garden to work it and take care of it; we were made to work. As Christians we have a mission that our Lord expects us to accomplish in the here and now. We are called to steward all we have been given while we wait for our Savior’s return. This is the dominion we are to exercise over all of God’s creation. This is what we were made to do.
The medieval church interpreted the talents in Jesus’ parable as spiritual gifts which God bestows on Christians. During the Reformation, John Calvin helped shape the modern meaning of the word talent when he defined the talents as gifts from God in the form of a person’s calling and natural ability.
Calvin made it clear that the use of our talents is not restricted to the church or to pious duties. It encompasses the whole of creation. Therefore, Calvin’s doctrine of callings emphasizes the utility, activity, and purposeful nature of God’s work in the world. Alister McGrath, in an article on the topic of calling, suggests that for Calvin:
The idea of a calling or vocation is first and foremost about being called by God, to serve Him within his world. Work was thus seen as an activity by which Christians could deepen their faith, leading it on to new qualities of commitment to God. Activity within the world, motivated, informed, and sanctioned by Christian faith, was the supreme means by which the believer could demonstrate his or her commitment and thankfulness to God. To do anything for God, and to do it well, was the fundamental hallmark of authentic Christian faith. Diligence and dedication in one’s everyday life are, Calvin thought, a proper response to God.
Far too many evangelical Christians today see their salvation as simply a “bus ticket to heaven” and believe it really does not matter what they do while they wait for “the bus.” The Parable of the Talents teaches us what we are supposed to do while we await the return of our King. We are to work, using our talents to glorify God, to serve the common good, and to further His kingdom. According to Calvin in his New Testament Commentaries, God put us here to work in the kingdom, and “the nature of the kingdom of Christ is that it every day grows and improves.” Biblical success is working diligently in the here and now using all the talents God has given us to produce the return expected by the Master.
Second, the Parable of the Talents teaches that God always gives us everything we need to do what he has called us to do. Have you ever wondered what a talent is worth in today’s dollars? It is hard to know for sure, yet whatever its exact value, in the New Testament a talent indicates a large sum of money, maybe even as much as a million dollars in today’s currency.
We are tempted to feel sorry for the servant who received only one talent, but in reality he received as much as a million dollars from the master and buried it in his back yard. Is it any wonder the master was so upset? He was given more than enough to meet the master’s expectations.
Just as the master in the Parable of the Talents expects his servants to do more than passively preserve what has been entrusted to them, so God expects us to generate a return by using our talents toward productive ends. The servant who received five talents had everything necessary to produce five more; the servant who received two had everything necessary to produce two more; and the servant who received one had everything necessary to produce one more.
John Calvin encouraged believers to be involved as salt and light in the world. In his book A Kind of Life Imposed on Man, scholar Paul Marshall describes Calvin’s challenge to believers as a call “to work, to perform, to develop, to progress, to change, to choose, to be active, and to overcome until the day of their death or the return of their Lord.” We can be confident in the eventual success of our work because it is what God created us to do. The Apostle Paul writes, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). We seldom associate this verse with our vocational work, but we should.
Third, the Parable of the Talents teaches that we are not all created equal. The most overlooked part of the story is the second half of verse 15: “each according to his ability.” The master understood that the one-talent servant was not capable of producing as much as the five-talent servant. We want to protest that this is unfair. In fact there is a current debate in our society regarding income inequality (see sidebar below). Yet we know this is true from our own experience. Diversity is woven into the very fabric of creation. In a free society, absent dishonesty and cronyism, disparity of wages is not a sign of injustice; it is the result of God’s diversity within His creation.
But even though we’re not created equal in regard to the talents we’re given, there is equality found in the Parable of the Talents and in God’s economy; it comes from the fact that it takes just as much work for the five-talent servant to produce five more talents as it does the two-talent servant to produce two more talents. This is why the reward given to each by the master is the same. The master measures success by degree of effort, as should we.
Many today would cry out against the five-talent servant’s wealth by saying he has too much money. Some would accuse him of being part of the greedy “one percent.” Yet as Christians, we are told in the Scriptures not to envy or covet our neighbors’ possessions. Professor Glenn Sunshine at Central Connecticut State University suggests that although Scripture has some very harsh things to say about the wealthy, this does not mean that all of them are evil or under divine judgment.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job were rich and yet were also approved by God. Just as poverty doesn’t guarantee virtue, wealth does not guarantee vice. … Scripture also tells us that God gives us the power to make wealth, and that he delights in the prosperity of his servants (Psalm 35:27)—which includes material prosperity (Deuteronomy 28:11-13). So it is clear that wealth is not necessarily evil.
Some Christians go as far as saying that making a lot of money is outright sinful. It could cause us and others to stumble, so we should be satisfied with some arbitrarily set amount. Yet if the five-talent servant had taken this advice and stopped working after making only an additional two talents, he might have received a harsh rebuke from the master!
In a sermon on money, John Wesley once preached that, as a Christian, you should earn all you can, give all you can, and save all you can (without interfering with your other biblical commitments such as taking care of your health, family, etc.).
Many Christians are also concerned about the connection between wealth and influence. They ask, “Don’t the wealthy have more political influence than the non-wealthy, and in our system isn’t that wrong?” It is wrong only when businesses and special interests curry favor from the government in the form of subsidies, bailouts, and legislation to protect their company from market competition. Economists call this “rent-seeking” or “cronyism,” and it is certainly on the rise in this country. Fourth, the Parable of the Talents teaches that we work for the Master, not our own selfish purposes.
The money that is given to the servants is not their own. The money they earn with the master’s capital is not theirs to keep. The servants are only stewards of the master’s investment, and it is the quality of their stewardship that the master seeks to measure. A poignant scene in the 1981 Academy Award-winning film “Chariots of Fire” depicts Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian, preparing to run in the 1924 Olympics. Liddell’s athletic success has made him a celebrity. His sister believes that Eric’s popularity has caused him to forget his promise to return to China as a missionary. Liddell assures her that he will return to China, but first he must run in the Olympic Games. He believes that God made him for a purpose, but God also made him fast. When he runs, Liddell says, he feels God’s pleasure. He goes on to say, “To give that up would be to hold Him in contempt. To win is to honor Him.” Like Liddell, we should maximize the use of our talents not for our own selfish purposes, but to honor Him. It is all about our attitude, the motivation that resides in our hearts. We know that we work in a fallen world. Because of the curse of sin, our work will be difficult, and we will not feel God’s pleasure all the time or at the level we will enjoy in the world to come. But we should feel satisfaction and joy from doing our best with what God has given us in the place where His providence puts us, seeking to win in order to honor Him.
Finally, the Parable of the Talents shows that we will be held accountable. The Parable of the Talents is not about salvation or works righteousness, but about how we use our work to fulfill our earthly calling. It is about whole-life stewardship, or what I call “stewardship with a capital ‘S.’” Christians have not been taught that stewardship is about much more than tithing to the church and taking care of their personal finances.
In the opening chapter of Genesis we find what is called the Cultural Mandate. “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground’” (Genesis 1:28). This mandate was meant not only for Adam and Eve, but for us as well. It is our job description and still stands as God’s directive for our stewardship of His creation. Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, writes:
The first phrase, “be fruitful and multiply,” means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, “subdue the earth,” means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, and compose music. This passage is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures, build civilizations—nothing less.
We are more than merely permitted to engage every part of the created order. We are told that the created world is ours, given to us as a trust from God Himself. We are to engage it, announcing and exercising the presence and rule of Christ over every part of it. This includes the arts and the sciences, social justice and economics, churches and U2 concerts, “The Passion of the Christ,” and “Les Misérables.” The unfaithful steward in this parable didn’t so much waste the master’s money; he wasted an opportunity. As a result, he was judged wicked and lazy. We are responsible for what we do for God with what we have been given, and one day we will be held responsible. What we hear from the Master on that day is up to us.
So how should we define the biblical meaning of success?
The late John Wooden, a committed Christian who became the most successful college basketball coach in history, was once asked how he would define success. He replied: Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
Now certainly this is a large part of the biblical meaning of success; we are to take the talents and opportunities God gives us and make the most of them. Yet, we still need to ask ourselves one more question: “Am I working to make myself look good, or am I working to glorify God?” The answer is almost counterintuitive; when we work for Him and the furtherance of His kingdom in everything we do and especially in our vocational callings, we truly find the purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction that we all desperately seek.
We work at the pleasure of the Lord, and our work is to be driven by our love of the Master. Our only desire should be to hear Him say, “Well done my good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Master.”
-- Hugh Whelchel
In the book of Genesis we see that God placed Adam in the garden to work it and take care of it; we were made to work. As Christians we have a mission that our Lord expects us to accomplish in the here and now. We are called to steward all we have been given while we wait for our Savior’s return. This is the dominion we are to exercise over all of God’s creation. This is what we were made to do.
The medieval church interpreted the talents in Jesus’ parable as spiritual gifts which God bestows on Christians. During the Reformation, John Calvin helped shape the modern meaning of the word talent when he defined the talents as gifts from God in the form of a person’s calling and natural ability.
Calvin made it clear that the use of our talents is not restricted to the church or to pious duties. It encompasses the whole of creation. Therefore, Calvin’s doctrine of callings emphasizes the utility, activity, and purposeful nature of God’s work in the world. Alister McGrath, in an article on the topic of calling, suggests that for Calvin:
The idea of a calling or vocation is first and foremost about being called by God, to serve Him within his world. Work was thus seen as an activity by which Christians could deepen their faith, leading it on to new qualities of commitment to God. Activity within the world, motivated, informed, and sanctioned by Christian faith, was the supreme means by which the believer could demonstrate his or her commitment and thankfulness to God. To do anything for God, and to do it well, was the fundamental hallmark of authentic Christian faith. Diligence and dedication in one’s everyday life are, Calvin thought, a proper response to God.
Far too many evangelical Christians today see their salvation as simply a “bus ticket to heaven” and believe it really does not matter what they do while they wait for “the bus.” The Parable of the Talents teaches us what we are supposed to do while we await the return of our King. We are to work, using our talents to glorify God, to serve the common good, and to further His kingdom. According to Calvin in his New Testament Commentaries, God put us here to work in the kingdom, and “the nature of the kingdom of Christ is that it every day grows and improves.” Biblical success is working diligently in the here and now using all the talents God has given us to produce the return expected by the Master.
Second, the Parable of the Talents teaches that God always gives us everything we need to do what he has called us to do. Have you ever wondered what a talent is worth in today’s dollars? It is hard to know for sure, yet whatever its exact value, in the New Testament a talent indicates a large sum of money, maybe even as much as a million dollars in today’s currency.
We are tempted to feel sorry for the servant who received only one talent, but in reality he received as much as a million dollars from the master and buried it in his back yard. Is it any wonder the master was so upset? He was given more than enough to meet the master’s expectations.
Just as the master in the Parable of the Talents expects his servants to do more than passively preserve what has been entrusted to them, so God expects us to generate a return by using our talents toward productive ends. The servant who received five talents had everything necessary to produce five more; the servant who received two had everything necessary to produce two more; and the servant who received one had everything necessary to produce one more.
John Calvin encouraged believers to be involved as salt and light in the world. In his book A Kind of Life Imposed on Man, scholar Paul Marshall describes Calvin’s challenge to believers as a call “to work, to perform, to develop, to progress, to change, to choose, to be active, and to overcome until the day of their death or the return of their Lord.” We can be confident in the eventual success of our work because it is what God created us to do. The Apostle Paul writes, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). We seldom associate this verse with our vocational work, but we should.
Third, the Parable of the Talents teaches that we are not all created equal. The most overlooked part of the story is the second half of verse 15: “each according to his ability.” The master understood that the one-talent servant was not capable of producing as much as the five-talent servant. We want to protest that this is unfair. In fact there is a current debate in our society regarding income inequality (see sidebar below). Yet we know this is true from our own experience. Diversity is woven into the very fabric of creation. In a free society, absent dishonesty and cronyism, disparity of wages is not a sign of injustice; it is the result of God’s diversity within His creation.
But even though we’re not created equal in regard to the talents we’re given, there is equality found in the Parable of the Talents and in God’s economy; it comes from the fact that it takes just as much work for the five-talent servant to produce five more talents as it does the two-talent servant to produce two more talents. This is why the reward given to each by the master is the same. The master measures success by degree of effort, as should we.
Many today would cry out against the five-talent servant’s wealth by saying he has too much money. Some would accuse him of being part of the greedy “one percent.” Yet as Christians, we are told in the Scriptures not to envy or covet our neighbors’ possessions. Professor Glenn Sunshine at Central Connecticut State University suggests that although Scripture has some very harsh things to say about the wealthy, this does not mean that all of them are evil or under divine judgment.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job were rich and yet were also approved by God. Just as poverty doesn’t guarantee virtue, wealth does not guarantee vice. … Scripture also tells us that God gives us the power to make wealth, and that he delights in the prosperity of his servants (Psalm 35:27)—which includes material prosperity (Deuteronomy 28:11-13). So it is clear that wealth is not necessarily evil.
Some Christians go as far as saying that making a lot of money is outright sinful. It could cause us and others to stumble, so we should be satisfied with some arbitrarily set amount. Yet if the five-talent servant had taken this advice and stopped working after making only an additional two talents, he might have received a harsh rebuke from the master!
In a sermon on money, John Wesley once preached that, as a Christian, you should earn all you can, give all you can, and save all you can (without interfering with your other biblical commitments such as taking care of your health, family, etc.).
Many Christians are also concerned about the connection between wealth and influence. They ask, “Don’t the wealthy have more political influence than the non-wealthy, and in our system isn’t that wrong?” It is wrong only when businesses and special interests curry favor from the government in the form of subsidies, bailouts, and legislation to protect their company from market competition. Economists call this “rent-seeking” or “cronyism,” and it is certainly on the rise in this country. Fourth, the Parable of the Talents teaches that we work for the Master, not our own selfish purposes.
The money that is given to the servants is not their own. The money they earn with the master’s capital is not theirs to keep. The servants are only stewards of the master’s investment, and it is the quality of their stewardship that the master seeks to measure. A poignant scene in the 1981 Academy Award-winning film “Chariots of Fire” depicts Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian, preparing to run in the 1924 Olympics. Liddell’s athletic success has made him a celebrity. His sister believes that Eric’s popularity has caused him to forget his promise to return to China as a missionary. Liddell assures her that he will return to China, but first he must run in the Olympic Games. He believes that God made him for a purpose, but God also made him fast. When he runs, Liddell says, he feels God’s pleasure. He goes on to say, “To give that up would be to hold Him in contempt. To win is to honor Him.” Like Liddell, we should maximize the use of our talents not for our own selfish purposes, but to honor Him. It is all about our attitude, the motivation that resides in our hearts. We know that we work in a fallen world. Because of the curse of sin, our work will be difficult, and we will not feel God’s pleasure all the time or at the level we will enjoy in the world to come. But we should feel satisfaction and joy from doing our best with what God has given us in the place where His providence puts us, seeking to win in order to honor Him.
Finally, the Parable of the Talents shows that we will be held accountable. The Parable of the Talents is not about salvation or works righteousness, but about how we use our work to fulfill our earthly calling. It is about whole-life stewardship, or what I call “stewardship with a capital ‘S.’” Christians have not been taught that stewardship is about much more than tithing to the church and taking care of their personal finances.
In the opening chapter of Genesis we find what is called the Cultural Mandate. “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground’” (Genesis 1:28). This mandate was meant not only for Adam and Eve, but for us as well. It is our job description and still stands as God’s directive for our stewardship of His creation. Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, writes:
The first phrase, “be fruitful and multiply,” means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, “subdue the earth,” means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, and compose music. This passage is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures, build civilizations—nothing less.
We are more than merely permitted to engage every part of the created order. We are told that the created world is ours, given to us as a trust from God Himself. We are to engage it, announcing and exercising the presence and rule of Christ over every part of it. This includes the arts and the sciences, social justice and economics, churches and U2 concerts, “The Passion of the Christ,” and “Les Misérables.” The unfaithful steward in this parable didn’t so much waste the master’s money; he wasted an opportunity. As a result, he was judged wicked and lazy. We are responsible for what we do for God with what we have been given, and one day we will be held responsible. What we hear from the Master on that day is up to us.
So how should we define the biblical meaning of success?
The late John Wooden, a committed Christian who became the most successful college basketball coach in history, was once asked how he would define success. He replied: Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
Now certainly this is a large part of the biblical meaning of success; we are to take the talents and opportunities God gives us and make the most of them. Yet, we still need to ask ourselves one more question: “Am I working to make myself look good, or am I working to glorify God?” The answer is almost counterintuitive; when we work for Him and the furtherance of His kingdom in everything we do and especially in our vocational callings, we truly find the purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction that we all desperately seek.
We work at the pleasure of the Lord, and our work is to be driven by our love of the Master. Our only desire should be to hear Him say, “Well done my good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Master.”
-- Hugh Whelchel
==matthew 25:34:
|
Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world
|
Now, notice that Christ, as it were, inferentially tells us that the actions that will be mentioned at the judgement day, as the proof of pour being the blessed of the Lord, spring from the grace of God, for He says, “Ye blessed of the Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
They fed the hungry, but sovereign grace first fed them. They clothed the naked, but infinite love first clothed them. They went to the prison, but free grace first set them free from a worse prison. They visited the sick, but the Good Physician in His infinite mercy first came and visited them. They evidently had no idea that there was anything meritorious in what they did; they had never dreamed of being rewarded for it. When they stand before the judgement seat, the bare idea of there being any excellence in what they have done will be new to the saints. For you see, they have formed a very lowly estimate of their own performances, and what they have done seems to them too faulty to be commended. The saints fed the hungry and clothed the naked because it gave them much pleasure to do so. They did it because they could not help doing it; their new nature impelled them to it. They did it because it was their delight to do good and was as much their element as water for a fish or the air for a bird. They did good for Christ’s sake. They performed works such as these because it was the sweetest thing in the world to do anything for Jesus. --- Charles Spurgeon, At the Master’s Feet |
==matthew 25:35:
|
for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in;
|
Matthew 25:35 is part of Jesus' teaching on the final judgment, highlighting that acts of service to the needy—feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, and welcoming strangers—are acts of service directly to him. It emphasizes compassion and practical, tangible care for marginalized people as a core Christian duty. This is from the "Sheep and Goats" passage, where Jesus explains that the righteous are recognized by their actions of mercy. Jesus explicitly states, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me". The teaching calls for active empathy and social responsibility rather than passive faith, urging believers to help those in need. This passage emphasizes that meeting basic human needs in the community is equivalent to serving Jesus himself.
|
Jan 30, 2022: The Dispatch reported: In 1916, Madison Grant, a eugenicist, conservationist, and promoter of scientific racism, wrote The Passing of the Great Race. The book promoted the superiority of the white, Nordic, Aryan “race” in Northern Europe and warned that it was being threatened by “inferior” races. Grant was also a major proponent of immigration restriction–his ideas had a part in the restrictionist 1924 Immigration Act. Even more to the point, his ideas caught on in Germany: Adolf Hitler called Grant’s book “my bible.” White supremacists continue to quote Grant today, and his ideas inform great replacement theory. Too many of our fellow citizens appear vulnerable to the fear that great replacement theory inspires, a fear of those different from us. As Christians, we believe that such fear is damaging to us personally as well as to the fabric of our churches and communities. In the spirit of the welcoming love and hospitality of Jesus, which animates the mission of the church, we must oppose the great replacement theory’s message. How do we do that? The answer lies not in castigating our family, friends, and neighbors who may have been unduly influenced by the narratives of fear and uncertainty that allow the theory to take hold. Rather, we must reach out, make connections, and illuminate a better path forward, grounded in the Gospel. Our desire should be to influence life in our nation in ways that reflect the love of Jesus, who taught us to “welcome the stranger” (Matthew 25:35) and “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). While national immigration policy is complicated and our government has a job to do in both securing the border and enforcing the rule of law, we also must reject any kind of demonizing fear-based rhetoric concerning our immigrant neighbors. The parable of the Good Samaritan also can help us. This is the story of someone (a Samaritan) who takes time to notice another person (a Judean) beaten by robbers and left for dead on the side of the road. Jesus tells this story not just to inspire us to be more charitable with the downtrodden, but to show us that neighborly love, and divine love, crosses lines of ethnicity and is welcoming of everyone. |
==matthew 25:40:
|
And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
|
January 26, 2026: Penny Nixon wrote: An open Letter to Speaker Mike Johnson: The Jesus of Scripture had much to say about the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). He didn’t qualify this. He didn’t say, “Care for the least of these unless it’s politically inconvenient” or “Love your neighbor unless they’re undocumented” or “Welcome the stranger unless it costs you votes.” Yet under your leadership, we have witnessed policies that treat human beings as dispensable — as problems to be managed rather than people made in the image of God. We have seen budget proposals that gut assistance to families struggling to feed their children. We have watched as health care becomes less accessible to those who most desperately need it. We have seen the stranger not welcomed but turned away, sometimes into danger. Where is your prophetic voice for these, the least of these? Or have you confused proximity to power with faithfulness to God? I think often of Matthew 25, the passage about the sheep and the goats. Jesus doesn’t ask about doctrinal correctness or religious rhetoric. He asks: Did you feed the hungry? Give drink to the thirsty? Welcome the stranger? Clothe the naked? Care for the sick? Visit the imprisoned? |