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The New Testament Church’s Response to the Poor
 By David Adams
Jubilee Community Church, Cape Town,
South Africa
‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.’
(Luke 4:18)
Jesus announced his public ministry by reading these words from the prophet Isaiah. Later, as the crowds pressed in to hear him, he would declare, ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’ (Luke 6:20).
At every point in his life Jesus rubbed shoulders with the poor. Born in a stable of a peasant couple, a refugee in Egypt, growing up in remote Galilee, dying on a cross like a common criminal, in so many respects it was with the poor that Jesus humbly identified. He never had any of the riches of this world. When he crossed the Sea of Galilee, it was in a borrowed boat. When he rode into Jerusalem, it was on a borrowed beast. When he was buried, it was in a borrowed tomb.
A blind beggar, a man with leprosy, a widow who placed her last two coins in the offering, a nameless and nondescript child, a woman from a dubious and broken background…Jesus saw each as priceless and full of kingdom promise.
Poverty and disease were widespread in Jesus’ day. Corruption and oppression were endemic. The gulf between rich and poor, free man and slave was immense. The vast majority could expect little more from life than abject poverty.
Indeed, the ancient Mediterranean was an unforgiving place, offering little protection from periods of hunger and acute oppression. Life expectancy at birth was probably between 20 and 30 years. Free workers lived in constant fear of unemployment. Beggars filled the cities of the Mediterranean world and, to a population in which nearly all lived only a little above subsistence level, the beggar embodied their deepest fears. In times of plenty all who were able-bodied could expect to subsist. But in times of shortage living conditions quickly deteriorated. And for those who were not able-bodied, all times were times of shortage and hardship.
It was the poor whom Jesus carried in his heart. He made friends with the needy and fed the hungry. He told his disciples to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind when they gave a party; those who would probably be in no position to invite them back (Luke 14:12-14). And he promised that in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the homeless and visiting the sick, they would be ministering to him (Matt. 25:35-40).
Is God on the side of the poor?
God is passionate about the poor. He delights in redeeming the lowly and seemingly insignificant, and in weaving their lives into His magnificent purposes. God opposes the poverty of the indigent and the oppressed as a social evil, and embraces the ‘humble and contrite in spirit’ (Isa. 66:2) or the ‘poor in spirit’ (Matt. 5:3), those who do not trust in their own strength and abilities but recognise their deep need of God and look to Him for their salvation. This is the heart attitude that God blesses.
So, is God on the side of the poor? Well, God is not biased and ‘there is no favouritism with Him’ (Eph. 6:9). Neither is material poverty a Biblical ideal. Rather, the Scriptures uphold the ideal that there should be no poor in the land (Deut. 15:4), and certainly the materially poor need to repent and be saved by God’s justifying grace just as much as the wealthy.
Yet, while God shows no partiality, He is not neutral in situations of injustice. In pursuing justice, God favours the poor who are either victims of injustice or find themselves in a position in which they are powerless to resist the oppression of the powerful. He has a special concern for them because of their vulnerability. In a way this may be likened to the special concern that parents will show for a child that is ill, though they love all their children equally. In this sense, God is on the side of the poor.
The New Testament Church
The church in Acts fully embraced the poor in both sharing the gospel and caring for the needy. Whenever anyone was in need, they shared; so ‘there were no needy persons among them’ (Acts 4:34). Such sharing was voluntary and not compulsory. But love for brothers and sisters was so overwhelming that ‘no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own’ (Acts 4:32). Indeed, such sharing was regarded as a hallmark of the Christian: ‘If anyone has material possessions, and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?’ (1 John 3:17).
The voiceless, rejected poor were accorded the dignity of full partnership in the church. So care for the needy was foundational in the apostolic church. The apostles themselves were initially involved in a daily distribution of food, serving the most marginalised – the widows. Paul gave himself tirelessly to poverty relief. When famine struck in AD 46, Paul and Barnabas took relief aid from Antioch to Jerusalem, the first instance recorded in the New Testament of anyone being sent out on an apostolic mission.
Indeed, Paul’s desire to alleviate the poverty of the Jerusalem Christians became a major focus of his apostolic ministry, as reflected in several of his letters. He arranged for gifts from predominantly Gentile churches, and insisted on accompanying the offering personally to Jerusalem even when he faced personal danger. For Paul had a deep conviction that this financial symbol of Christian unity mattered far more than even his own life.
This was integrally linked to Paul’s understanding of Christian fellowship (koinonia). For Paul, fellowship with Christ involved fellowship with all the members of the body of Christ. Christ’s death for Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, had broken down all dividing walls, as he so powerfully sets out in Ephesians 2:11-22. In Christ there was now one new humanity. Caring for the needy in this family of believers provided a graphic demonstration of this fellowship. For, when the Jerusalem leaders had endorsed Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, they had extended ‘the right hand of fellowship’ (koinonia), and had stipulated a single, tangible expression of that fellowship: ‘Remember the poor’ (Gal. 2:9-10), which was the very thing that Paul was especially eager to do.
Radical sharing
In giving expression to this fellowship, Paul ensured that Jesus’ teaching on care for the poor would find application not only in local contexts but also across networks of churches. In 2 Corinthians 8:13-15 he urged the Christians in Achaia to provide relief aid to the church in Judea by appealing to the notion of ‘equality’; that those who had a surplus would share with those in need, and that this sharing was intended to be mutual. To support this he made reference to Exodus 16:18 and the story of God’s provision of manna in the wilderness. God provided the manna, but each person had to gather enough to feed those in his tent. Some had the ability and industriousness to gather more than they needed, while others did not gather enough. However, as they measured out what they had gathered so as to provide an omer of manna for each person, those who had a surplus would provide out of their surplus for those who did not have enough. In this way each person was adequately provided for. There was, in any case, no point in hoarding, for any surplus that was hoarded would simply decay.
Early church fathers like Augustine, Cyprian, Origen and Chrysostom took this to heart and taught that one should spend on oneself only that which was absolutely necessary; the remainder should be given for the care of the poor. Consequently a radical ethos of sharing characterised the early church. An understanding that all had something to share, whether material or spiritual, accorded value to all irrespective of their background. So, for example, Paul viewed Onesimus, the runaway slave, as a partner in the gospel with a genuine contribution to make.
How do we respond?
From the New Testament example, the church itself is to be the locus for caring for the poor. The church did not contract this out. Their response to the poor was holistic; the gospel was preached and the needy were cared for both within the church, as a matter of priority, and beyond. The Biblical pattern is that evangelism and social action belong together ‘like the two blades of a pair of scissors or the two wings of a bird, as they were in the public ministry of Jesus’ (John Stott, Issues Facing Christians Today (1990) Marshall Pickering, London; p 340). It is important that we too fully embrace both.
In pursuing this, relationship is key; the loving, caring relationships between equal partners in the gospel. Without Christ all are poor and so in Christ there is no ‘rich’ and ‘poor’. All are one. Those who have suffered have a unique contribution to make.
This is what distinguishes Christian involvement in poverty alleviation from secular initiatives. There’s no ‘we’ and ‘them’. Rather, it is a genuine invitation from the heart of those who have received God’s mercy to those who are poor and in need to come and join God’s community of faith and be caught up in God’s glorious mission. |
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