The poor in the Bible

If you have walked past someone asking for help and wondered what God wanted of you, or if you are poor yourself and wonder whether God sees you, the Bible speaks to you. From the law of Moses to the letters of the apostles, Scripture teaches that God has a special care for the poor and calls the people who love him to share with them and defend them.

What does the Old Testament law say about the poor?

The law of Moses treats care for the poor as a matter of justice, written into the way Israel farmed, lent, and worshiped. Farmers were forbidden to harvest the edges of their fields or gather the fallen grapes, because those were left “for the poor and for the foreigner” (Leviticus 19:9–10). Every seventh year, debts between Israelites were to be cancelled (Deuteronomy 15:1–2).

Deuteronomy 15 asks for more than the right actions. It asks for an open heart:

“If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.

Deuteronomy 15:7–8, NRSVUE

The same chapter admits that need will never disappear from the earth, and for that very reason it commands generosity: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land’ ” (Deuteronomy 15:11).

The Book of Proverbs teaches that God takes the treatment of the poor personally: “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for his Maker, but he who is kind to the needy honors him” (Proverbs 14:31). Another proverb says, “He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD” (Proverbs 19:17). If you are poor, the Psalms hold out a promise meant for you: “the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever” (Psalm 9:18).

What did the prophets say about the poor?

The prophet Amos, a shepherd from the village of Tekoa who preached in the eighth century BCE, made the treatment of the poor the test of Israel’s faithfulness. He accused the wealthy of selling “the needy for a pair of sandals” (Amos 2:6), and he named the dishonest business practices that kept them rich:

Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances,

Amos 8:4–5, NRSVUE

Amos heard God refuse the feasts and songs of worshipers who cheated the poor, and in his most famous line he spoke God’s own desire: “But let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:21–24). Isaiah describes the fast God wants as distributing “your bread to the hungry” and bringing “the poor who are cast out to your house” (Isaiah 58:7). For the prophets, worship and justice belong together, because the same God receives both.

What did Jesus say about the poor?

Luke’s Gospel announces God’s concern for the poor before Jesus is born. Mary sings that God “has filled the hungry with good things” and “has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:53). In his first sermon at Nazareth, Jesus reads from Isaiah and applies the words to himself: “he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18).

In Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, Jesus pairs blessings with woes. “Blessed are you who are poor, for God’s Kingdom is yours,” he says, and later, “But woe to you who are rich! For you have received your consolation” (Luke 6:20, 24). His parables return to the theme again and again. The rich fool builds bigger barns and dies that night, “not rich toward God” (Luke 12:16–21). The rich man who ignored Lazarus at his gate finds himself in torment, while Lazarus is carried to Abraham’s side (Luke 16:19–25). Some Christians read the parable as a description of the afterlife and others as picture-language for God’s judgment, and on either reading it promises that God sees the suffering of the poor and calls the comfortable to open the gate while there is still time.

When a rich man asked how to inherit eternal life, Mark says that Jesus “loved him” and invited him to sell what he owned, give the money to the poor, and follow. The man went away sorrowful, and Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into God’s Kingdom” (Mark 10:21–25). The invitation came from love, and it still does.

In the parable of the judgment of the nations, Jesus identifies himself with people in need:

for I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me.

Matthew 25:35–36

The king then explains, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me” (translated from the Greek¹, Matthew 25:40).

How did the early church care for the poor?

The first believers in Jerusalem “sold their possessions and goods, and distributed them to all, according as anyone had need” (Acts 2:45). Luke reports the result: “neither was there among them any who lacked” (Acts 4:34), which echoes the promise of Deuteronomy 15:4. Paul gathered a collection from his Gentile churches for the poor in Jerusalem and said its purpose was “that there may be equality” (2 Corinthians 8:13–14).

The Letter of James warns churches against seating the rich in honor and telling the poor to stand (James 2:1–6), and it asks what good it does to say “Go in peace. Be warmed and filled” without supplying what the body needs (James 2:16). The First Letter of John asks, “whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, then closes his heart of compassion against him, how does God’s love remain in him?” (1 John 3:17).

The Church Fathers kept this teaching at the center of the Christian life. John Chrysostom, the great preacher of Antioch who later became bishop of Constantinople, told his congregation that honoring Christ in church while ignoring the poor outside made no sense: “Would you do honor to Christ’s body? Neglect Him not when naked” (Homily 50 on Matthew). In a sermon on the rich man and Lazarus he went further, teaching that a rich person who does not share with the poor is keeping what belongs to them. A generation earlier, Basil of Caesarea, a bishop in Cappadocia, built a great complex outside his city to feed and house the poor, the sick, and travelers; people called it the Basileias.

Is it a sin to be rich?

Scripture treats wealth as a trust that can be used for God and neighbor. Abraham was rich, Joseph of Arimathea was “a rich man” who “was also Jesus’ disciple” (Matthew 27:57), and when the tax collector Zacchaeus promised to give half his possessions to the poor, Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:8–9).

Scripture does warn that riches can endanger the soul, because they can draw the heart away from God and neighbor. The verse people misquote as “money is the root of all evil” actually reads, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). The same letter asks the rich “that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to share” (1 Timothy 6:18). Jesus named the choice in one sentence: “You can’t serve both God and Mammon” (Matthew 6:24), using an Aramaic word for wealth. If you have more than you need, these verses invite you to hold it with an open hand.

What do the mainline churches teach about the poor?

The mainline churches all teach care for the poor as part of the Christian life. The Belhar Confession, part of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Book of Confessions, confesses that God is “in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged.” Article XXXVIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles, inherited by the Episcopal Church and other Anglican churches, says that “every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability.”

John Wesley, the Anglican priest who founded Methodism, summed up Christian economics in his sermon “The Use of Money” with three rules: gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. The United Methodist Social Principles “decry the widening gap between the rich and the poor.” The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s 1999 social statement on economic life names its goal in its title: Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All.

Christians of good faith disagree about which economic policies help the poor most. They agree, because Scripture speaks so often and so clearly, that the poor are their neighbors and that generosity is part of following Christ. For the same theme, see whether Christians have to tithe, the greatest commandment, and Micah 6:8; the article on faith and works explains why James insists that faith without deeds is dead.

Jesus promised that he would be found in the hungry, the stranger, and the prisoner. To open your hand to a neighbor in need is a way of loving God, and many Christians have found that it becomes a way of praying. And if you are the one in need, the God who heard the cry of the poor in Israel hears yours.

Notes

1. Greek (SBL Greek New Testament): ἐφʼ ὅσον ἐποιήσατε ἑνὶ τούτων τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν ἐλαχίστων, ἐμοὶ ἐποιήσατε. Adelphoi, literally “brothers,” is the ordinary Greek word for siblings and for the members of a family or community, women as well as men. ↩︎