Matthew 25:40 (CSB) – “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
We’re out of balance in the Church today. We’ve made our salvation out to be entirely about the theology we believe. But, Jesus doesn’t say that the sheep and goats will be divided based on what they believed; he doesn’t speak here of doctrine, denomination, or creed. Yes, I agree that a certain theological faith is assumed here based on other passages (See John 8:24, 17:3; Matthew 16:15–17), but, Jesus speaks here of how we treated the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner. These are not peripheral matters, they’re the central ethics of the Christian faith upon which our judgment will be predicated!
I believe the Church is so unbalanced because we’ve disassociated salvation altogether from how we live. We correctly recognize that salvation was accomplished on the cross and made by grace without respect to our work, but we’ve wrongly concluded that salvation does not then entail how we live. From this imbalance, things like helping the poor or welcoming the outsider are dismissed either as “liberalism”, or as optional good deeds that amount to “icing on the top.” But, how we live our life matters. And Jesus is clear that how we treat others — especially the overlooked and vulnerable — is how we treat him. Ironically, we preach that Christ lives in us, yet we fail to see Christ in the needy! We rally for religious freedom, yet turn away from the refugee! We denounce sin, yet ignore the broken systems that exploit the poor or perpetuate corruption in the incarcerated. In fact, we so fear being “liberal,” that as soon as I mentioned some of these categories, most conservative Christian readers clicked away even though I haven’t proposed any socialist, communist, or “woke” solutions. The mere mention of our personal social obligation to the poor and vulnerable is enough to close most Christian ears today.
Jesus’ words are not an endorsement of any political ideology. They’re a command to the Christian community for each Christian to proactively love the poor and vulnerable in the world they inhabit. They do not map onto any party’s platform — they challenge every heart. The gospel is not just about escaping judgment; it is about being made new in the likeness of Christ.
In closing this post I wanted to consider how best to fulfill my obligation before God to faithfully declare the whole counsel of his word to his people, and in considering that point, it became clear that because the text we’re discussing is from Jesus’ teaching on the judgment of God, my closing should reflect the weight of God’s judgment. So, here’s my conclusion: whoever says they love Jesus but shows no concern for the poor, the immigrant, the imprisoned, or the vulnerable, proves by their neglect that they are not listening to him. His standard isn’t complicated: “Whatever you did for them, you did for me.” You don’t need a scholar to explain this to you; all you need are “ears to hear.”
A Dedicated Faith 