Commandment Keeping and Caring for Those Who Are Poor

A number of months back I purchased a book that would prove fateful. In preparing for a series of sermons that I was planning to deliver on the Ten Commandments, I bought Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, by Christopher J. H. Wright, a British evangelical Old Testament scholar.

I actually didn’t gain a lot from the book for my series directly; nevertheless, what Wright shared blew my mind. It was extremely thought-provoking and paradigm-shifting, inspiring me to preach a subsequent series based on some of the concepts Wright proposed.

What most captured my imagination was Wright’s portrayal of the Old Testament’s economic vision. Unlike modern systems that gravitate toward either privatization or socialization, it reflects to some degree a distinctive and carefully ordered balance between the two.

This is because, as Wright explained, what really bothers God, among other things, is poverty. All throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, God expresses an extreme care for those who are poor. And throughout the prophets and other portions of the Bible, God issues scathing rebukes to those exploiting and oppressing poor and vulnerable individuals. This was, indeed, one of the main factors that led to Israel’s demise and its eventual exile.

Read Amos. Read Micah. Read Isaiah—when he declares a great judgment upon those carrying out economic injustice and creating laws and policies that take advantage of poor individuals. “Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees,” He thus thunders,

“Who write misfortune,

Which they have prescribed

To rob the needy of justice,

And to take what is right from the poor of My people,

That widows may be their prey,

And that they may rob the fatherless” (Isa. 10:1, 2).

All this led Wright to a provocative conclusion: “The law makes care for the poor the litmus test of covenant obedience to the whole of the rest of the law,” he explains. “The law is kept only if the poor are cared for.”[1]

Such an idea should no doubt get the attention of Seventh-day Adventists—we who pride ourselves as being those in the last days who “keep the commandments of God” (Rev. 14:12). We’ve typically insisted that it is the fourth commandment—which prescribes Sabbath rest—that is the “litmus test” of spiritual fidelity, especially in these last days. In the very end it is observing the seventh day as the Sabbath that indicates whether one is being faithful to God.

Being someone who keeps ‘the commandments of God’ involves so much more than Sabbathkeeping.

Without denying the significance of the Sabbath, and the role it may play in future events, I wonder if we’ve perhaps been guilty of having a truncated view of what it really means to “keep” all of God’s commandments, though. While it is certainly not less than keeping the Sabbath, I think being someone who keeps “the commandments of God” involves so much more than Sabbathkeeping. It does, indeed, involve our attitude and actions toward those who are poor and in need (which, by the way, is not wholly unrelated to Sabbathkeeping, since this weekly break was partly instituted by God with an eye toward economic justice—as Isaiah 58 attests to).

Actually, long before Christopher J. H. Wright proposed that caring for poor people was the “litmus test” of one’s loyalty to God, someone else made a similar statement. In her reflections on the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 in The Desire of Ages, Ellen White offered a similarly provocative proposal. “Christ on the Mount of Olives pictured to His disciples the scene of the great judgment day. And He represented its decision as turning upon one point,” she wrote. “When the nations are gathered before Him, there will be but two classes, and their eternal destiny will be determined by what they have done or have neglected to do for Him in the person of the poor and the suffering.”[2]

Evidently, for White, as with Wright, our treatment of those who are poor, suffering, and marginalized is of hugely significant importance—singularly so, being the “one point” upon which the judgment is based. It is a reflection of our commitment to Christ and whether we have truly allowed the gospel to take root in our lives and shape our actions. To be sure, I think the gospel must also manifest in other ways beyond our treatment of poor individuals. But as a faith community that places a heavy emphasis on keeping all of God’s commands, I think we could probably incorporate this type of messaging—and practice—to a much greater degree.

How does this all work out practically?

I’m still working through that personally. But, at the very least, I feel strongly convicted that it must have both a personal element (pursuing acts of individual charity), as well as a corporate element (pursuing acts of corporate economic justice). Indeed, elsewhere Ellen White proposed that had Old Testament economic law, which was “for the benefit of the poor,” been continuously practiced, “the terrible evils that in all ages have resulted from the oppression of the rich toward the poor and the suspicion and hatred of the poor toward the rich” would have been largely prevented.[3]

So let us who are desperately seeking to be wholly aligned with God’s law, who want to be commandment keepers in every sense of the term, pursue God’s economic vision for the world with great passion and zeal, especially as we eagerly await Christ’s return.

[1] Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 174. (Emphasis original.)

[2] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898, 1940), p. 637. (Emphasis supplied.)

[3] Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1890, 1908), p. 536.