The Least of These My People
Rev. C. Van Schouwen, Sioux Center, Iowa
Christians have asked at times, what is the greatest good work that we as Christians can perform in this earthly life, and what is the greatest sin that a person can commit? This question was answered by Christ, when He said in Matthew 25:35, “For I was hungry and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
The disciples were puzzled when Christ made this statement and so they asked, when did we do these things for thee? Christ answered with these remarkable words, “What ye have done to the least of these my brethren, ye have done to me.” In other words, whatever we do for fellow Christians in their needs, being motivated by love for Christ, we have done to and for Christ. When we give food to Christ’s hungry people, clothing to the poor, visit the sick and the lonely, or give a helping hand to those who have burdens, we are actually doing that to Christ. All Christians belong to the mystical body of Christ and whatever we do for members of the body, we are doing to Christ. Therefore, we must conclude such concern for the people of God is the greatest good in Christian living.
The entire chapter of Matthew 25 is devoted to the Judgement Day. The above mentioned precept is so basic and so utterly important that Christ will apply this criteria, either accepting or rejecting, in judging the people. The statement “What ye have done to the least of these my brethren” involves two questions—what have ye done to or for me in your earthly life and what have ye done to or for my people? Since these questions will be asked in the Judgement Day, the greatest sin that anyone can commit is the rejection of Christ and the persecution of His people.
The question arises, to whom did Christ refer, when He said, “What ye have done to the least of these my brethren?” Liberals maintain that the “least of these my brethren” refers to all the needy people in the world. And so they quote Matthew 25:35 to prove that the church must be involved in solving the social and the political problems of society and that the essence of Christian living is found in social activity. Even some of our own ministers have quoted this text to prove that the church must provide for the poor and hungry of the world.
However, the context has a very important bearing on the meaning of this text. It must not be forgotten that Matthew 25 speaks about the Judgement Day. All the people that ever lived upon the face of the earth will be gathered around the Great White Throne and they will be judged according to their works (Rev. 20:11–12). The sheep will be placed on His right side and the goats on his left side (Matt. 25:33). And then the King will say to those on His right side, “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.” The least of these, although denigrated by the unbelieving world, are most precious in the sight of God. And why are they blessed? Christ said, “For I was hungry and ye gave me food; I was thirsty and ye gave me to drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; I was sick and ye visited me; I was naked and ye clothed me; I was in prison and ye came unto me.”
And Christ will say to those on his left side, “Depart from me, ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” Why? Because when Christ (His people) was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick and in prison, they showed no love or concern for Him. What the unbelievers did to Christ’s people, they did to Him. Throughout the ages unbelievers have either persecuted the people of God or revealed very little concern for them in their needs.
Thus, it is a complete perversion of Matthew 25:35 to interpret this text to mean that the church must become involved in solving the social and the political problems of society. When almost every denomination is permeated with the social gospel, we must be on our guard as a denomination not to become infected with the virus of this evil. It is the chief cause of apostacy in many churches.
Getrouw, Dutch monthly magazine of the International Council of Christian Churches, in its October, 1983, issue reported on a speech of Bishop Isaac P.B. Mokoena which sounds a substantially different note from that which is often heard in our news from South Africa. He spoke at last June’s world-congress meeting of the Council as president of a large group of black South African churches, the Reformed Independent Churches Association. Although the bishop had formerly worked with The World Council of Churches and the South African Council of Churches (as director of church development in South Africa) he now said:
“After some time I discovered that the World Council of Churches and the South African Council of Churches introduced ideologies into our college which differed completely from the pure Word of God, which we needed more than anything else. Instead of it they defended a gospel of change, liberation theology and black theology. Convinced that the gospel of Jesus Christ calls men and women to a radical conversion, and to genuine reconciliation of man with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, I decided to withdraw. I was the leader and official spokesman of 4 1/2 million black Christians in South Africa above the age of 15 years, but we left the World Council and its representative, the South African Council of Churches. We went from the known to the unknown, but we were not prepared to sacrifice principles for advantages at the expense of the Word of God.
“South Africa is criticised for its apartheid politics. Let me say to you that I am absolutely against that if it should mean ‘apart–hate,’ but if it is apartheid, we accept a separate development. I am black and I will keep my identity, culture, custom and traditions without mixing with the white. Also the Zulu wants to develop himself in harmony with his identity, culture, custom and traditions. Therefore I would never choose to find myself in a white situation that is strange to me and to which I would not wish to belong.”
He expressed appreciation for the labors of the International Council of Christian Churches and the wish, with those he represented, to join them in the conflict against the enemies of the cross. “To the churches who are not members of the World Council and the South African Council, I would want to say that it is not enough to stay outside of these organizations and to say nothing publicly against their destructive ideologies, for one who does not speak out against them, condones them and is part of their system.”
We cannot condone the racially discriminatory laws of South Africa. (They evidently conflict with Biblical standards of justice just as do some of our governments’ “affirmative action” programs and the racially determined grants of our churches’ race comrnittee-SCORR.) But we admire and badly need leaders like Bishop Mokoena who will take a bold stand for the gospel against its churchly betrayers.
P.D.J.
The following is the conclusion of an article on the book of Judges by Oswald T. Allis in the Nov. 21, 1960 Christianity Today
“The book of Judges has a lesson which the present generation of Christians greatly needs. We are learning today at heavy costs that the failure of even a single generation to pass on to its successor its own precious heritage of faith and morals will have tragic results. The Godlessness and delinquency in present day America is largely ‘the result of the breakdown of Christian nurture in our homes, schools, and churches. It does not take long to train up a generation of whom it can be said, ‘And there arose another generation after them which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which He had done for Israel.’ The Communists in Russia and China are strenuously engaged in the task of bringing into being a new generation which knows nothing of its past, which is a stranger to the culture which went before it. In other places, no such special training of the young people is needed. Let the children alone, leave them without discipline, allow them to ‘develop naturally,’ we say, which is the basic idea in ‘progressive education’; and when they grow up it will be said of them, ‘Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.’ Christian education, Christi~ example, Christian nurture, are the supreme need today. If Christianity is to meet triumphantly the forces of evil which challenge its very existence.”
Why We Can’t Always Trust tbe News Media
In February and July of last year the Outlook placed some evidently reliable reports of good news from Guatemala under the leadership of its evangelical Christian president, Efrain Rios Montt. These reports were in sharp conflict with U.S. press reports which represented him as a blood-thirsty killer and which were repeated by religious papers, and church executives, including some of our own. The Montt administration was overthrown in another military coup in August of last year. Now the January 13, 1984 issue of Christianity Today features an 8-page special article by its editor on contemporary issues, Tom Minnery, detailing how the U.S. public has been misled by biased news reporting.
The article sketches the ways in which Montt, a retired army general and academic director of a Christian school in Guatemala City was asked by the younger army officers in the coup to become leader of the government. Montt faced the need to bring needed reforms, to punish army troops who brutalized innocent Indians while at the same time pressing the battle against Marxist revolutionaries who were trying to take over the country. The article speaks of the “vicious propaganda campaign waged by guerrilla organizations” which in the words of the Washington Post ‘invariably defines rebel attacks on the government militias as blows against the official agents of repression, and the government‘s attacks on guerrilla militias as massacres of civilians.” Such reports were picked up and circulated by Amnesty International, and were in tum taken over and passed on unchallenged by U.S. news media. The article details examples of Amnesty International’s uncritical acceptance of guerrilla misrepresentations and of that organization’s explanation that “it deals with illegal actions of governments against noncombatants, not with the actions of armed guerrillas against governments.” Amnesty International’s partisan reporting on the guerrilla war and ignoring of improvements made by Montt distorted our news.
Contributing to the same kind of distortion, according to the article, was a similarly partisan report in The New Republic by New York free-lance writer Allan Nairn. The Christianity Today article recounts how veteran Wycliffe translators, Ray and Helen Elliott, who had long lived among the Indians, had futilely sought in conversations with the author to correct the distortions which he seemed determined to report.
It is difficult to learn what is really happening in a country involved in a guerrilla war. I recall how difficult that was for us in mainland China 35 years ago. I also remember how liberal missionaries who had lost the gospel then tended to substitute for it a social program that was virtually identical with that advocated by Communists’ propaganda. It is remarkable how little that state of affairs has changed in a third of a century. Leaders of liberal churches (and their Councils) continue to promote the avowedly anti-Christian Communist Programs. In this they tum out to be the victims and unwitting tools of him who our Lord designated as both “a murderer from the beginning” and the “father of lies” (John 8:44). Perhaps one of the greatest dangers to evangelical Christians and churches is that of being taken in by his propaganda. Our Lord taught us not to be “ignorant of his devices” (2 Cor. 2:11), but to pray constantly, “. . . deliver us from the evil one” (Matt. 6:13).
P.D.J.