The Church is called to take care of the poor, yes—but let’s define “poor” biblically. True poverty, the kind that the Bible speaks of, refers to people who are genuinely unable to work due to circumstances beyond their control—whether that be age, disability, or some unavoidable calamity.
That’s a truncated definition at best. According to the Bible, the poor include those people and the figuratively poor and those whose calamity comes to them by the hands of others. The Bible constantly calls out those who sow systemic injustice.
Micah 2: 1 Woe to those who devise wickedness
and work evil on their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
because it is in the power of their hand.
2
They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
a man and his inheritance.
3
Therefore thus says the Lord:
behold, against this family I am devising disaster,
from which you cannot remove your necks,
and you shall not walk haughtily,
for it will be a time of disaster.
3: 9
Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel,
who detest justice
and make crooked all that is straight,
10
who build Zion with blood
and Jerusalem with iniquity.
11
Its heads give judgment for a bribe;
its priests teach for a price;
its prophets practice divination for money;
yet they lean on the Lord and say,
“Is not the Lord in the midst of us?
No disaster shall come upon us.”
12
Therefore because of you
Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.
It ought also go without saying that there’s a sense in which we are all poor before the LORD. Why does God appear to favor the poor? Answer: Because we all constantly marginalize God all day & all night.
The purpose of the created order is to testify to **God’s** existence, attributes, & authority. Our worship and sexual ethics are to be derived from the LORD’s image & authority **not our own** and, given the tenor of Romans 1:28 - 32, all our ethics are to be so derived — lest God proverb us into the extraordinary crime rate that is part & parcel of a society with major systemic issues. On the one hand Reformation Charlotte contends with the World System that its representatives see at work around us, yet they chronically & notoriously balk at just about any notion that these issues include a rather large systemic component that has accreted over time.
These people deserve our compassion and help, and the Bible calls us, as Christians, to step in when family or other means of support are unavailable. But let’s not conflate this with the welfare queens and professional moochers who’ve learned to milk the system for all it’s worth. The Bible is clear that if a man will not work, he shall not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10). There’s no ambiguity there.
That’s just Ecclesiastical Tradition. Let’s take a look at 2 Thessalonians 3:6 - 15.
2 Thessalonians 3:6–15 (ESV): Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. 7 For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, 8 nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. 9 It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. 10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. 11 For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. 12 Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.
13 As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good. 14 If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. 15 Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.
Some people believe that this text supports draconian cutting of the social safety net. Isn’t it obvious? If someone doesn’t work, they shouldn’t eat. In truth, 2 Thessalonians does not support this concept. The selected text is referring to the Thessalonians’ fellowship meal and the Lord’s Table.
People in that church had decided to withdraw from church life in view of the immanent return of Christ. There was also a sharp divide between people of means and the poor.
A group of people had visited Thessalonica and taught them. Those same visitors, realizing how poor most of these people were, refused to accept payment for their work. Instead of accepting payment for their services, these visitors used their money to pay the people for the food they provided.
The example that they set is an example of serving people in unexpected ways. Paul in 1 Corinthians talks about the right of people serving others (apostles and their entourage) and expectation for payment. Ministers and visitors serving the church should receive monetary support when possible (1 Timothy 5:18). However, these particular ministers chose to forego payment, a monetary love offering, and instead they assisted the church and its people. Instead of money, they accepted what the Thessalonians gifted them by way of food, shelter, & fellowship.
When Paul speaks to the idleness problem, he isn’t as concerned for the world as much as he is concerned for the church. The world, of course, should emulate what the church does when the church gets it right.
Paul is not laying down a principle that we should do something like cut the social safety net for idle people in draconian fashion. Rather he is laying down a principle for dealing with people who, through idleness become chronic busybodies and gossips who ultimately cause problems in the church & should, if the their activity has reached it’s crescendo or near crescendo, be barred from the fellowship meal - but not the ministry of the Word. That said, even this is the option of last resort.
Thus, the text is about church discipline within the local church. Those who are idle should be sanctioned with a penalty that is fit for the problem. Why food? Because this is a weekly or biweekly fellowship meal that their congregation put together.
What should these people do for food during the week? The church should provide for them like the visitors provided for the church. Society should emulate this behavior. However, if Publisher is to be believed, Government should sanction them and the churches should shun them or all but shun them.
This text isn’t about “personal responsibility,” it is about our duties to each other as Christians & how to handle those who fit a particular profile. If someone has been barred from the Table under these conditions, the church should help feed them during the week.
Question: If society chooses to regulate the recipients of social safety net benefits, how large or small a sanctioning should it be?
Answer: The equivalent of the cost of their plate & cup in a fellowship meal, not the equivalent to the cost of living for the week. They should also be blessed, not merely sanctioned.
Why? To give them hope and to maintain their connection to the church community, and with respect to the civil order, hope that can help them rise above where they are right now and begin contributing to the whole community again.
But progressives hate that verse, don’t they? They hate it because it shines a spotlight on their hypocrisy. They want to pretend that their calls for a welfare state are rooted in biblical compassion, but what they really want is a system that enables their laziness. And they have the nerve to claim that conservatives, the ones who actually work hard and take responsibility, are the ones oppressing them.
Reformation Charlotte, please stop gaslighting everyone around you into believing that they are your oppressors. You yourselves routinely go out of your way to devour progressives & whoever else you call swine. If you continue, the swine will rise up & trample you (Matthew 7:6).
They’ve bought into the lie that salvation comes through government programs and handouts, rather than through the blood of Christ.
…Say people whose soteriology runs through political idolatry just like Greg Locke.
While you accuse progressives of running to government programs as if the Civil Use of the Law looks like your particular brand of American Conservatism, even calling into question the regeneracy of some of your opponents, stating, for example, Democrats ought to be purged from the churches, you concomitantly sound deaf to the fact that you are denying the sum & substance of the Gospel & the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone in favor of Situational Ethics & Works Righteousness.
In Situational Ethics, the morals police justifies their actions by evaluation of their & others activities &/or motives via examination of the context, eg the circumstances, in which the deed in question was or will be performed. How does this play out?
If David Baker asks if he should bake the cake (and in some cases now refuse to use the slur “Alphabet people”) men & women like Publisher reply with Situational Ethics. Their answer is “No,” based on the fact that the homosexual couple is obviously in sin & the cake proves it, and, to read Publisher & others when they write about it, the transgender person is presumptively unregenerate. Ergo, paracleting them is enabling them & collaborating with the Encroaching Liberal & Homosexual Menace.
Their reasoning process basically involves them & their supporters determining the moral blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of the baker’s refusal to bake &/or refuse to use the term “Alphabet people,” by way of their evaluation of the circumstances of the act in question - either brazenly or tacitly based on the moral status & agenda of the gay couple and /or trans person - not by way of the the baker’s motives.
God does not condemn & commend our thoughts, words, & deeds based on the identity of our clients / customers & the meaning of a product we sell &/or serve. If God condemned & commended that way, then that would result in a species of works righteousness, on the basis that it is possible to disobey & offend God & obey & commend God regardless of the motives that underwrite our thoughts, words, & deeds. By way of contrast, James 1:14-15 says that we form & follow desires that lead us into sin, condemnation, & death. In other words, God looks at the heart, not the outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7).
Publisher reflexively defaults to Situational Ethics, in which each business transaction or personal encounter is unique, & therefore whether or not you will comply with Matthew 5:22 or 5:41 depends on David’s evaluation of the identity (& moral status) of the objects of David’s moral response not David’s actual motives. That places them on the road to Works Righteousness.
If all it takes to make the baker guilty of sin is the baking of a cake based on his or her clients’ identity & the meaning of a cake, then the baker’s internal volitional mechanism really doesn’t matter. The baker is guilty regardless of his or her motives. Ergo, even though the Bible denies that we can do any spiritual good accompanying our salvation (Romans 8:7), it might still be possible to earn God’s favor (if only preparationalistically, or even salvifically) after all.
Isn’t that where Semi-Pelagian soteriology & Arminianism lead? In both, regeneration comes through faith, so there’s a certain amount of spiritual good that must be done out of one’s own volitional agency in order for God to regenerate & justify.
They worship at the altar of the welfare state, offering up your tax dollars as sacrifices to their god of envy.
Sounds like Witchcraft.
Let’s call it what it is, the welfare state isn’t about justice. It’s about greed. It’s about laziness. It’s about sluggards demanding what they haven’t earned.
The only 2 Scriptures Publisher has offered us are 2 classic examples of what Steve Hays used to call “spooftexting.” The article is titled “The Church is Called to Take Care of the Poor, the Oppressed, and the Marginalized,” but it’s really just an angry rant about the welfare state that nods in the direction of the Bible but does the minimum’s minimum’s minimum when it comes to biblical exposition. It’s a remarkable testament to mercilessness & gracelessness.
And the so-called Christians who push for this are nothing more than false prophets leading others into the same pit of sin they’ve fallen into themselves.
So, the next time someone tells you that the Church is called to support the “least of these” by backing a welfare state, remember this—the real least of these aren’t the lazy, the entitled, or the slothful. The real least of these are the truly oppressed, the truly vulnerable, those who cannot help themselves.
And no government program is going to fix what’s wrong with people who refuse to take responsibility for their own lives. Only repentance, hard work, and the life-altering power of the gospel can do that.
Thank you, Publisher for your words. They come across as a stunning piece of psychological self-analysis & diagnosis. You are false prophets leading God’s people to ruination. Micah 3:9 - 12 is for you. From your heart, Publisher, you have spoken.
May God bless us all — each & every one, and “Go & sin no more.”
