The Least of These

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. MATTHEW 25:40

In the autumn of 1881, A. B. Simpson asked the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church in New York to receive into membership a group of Italian immigrants who had been converted through his ministry. The congregation declined. He resigned. He was thirty-seven, with a family to support, and he gave up a distinguished pulpit, a settled salary and the denomination in which he had been raised and ordained. He had no congregation to go to and no income arranged. Everything he built afterwards grew out of that refusal.

The gospel and the unwanted

The conviction behind it had been forming for years. In Louisville he had built a plain tabernacle rather than a handsome church, on the reasoning that working men who owned no respectable clothes would not come where they would be conspicuous. It was a small architectural decision with a large theology behind it.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. LUKE 4:18

Simpson observed that the churches of his day were arranged, without anyone having decided it, for people like themselves. Pew rents, respectable dress, a manner of speech and an unspoken social threshold combined to make the gospel inaccessible to precisely the people it had first been preached to. He regarded this as a direct violation of an apostolic command.

My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons …Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? JAMES 2:1, 4

James’s example is a congregation that seats a well-dressed visitor comfortably and leaves a poor one standing. Simpson’s point was that we no longer do this crudely, and do it all the time.

What he actually built

The Gospel Tabernacle became a working demonstration. Around it grew rescue missions for the destitute, work among prostitutes, an orphanage, homes where the sick could stay and be cared for and prayed over, and services conducted in the languages of the immigrants pouring into the city. None of this replaced preaching. Simpson would have regarded the suggestion as absurd; he was preaching several times a week and writing continuously throughout. But he did not regard practical mercy as a separate department either, or as a means to secure a hearing for the real message. It was part of the message.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. JAMES 1:27

Both, and neither reduced

There is a caution to state, because the century after Simpson divided badly on exactly this point. One wing of the church reduced Christianity to social improvement and quietly lost the gospel of the cross, until it had nothing to offer anyone that a competent charity could not offer better. Another wing reacted by treating practical mercy with suspicion, as a distraction from soul-winning — and produced congregations that could explain justification and would not have noticed a hungry family in the next street. Simpson held both without apparent strain, and the reason is his Fourfold Gospel. A Christ who saves the soul, sanctifies the character, heals the body and is coming to reign over the earth cannot be confined to any single department of human need. The whole person is in view, and so is the whole world.

Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? 1 JOHN 3:17

The identification

The text at the head of this chapter contains the sharpest claim in the New Testament about the poor, and Simpson took it at face value. The King does not say that serving the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner is like serving Him, or that He approves of it. He says it was done to Him. There is an identification here so complete that the people in the parable are astonished — in both directions. Neither group knew.

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in. MATTHEW 25:35

The uncomfortable question raised by Simpson’s resignation is not whether your church would refuse a group of immigrant converts. Almost none would say so. It is subtler than that. Who, in practice, is not here? Look around your congregation and ask which kinds of people are absent, and whether anything about the arrangements — the assumptions, the dress, the vocabulary, the unspoken thresholds — helps to explain it.

Money

Simpson’s convictions about the poor were expensive, and it is worth saying how he handled money, because that is where such convictions are tested. He resigned a comfortable salary with a family to support and never again held a position with guaranteed income. The Alliance operated on faith lines: no salaries promised, no debt incurred, and no appeals of the ordinary kind. Money came in and went out, and the needs were made known chiefly to God. Whether every ministry should be run this way is a fair question, and Scripture does not require it — Paul accepted support and asked for it plainly. What is not optional is the underlying attitude, and Simpson’s practice illustrates it.

Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God …that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate. 1 TIMOTHY 6:17–18

He held up the Macedonian churches as the pattern, and the details of Paul’s description are pointed: they were in deep poverty, their giving was beyond their means, they had to beg for the privilege, and the sequence began with giving themselves to the Lord first.

For to their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves. 2 CORINTHIANS 8:3

Note that they were the poor giving to the poor. Simpson observed that generosity is not a function of surplus, and that congregations which wait for prosperity before becoming generous generally discover that prosperity does not produce it either. The test is not the amount but the effect. Giving that does not alter how you live has not yet begun.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Look honestly at who is absent from your congregation, and ask what in your arrangements might account for it. 2. Identify one person in your regular orbit whom you have quietly filed as not worth your time. Change that this week. 3. Do something practical and unremarkable for someone who cannot repay you and will not report it. 4. Check which reduction you drift towards — gospel without mercy, or mercy without gospel — and correct in the other direction. 5. Read Matthew 25:31–46 and let the astonishment of both groups do its work. Neither knew.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You were anointed to preach the gospel to the poor, and I have built a religion that is comfortable for people like me.

Forgive the respect of persons that I have never had to name because everyone around me shares it.

Show me who is missing, and why. Show me the person I have quietly decided is not worth my attention.

You said it was done to You. Let me believe that this week, in something small and unrecorded. Amen.