He will also say to those on the left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels!

For I was hungry
and you gave Me nothing to eat;
I was thirsty
and you gave Me nothing to drink;
I was a stranger
and you didn’t take Me in;
I was naked
and you didn’t clothe Me,
sick and in prison
and you didn’t take care of Me.’

“Then they too will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or without clothes, or sick, or in prison, and not help You?’

“Then He will answer them, ‘I assure you: Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me either.’

“And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:41-46)

What if God were one of us? It’s a question that appears in Joan Osborne’s 1995 song, One of Us. Jesus was God and he did become one of us.

Those who do not take care of strangers, do not provide for the poor, sick and imprisoned, are not taking care of Jesus himself. Such people who ignore Jesus’ suffering are destined for the eternal fire that God prepared for Satan and his angels. The apostle John, in one of his letters, wrote that if we claim to love God but hate our neighbor, then we don’t actually love God. John was basing what he wrote on what Jesus himself said here.

Who does Jesus condemn in the harshest terms? The Pharisees and religious leaders who believed that the Messiah would come to destroy the wicked, such as the gentiles, the prostitutes, and the tax collectors. But who was it that mistreated the poor? Who took the homes of widows, put debtors in prison, and burdened men with rules they wouldn’t keep themselves? Mostly the rich and powerful Sadducees and Pharisees.

It tells us something about God’s priorities. Just as God’s prophets in the Old Testament condemned those ancient religious rulers for worshipping other gods and mistreating the poor and powerless, so Jesus condemned the leaders of his day for the same things. It reminds us, too, that those who belong to Jesus become part of Jesus. How we treat those others is how we treat Jesus.

Send to Kindle