Proverbs 14:21 ESV
Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor.
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Today’s verse is the moral counterbalance to last week’s realism. Last week, we got the realpolitik of the situation, the way things are whether we like it or not: people like people who can do stuff for them. This week, we’re looking at the way we ought to behave, irrespective of the tendency of mankind, in wariness of the same tendency in our own hearts. God calls His people to a wholly righteous life. As a part of this, man is called not just to see the world as it is- that’s called understanding, that’s called knowing the truth- but to act in it as God intended man to act, towards the truth of the world, which is this: Christ came to save sinners, and Christ saved also the world defiled by sinners. Christ has conquered the world, and so we are called to transform it into a more perfect creation, to His glory. This is a slow, heart-wrenching process. This is a process which will not be complete before the final return fo the Lord. Victory, though, is assured, and a part of our part in it is this: that we love our neighbors as ourselves, no matter what they can do for us.
First, let’s outline the sin. We are instructed that ‘whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner’. The important (and actually misunderstandable) words here are ‘despise’, ‘neighbor’, and ‘sinner’.
To despise a man is to have towards him a heart that does not comport with his status as the Image of God on earth, however marred. I might be angry. In my anger, if I pass beyond a desire for justice into vindictiveness, to desiring more than God’s judgement would grant, to exacting punishment for the sin which he commits against God (which sin is not my right to seek to punish), I treat the man as less than the Image of God. I might be contemptuous. In expressing contempt towards a man, I elevate myself above him, proclaiming my status greater than his in essence, when we are both made in His Image (note that this does not apply to truthful, humble assessment of different capacities, moral characters, or relationships; to assess one person as less in an area than another is without blame so long as he actually is lesser. So contempt for a person’s gender or race is wrong, but considering those factors when deciding if they’re fit for a long trek across tropical Africa may be meet, given differences in physique and disease-resilience). I could be worshipful towards another. Be he celebrity, faux-god, dictator, philosopher, father, politician, or fictional character, if I place a man as a god instead of an image of God, I degrade him with the lie, stripping him of the truth which should be his glory- that he is made in God’s image, even if he, being reprobate, despises Him- and replacing it with a blasphemy and a lie. In any of these cases, I sin, according to the proverb, provided that man be my neighbor.
This next term is perhaps the easiest of the three to unjustly limit, to the man not acquainted with Scripture. Many of you, however, will remember the passage in which Jesus elucidates the meaning of a similar text, the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. In this, Jesus defines neighbor, in context of the Greatest Commandment, as all men with whom we come in contact or relationship, at the very least. Of course, we must be sure, in applying this inspired interpretation of another part of Scripture, that we’re not misapplying it, using one definition of ‘neighbor’ when the author of the proverb intended another. Thankfully, that’s not hard, if we consider that this proverb, to not despise our neighbor, is a part in spirit of the Greatest Commandment, to love the Lord our God with heart, mind, soul, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves, particularly the last part, its weight subsumable into the fullness of that sublime command.
The third and final term, then, awaits. What does this proverb mean by ‘sin’? What is ‘sin’? Sin is that which does not comport with God’s character as He would have it reflect by His image, which therefore seeks not His glory aright. To sin, in the terms of Romans 3:23, is to fall short of the glory of God, to not give Him His due obedience. Therefore, any sin, no matter how small, breaks the spirit of the whole of the law of God, for the whole law has one spirit: to honor Him as He ought to be honored (James 2:10). When I sin, I proclaim that my desires or judgement or will is higher than Him, more sovereign than Him, more worthy than Him. Can there be a higher hubris? This sin, of despising our neighbor, is therefore no small matter.
The second half of the verse here comes into play. The principle at play here is the positive image of the first half’s negative command, the ‘do’ to its ‘do not’. We are called to, in the words of Isaiah, “Pour [ourselves] out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted” (Is. 58:10). God has given man a responsibility to honor Him and in that responsibility a responsibility to care for His image, our fellow men.
The first responsibility of mankind, of course, is to those towards whom he has a peculiar (special) duty. A man who feeds the poor before his family sins, for he despises his family, to whom his affection ought to burn brightest, to whom his duty is deepest. After the family, the layers of responsibility are murkier. Friendship can be a bond. Understanding, circumstance, or capability can render a man specifically suited to aid in some particular way, reducing the threshold morally required to motivate him to act, given the balance between capability and relationship which underlies and creates the responsibility under God. His vocation might call upon him for action. His bonds of common culture or citizenship or language might call upon him. Among these bonds, perhaps the single strongest bond is the bond of Christian brotherhood, the fellowship between members of the church of God, insofar as we on earth can see in each other. This is a matter, honestly, of much nuance and thought, which we do not have half the space here to truly dive into, save to say that in none of this is evil justified for the ends (aaand we can talk about whether it’s ever right to lie another time).
God has called His people to be a holy people; He has called also all men to be righteous, without fault, that when they choose in their hatred of Him to rebel His justice might be meted out upon them (Rom. 1:16-25). This second calling is a requirement of His nature as a sovereign and just God. The first, though, is a call given in grace. God calls His people to holiness, but if, in the words of Luther, he took count of our “secret sins and inmost faults”1 (let alone all the open ones), we’d all go to Hell, Christian or not, pastor and penitent, man and woman, lock stock and barrel. We are all imperfect people who sin like we breath, if not more often, not giving Him the glory He deserves and acting against His law so often we cannot even count. Even Paul, apostle to the Gentiles, a man who saw Christ with his own eyes and that in His glory, sinned (Acts 9:1-9; Rom. 7:15-20). How good the news is, then, that Christ has given us (Isaiah 52:7), the news that He came to die on the cross, not only to take our sins from us but to give us His righteousness as a new garment, against which none can raise claim in justice. To God be the glory, great things He has done2.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
1 – ‘From Depths of Woe I Raise to Thee’ by Martin Luther
2 – ‘Thine Be the Glory’ by Edmond Budry
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
