The Uncomfortable Calculus of a Fallen World Text: Proverbs 14:20
Introduction: Reading the Room
The book of Proverbs is a book of divine wisdom, but it is not a book of fortune cookie platitudes. It is not a collection of sentimental encouragements designed to make us feel better about ourselves. Rather, it is a bucket of cold, clear water thrown in the face of a sleepy and compromised generation. It is designed to wake us up to reality as it actually is, not as we wish it were. This means that Proverbs often functions as a divine diagnosis before it offers a divine prescription. It describes the world as it is, twisted and disordered by sin, so that we might learn to navigate it with skill and, ultimately, to be agents of its restoration.
Some proverbs are promises from God, but many are simply observations. They are inspired descriptions of how a fallen world generally works. "A soft answer turns away wrath," is a proverb, but we have all seen instances where a soft answer was met with a doubled fist. This does not make the proverb untrue; it makes it a proverb, a statement of how things generally run in God's world. To treat every proverb as a mechanical, one-to-one promise is to misread the genre and set yourself up for bitter disappointment.
Our text today is one such proverb. It is a sharp, uncomfortable, and entirely accurate observation about the social dynamics of our fallen world. It describes a reality we have all seen, and if we are honest, a reality we have all participated in, whether actively or through cowardly inaction. It is a description of the sinful human tendency to gravitate toward power, influence, and wealth, and to recoil from weakness, need, and poverty. It is a picture of the world's loveless calculus, a world that is constantly asking, "What can you do for me?"
This proverb is not a command. It is not telling us to hate the poor and flatter the rich. God forbid. It is holding up a mirror to the natural man, to the way the world operates apart from grace. And in holding up that mirror, it forces us to ask a crucial question: Does this describe me? Does this describe our church? Because the gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to be a sledgehammer to this entire way of thinking and relating. The kingdom of God operates on a completely inverted set of values. And if we who claim the name of Christ are still running on the world's operating system, then we are liars.
The Text
The poor is hated even by his neighbor,
But those who love the rich are many.
(Proverbs 14:20 LSB)
The Social Leprosy of Poverty
Let us first consider the first clause:
"The poor is hated even by his neighbor." (Proverbs 14:20a)
This is a brutal statement. The word for "hated" here can mean something less intense than what we might imagine; it can mean to be unloved, disregarded, or shunned. But the point is sharp enough. Poverty has a way of repelling people. The poor man finds himself isolated, and this isolation comes not just from strangers, but from his "neighbor." This is the man who lives next door, the man you are supposed to have a basic level of community and fellowship with. Even he wants nothing to do with the poor man.
Why is this? In a fallen world, relationships are fundamentally transactional. The natural man, the man enslaved to his sin, is always running a cost-benefit analysis in his head. A relationship with a poor man appears to be all cost and no benefit. He cannot advance your career. He cannot lend you money. He cannot increase your social standing. In fact, he is a threat to all of those things. He is a drain. He is a constant, walking reminder of need, and our flesh hates to be confronted with need that makes a demand on us. His poverty might be contagious. His requests for help are an interruption to our pursuit of comfort. And so, the neighbor, who is supposed to love, instead hates. He shuns. He closes the curtains when he sees the poor man coming up the walk.
This is a raw description of sin's social consequences. Sin atomizes. It breaks down community and replaces it with self-interest. The poor man is treated like a social leper. His poverty becomes his defining characteristic, and it is a characteristic that makes others flee. We see this elsewhere in Proverbs. "All the brothers of a poor man hate him; how much more do his friends go far from him!" (Proverbs 19:7). The circle of abandonment just keeps widening. Family, friends, neighbors, they all back away.
We must see this for the sin that it is. This is the world's system. It is friendship with the world, which James tells us is enmity with God (James 4:4). This is the spirit of Cain asking, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The answer, which thunders from heaven, is yes. Yes, you are. And to despise your neighbor, to shun the poor man at your gate, is a profound sin. The very next verse in this chapter says, "He who despises his neighbor sins, but happy is he who is gracious to the poor" (Proverbs 14:21).
The Magnetic Pull of Mammon
Now consider the second half of the proverb, which presents the flip side of this sad reality.
"But those who love the rich are many." (Proverbs 14:20b)
If poverty repels, wealth attracts. The rich man does not lack for company. His "friends" are numerous. The word here for "love" is not necessarily speaking of deep, covenantal affection. It speaks of the fawning, the flattery, the desire to be near someone. These are not true friends; they are parasites. They are fair-weather friends, drawn to the warmth and light of the rich man's prosperity. They are there for the parties, the connections, the potential for personal gain.
This is the worship of Mammon in its social form. Men worship power, and in our world, money is power. So they gather around the man who has it. They laugh at his jokes, which are not funny. They praise his insights, which are dull. They seek his favor. They want to be seen with him. His wealth creates a gravitational field, and the shallow, self-interested people of the world are pulled into its orbit like so much space debris.
This proverb is a warning to two groups of people. First, it is a warning to the rich. Do not be deceived by the crowd around you. Your wealth has bought you admirers, but it has not bought you friends. The loyalty of these people is as deep as their own pockets. The moment your wealth is gone, they will be gone too. True friendship is tested in adversity, not in prosperity. The man who trusts in the loyalty of his entourage of flatterers is a fool.
Second, it is a warning to all of us not to be one of the "many." Do not be the person who calibrates his respect and affection based on a man's net worth. This is precisely the sin that James condemns with such ferocity in his epistle. When a rich man in fine clothes and a poor man in shabby clothes come into your assembly, and you give the rich man the seat of honor and tell the poor man to stand in the corner, you have become "judges with evil thoughts" (James 2:4). You are operating by the world's corrupt value system, not by the royal law of love. You are demonstrating that you do not truly believe the gospel.
The Gospel's Great Reversal
This proverb, then, sets the stage for the gospel. It describes the disease for which Christ is the cure. The kingdom of God turns this entire sordid system on its head. In God's economy, the last are first and the first are last. God did not send His Son to court the favor of the rich and powerful. He came to the poor, the meek, the outcast, the hated.
Think of the incarnation. The eternal Son of God, who was infinitely rich, for our sakes became poor, so that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). He emptied Himself. He was born in a stable, to a poor family, in a backwater town. His disciples were fishermen and tax collectors, not the movers and shakers of Jerusalem. He spent His time with sinners, with lepers, with the ritually unclean, with the very people the world despised and shunned.
And in His death, He experienced the ultimate fulfillment of the first half of our proverb. He was hated and rejected by His neighbors. His friends fled. His brothers did not believe in Him. He was utterly abandoned. He became poor, naked, and cursed for us. He was cast out of the city and hung on a tree, the ultimate symbol of shame and dereliction.
Living in the Opposite Spirit
Because this is our God and this is our salvation, we are called to live in the opposite spirit of this proverb. This proverb describes the city of man, but we are citizens of the city of God. Therefore, we must consciously and deliberately cultivate a contrary set of reflexes.
When we see the poor man, our instinct must not be to recoil, but to draw near. We are to be gracious to the poor, to open our hands to our brother, to the needy and to the poor in our land (Deuteronomy 15:11). This is not about sentimental pity or virtue signaling. It is about recognizing the image of God in a man that the world has deemed worthless. It is about understanding that in showing mercy to the "least of these," we are showing mercy to Christ Himself (Matthew 25:40).
And when we encounter the rich man, our instinct must not be to fawn and flatter, hoping some of his prosperity will rub off on us. We are to honor him as a man made in God's image, certainly, but we are not to show partiality. We are to warn him of the unique spiritual dangers that his wealth brings, the danger of pride, of self-reliance, and of trusting in uncertain riches rather than in the living God (1 Timothy 6:17). We are to call him to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for himself the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that he may take hold of that which is truly life (1 Timothy 6:18-19).
This proverb paints a bleak picture of the world. But we are postmillennialists. We believe that the gospel is the power of God for salvation, and that this salvation is not just for souls in the sweet by-and-by, but for the transformation of cultures and societies in the here and now. The kingdom of God is leaven in the lump of the world, and it is our task to live out the values of that kingdom so faithfully, so robustly, that the world's loveless calculus is shamed and, over time, overturned.
The world says the poor man is hated. The gospel says he is blessed, for his is the kingdom of heaven. The world says the rich have many lovers. The gospel says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Let us therefore resolve to live by the gospel's strange and glorious logic, and not by the sad, predictable, and sinful logic of the world. Let us be the kind of people whose friendship is not for sale, and whose love is not determined by a man's bank account, but by the infinite value stamped upon him by his Creator.