The Litmus Test of Righteousness Text: Proverbs 14:21
Introduction: The Vertical and the Horizontal
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is a divine manual for skillful living in the world that God made. It does not give us abstract platitudes or sentimental fluff. It gives us the hard-nosed reality of how the world actually works under the sovereign hand of God. And one of the central themes of this practical wisdom is that you cannot separate your relationship with God from your relationships with other people. You cannot claim to love God whom you have not seen while despising your neighbor whom you have seen. It is a package deal.
Our modern world is full of people who want to do just that. We have the piously religious who are fastidious in their private devotions but who are absolute terrors to their family, their employees, or the waitress at the diner. On the other side, we have the secular humanists who talk a great game about loving humanity in the abstract but who cannot stand actual human beings. Both are attempting to sever the horizontal from the vertical. They want to either have a relationship with God that makes no demands on how they treat others, or a relationship with others that is untethered from the God who defines what love and justice actually are.
Proverbs will have none of it. The wisdom of God is holistic. It governs all of life, from the king on his throne to the janitor in the hallway, from the prayers in your closet to the transactions in the marketplace. And this proverb before us today is a sharp, two-edged diagnostic tool. It cuts right to the heart of the matter. It presents us with a stark antithesis, a choice between two ways of living that reveal the true state of our souls. It is a spiritual litmus test. Do you want to know if you are walking in sin or in blessing? Look at how you treat your neighbor, particularly the poor one.
The Text
"He who despises his neighbor sins, But how blessed is he who is gracious to the poor." (Proverbs 14:21)
The Sin of Contempt (v. 21a)
The first half of the proverb lays down a foundational principle of biblical ethics.
"He who despises his neighbor sins..."
Let us not glide over these words. First, who is our neighbor? As Jesus made abundantly clear in the parable of the Good Samaritan, your neighbor is anyone God has placed in your path. It is not limited to the person who lives next door, or someone who looks like you, votes like you, or shops at the same stores as you. Your neighbor is the person you are interacting with right now. It is the person you work with, the person in front of you in line, the person who cuts you off in traffic. Every human being is your neighbor because every human being is made in the image of God.
Now, what does it mean to "despise" him? The Hebrew word here carries the idea of contempt, of looking down on someone, of treating them as insignificant or worthless. This is not necessarily about overt, screaming hatred, though it certainly includes that. This is about the posture of the heart. It is the sneer, the rolling of the eyes, the dismissive wave of the hand. It is the pride that says, "I am better than you. Your thoughts, your needs, your very existence, are beneath my notice." It is the sin of the Pharisee who thanked God he was not like other men. This is the sin of treating an image-bearer of the infinite God as though he were a piece of trash on the sidewalk.
And the verdict from God is blunt: this is sin. To despise your neighbor is not a personality quirk. It is not a minor foible. It is sin. It is a transgression of the law of God. Which law? The royal law, as James calls it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (James 2:8). Contempt is the polar opposite of love. Love seeks to build up; contempt seeks to tear down. Love honors the image of God in another; contempt defaces it. And because God is the one whose image is being defaced, the sin is ultimately against Him. As the Scripture says elsewhere, "Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker" (Proverbs 14:31). When you look down on your neighbor, your quarrel is not ultimately with him, but with the God who made him.
The Blessing of Grace (v. 21b)
The proverb then pivots from the negative to the positive, from the way of sin to the way of blessing.
"...But how blessed is he who is gracious to the poor."
Here we see the contrast in sharp relief. The one who despises his neighbor sins, but the one who is gracious to the poor is blessed. Notice the specific focus here. The neighbor is now identified as the poor. Why? Because the poor are the easiest to despise. They cannot benefit you. They cannot advance your career. They cannot return the favor. Your treatment of the poor is therefore the purest test of your character. It reveals whether you see people as means to your own ends, or as ends in themselves, as creatures deserving of honor and grace because they are God's.
And the action required is to be "gracious." This is more than just tossing a few coins in a cup. It means to show favor, to be kind, to be merciful. It is a disposition of open-handed generosity. This is the heart of biblical charity. It is not the impersonal, bureaucratic, soul-crushing machinery of the welfare state, which robs the giver of his joy and the receiver of his dignity. This is personal, cheerful, and wise assistance. It is the diaconal ministry of the church, where help is given in the context of relationship, accountability, and the gospel.
And the result of this way of life is blessedness. The Hebrew word is often translated "happy," but it is much deeper than that. This is not a fickle, subjective feeling. This is objective, covenantal blessedness. It is the state of being right with God and therefore being rightly oriented to His world. When you are gracious to the poor, you are aligning yourself with the economy of God. You are acting in accordance with how reality is actually structured. God's world is designed to bless the generous and punish the contemptuous. This is not karma; this is covenant. God has promised to honor those who honor Him by caring for the people He made.
Conclusion: The Gospel Antithesis
So, we are left with two paths, set side-by-side. The path of contempt, which is sin. And the path of grace, which is blessedness. There is no middle ground. You are on one path or the other. Your treatment of the people around you, especially those who can offer you nothing in return, is a dead giveaway as to which path you are on.
This proverb drives us, as all of Scripture does, to the gospel of Jesus Christ. For in the gospel, we see this antithesis in its ultimate form. We were the poor. We were spiritually destitute, with nothing to offer God. We were His neighbors, but we had despised Him, treated Him with contempt, and sinned against Him. We deserved His wrath.
And what did He do? He was gracious to us, the poor. The Lord Jesus Christ, who was infinitely rich, became poor for our sakes, so that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). He did not despise us in our filth. He entered into it. He came to us, touched us, and healed us. He was the ultimate Good Samaritan. He showed us the ultimate grace. He was despised and rejected by men, so that we might be accepted and blessed by God.
Therefore, our graciousness to the poor is never a way to earn God's favor. It is always a response to the grace we have already received. Because God has been gracious to us in Christ, we are now free to be gracious to others. We love because He first loved us. We give because He has given everything for us. The litmus test of this proverb does not determine whether God will love you. It reveals whether you have understood and received the love that God has already shown you in His Son. So, look to your neighbor. Look to the poor. In your response to them, you will find a mirror reflecting the true condition of your own heart before God.