He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker.
Oppression of the poor a reproach to their Maker
Every man acting his part in his social capacity is “a spectacle.” Society is an organisation of rational creatures, acting together for some good. Society is a commonwealth of human nature in close connection with God. And so every man becomes his “brother’s keeper.”
I. Human nature, as involving a crime--“oppressing the poor.”
1. By political injustice. When they have no proper organ for expressing their wants, or have a voice in the representation of their country, or a free agency in all the enactments of their country.
2. By social neglect. When the state, as a body, allows vast masses of accumulating distress and ignorance and misery to grow up around it.
3. By mental debasement. Real, true, solid Christian education consists in three things--in giving the mind great truths, in imparting to the mind great motives, in the bestowment of great principles.
II. The consequence--the maker is reproached. The poor cannot but think ill of God, when society, which assumes to be His arrangement, presses so heavily upon them. (R. Montgomery, M.A.)
Godliness and humanity
Piety and philanthropy are essentially one. Wherever there is piety or godliness, there is philanthropy. Philanthropy is the offspring of all true religion. The text teaches--
I. That inhumanity is ungodliness. There is a great deal of inhumanity in the world, the poor have to endure a great deal of “oppression.” Superior force is exerted to exact their labours for the most inadequate remuneration, and thus to “grind their faces.” All this oppression of the poor is a reproach of God; he who does it “reproacheth his Maker.” He reproaches his Maker--
1. By disregarding that identity of nature with which our Maker has endowed all classes.
2. By disregarding those laws which our Maker has enjoined concerning the poor (Leviticus 25:35-36; Deuteronomy 15:11).
II. True humanity is godliness. “He that honoureth Him, hath mercy on the poor.” He that honoureth God, by loving Him supremely, and serving Him, will have mercy on the poor. There is, it is true, a fickle, sentimental, natural mercifulness for the poor, which has no connection with godliness, but this is not true humanity. True humanity is that which sympathises with man, as the offspring of God, the victim of moral evil, the child of immortality, and which consecrates itself in the Spirit of Christ to ameliorate his woes and redeem his soul, and this is godliness in its practical development (Isaiah 58:6-7). (Homilist.)