Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Serving the Least of These Through Our Daily Work
Serving the Least of These Through Our Daily Work
Jul 18, 2025 7:48 PM

When discussing the Christian call to service, we often hear references to Matthew 25, where Jesus speaks of a King who separates “sheep” from “goats” –those who are willing from those who refuse.

To the sheep, the King offers the following:

Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

To the goats, the King says, “Depart from me,you whoare cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and hisangels.

It’s all very hearty, but the final line is what seems to stick in popular discourse: “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

It leads to a rather powerful tilting of the human order:Service to others is also service to God. Yet far too often we limit our view of such service, confining it to the realms of private charity, church ministry, personal relationships, or political activism. But although these are areas where the parable certainly applies, in his book,Work: The Meaning of Your Life, Lester DeKoster adds another realm to the mix.

Work is service to others, he argues, and thus, work is service to God.He interprets Matthew 25 accordingly:

The Lord does not specify when or where the good deeds he blesses are done, but it now seems to me that Jesus is obviously speaking of more than a vocational behavior or pastime kindnesses. Why? Because he hinges our entire eternal destiny upon giving ourselves to the service of others—and that can hardly be a pastime event. In fact, giving our selves to the service of others, as obviously required by the Lord, is precisely what the central block of life that we give to working turns out to be!

Is the Lord talking here about work? Yes, e to think so.

After a closer look at the textual implications, DeKoster offers a series of simple applications to demonstrate the how behind the what.

The following lists are pulled directly from mentary, which proceeds according to the specific necessities Jesus speaks to. In the book, he includes much more than these lists provide, but the lists themselves are still particularly helpful in illustrating the overarching point: opportunities for Christian service abound, and often in areas you least expect.

1. I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.

“God himself, hungering in the hungry, is served by all those who work in:

agriculturewholesale or retail foodskitchens or restaurantsfood transportation or the mass production of food itemsmanufacturing of implements used in agriculture or in any of the countless food-related industriesinnumerable support services and enterprises that together make food production and distribution possible

2.I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.

“The Lord is ‘thirsty’ wherever water is needed and is served by all who knit the sleeve of civilization by working in:

municipal or private water servicespurifying watersexploration for or desalinization of waterwell-drilling, pipe-laying, plumbing installation, or maintenancemanufacturing or servicing water-related equipmentworking in the countless water-related goods and service industries

3.I needed clothes and you clothed me.

“Here Jesus is saying: I was in all who need shelter and clothing, and youare working in:

textilesbuilding and repairing of dwellingssales of clothing and shelter itemsfire or police or military protection of propertyreal estate and insurancethe (who knows how many) goods and service occupations related to shelter fort”

4.I was sick and you looked after me.

“Human health thrives on the boundary between the physical and the mental. And the Lord says, ‘I was sick,’ and you work in:

medical servicescounseling, visiting, healingthe making or selling of medicines or in related researchhealth insuranceserving others through working in any of the numerous physical or mental health-related occupations”

5.I was a stranger and you invited me in.

“‘I was a stranger,’ the Lord says, for all who munion munication, and you work:

for a panyat delivering the mailin the churchat keeping cars moving, roads open, mercial means of travel runningin the media and on TVin any of the innumerable avenues of service that keep people munication with each other and the world”

6.I was in prison and you came to visit me.

“God chooses to be found also among social ‘outcasts’…and you work in:

social services, professional or voluntarylaw or the courts on behalf of justiceeducationpolitics and governmentproviding employmenthuman rehabilitationany of the liberating services that so many desperately need”

Though these lists are extensive, they are not exhaustive. God is knitting an elaborate and diverse civilization through the work human hands, and more importantly, is changing hearts through the process, calling us to view and approach our work as the sacrifice it was designed to be.

“To work is to love—both God and neighbor,” DeKoster writes. “For the ‘love’ required by the Bible is the service of God through the service of man. And because God wills to be served through our service of others, he provides us with civilization to facilitate our working at our best.”

The future of civilization should be oriented around Christian love, but if we remember Jesus’ initial words, this is ultimately about the final judgement, i.e. the path to eternity. “The parable is teaching us that wewill ‘see’ at last what day-by-day living is all about,” DeKoster writes. “It’s a matter ing sheep or ing goat. That is the meaning of time spent on thejob and of time spent on all else.”

In striving to be sheep, then, let us not confine our willingness and obedience to the spare hours of the day, but rather expand our imaginations to the full web of economic interaction and cultural engagement. The scope and range of Christian service is deep and wide, and the least of these are probably closer than you think.

[product sku=”1192″]

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Stop Apologizing for Our Liberties
You cannot apologize to a fanatic, says Lee Harris. It only serves to convince him that he was right all along: The last few weeks have witnessed a peculiar and disturbing spectacle: An American administration that has spent a great deal of time and energy apologizing for our liberties—in particular, for what many would regard as the foundation of all our other liberties, namely, the freedom to express our minds as we see fit. This signature freedom, of which Americans...
Counting the Profit of a Third Party Choice
Joe Carter recently highlighted the discussion at Ethika Politika, the journal of the Center for Morality in Public Life, about the value of (not) voting, particularly the suggestion by Andrew Haines that in some cases there is a moral duty not to vote. This morning I respond with an analysis of the consequences of not voting, ultimately arguing that one must not neglect to count the cost of abstaining to vote for any particular office. One issue, however, that I...
Rev. Sirico on Life, Work, and Human Flourishing
J.Q. Tomanek of Ignitum Today interviewed Rev. Sirico about life, work, human flourishing, and his new book, Defending the Free Market: JQ Tomanek: Back in the day, holiness was misinterpreted as a cleric or religious life thing. How can a lay Catholic practice their faith? What are some ways to sanctify our work as lay Catholics? Is “ora et labora” just a monk thing? Reverend Sirico: Yes, religious people are often tempted to e so “heavenly minded they are no...
Did 2,362 Millionaires Get Unemployment Checks in 2009? (Answer: Yes they did.)
The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a group that works exclusively for the U.S. Congress, issued a report with one of the greatest titles I’ve ever seen on a government document: Receipt of Unemployment Insurance by e Unemployed Workers (“Millionaires”) Now the first nine words are nothing special, typical policy-wonk speak. But whoever added in the word “millionaires” with scare quotes and parentheses is a genius. Most people would have been nodding off around the word “Insurance” but seeing millionaires (that’s...
How were people On Call in Culture 165 years ago?
What is so special about 1837? That was the year Abraham Kuyper was born. September 29th is his 165th birthday. So we thought we would go back to 1837 and see how people were being On Call in Culture back then. We don’t know if they were all believers on a mission to bless the world, but by seeing what was going on 165 years ago, we hope you are encouraged to engage your world in 2012! How did people...
Is it really ‘aid’ if it goes to relatively wealthy nations?
Alan Duncan, an aid minister in the UK, says his government is “forced” to hand over large amounts of money to the EU’s foreign aid budget, but has no say in how the money is spent. The problem is that much of the $2 billion+ “aid” money (one-sixth of the British budget) goes to projects such as making a Moroccan water park more eco-friendly, an art project in St. Petersburg, and building a hotel and plex in Barbados. Britain’s International...
Want to Help the Poor? Promote a Free Market in Health Care
Want to help the poor? Promote a free market in health care. That’s the argument made by John C. Goodman, author of the new book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. Timothy Dalrymple recently talked with Goodman about the best approach for restoring free-market pricing mechanisms into the market for medical care and health insurance: Aren’t there some people, however, who have little of money and lots of time, and would prefer to wait in order to receive cheaper care? There...
On Call with Dr. Pamela Casson
Dr. Pamela Casson, a pediatrician in Colorado Springs, knows what it means literally to be “On Call.” This week she shares with us in this video interview with Jon Hirst how she sees God working through her in her work with families, children and the world around her. Thank you Pamela for giving us an inside look at how you see your work as blessing the world. ...
Dodd-Frank: The Other Serious Threat
At least es at us head on. The greater legislative threat may be the one that most Americans have never heard of. Economist Scott Powell and Acton friend Jay Richards explain in a new piece in Barron’s: While Obamacare received more attention, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as Dodd-Frank after its Senate and House sponsors, … unleashed a new regulatory body, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to operate with unprecedented power. Dodd-Frank became law in...
Markets and culture: A time to play, a time to pray
Faced with the prospect of a professional athletic career, a nearly-half million dollar salary, and a perfect lady, what’s not to like? Apparently, for Grant Desme, it was the noise and unrest of the world. Can a culture of life and the noise and tumult of the marketplace co-exist? Rev. Robert Sirico, reflecting on this, says they can, so long as it is not a place where: [C]apitalism…places the human person at the mercy of blind economic forces…What we propose,...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved