The God Who Sees the Poor (Proverbs 17:5)
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Proverbs 17:5
Whoever mocks the poor insults his Maker;
he who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished.
Recently I have been a traveling man, and I have been quite struck by the prominence homelessness has in our society. But maybe even more so, I’m struck by how the homed respond and treat the homeless. They ignore them. Pretend and act as if they do not exist.
To me that is the greatest mockery. Not a “haha you are poor and I’m not” kind of mockery, but one that treats the impoverished as if they are lesser than life. As if you can’t get near them or touch them or interact with them. And it makes me so mad. And I get even more mad when I follow suit!
I can name a few instances recently where I have closed my heart off to a brother in need. And the Bible says “...if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?” (1 John 3:17).
Because here’s the truth: to mock or ignore the poor is to insult God, because every person bears His image.
Whether or not you give a dollar isn’t the point. The deeper issue is: do we see them? Do we recognize their humanity — or do we shield ourselves from discomfort by pretending they aren’t there?
And that’s not just a failure of manners — it’s a failure of theology. Because the image of God isn’t something people earn through stability or success. It’s theirs by birth, by breath. When we turn away, we’re not just turning from a person — we’re turning from the One who made them.
The verse continues: “...he who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished.”
One commentator says: “He who is pleased to hear of the misfortune of another will…in the course of God’s just government, have his own multiplied”.
Of course this should never be the life of a Christian. We are called to “rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).
And Jesus himself tells a story about this. A man is beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. Two religious men walk by — they see him, but they pass. Then comes a Samaritan — an outsider. He sees, stops, binds the wounds, pays the cost. That, Jesus says, is a neighbor.
You see, the priest and Levite weren’t openly cruel. They didn’t mock with words. But their silence, their distance, was a kind of insult. A refusal to see. And that’s what Proverbs warns us about.
The gospel calls us into a different way — one marked by active mercy, because we’ve received mercy. When I was spiritually bankrupt, Jesus didn’t pass me by. He came near. He healed. He gave. He saw me. And now, by his Spirit, he invites us to do the same — not to earn his love, but because we already have it.
So our response to the poor isn’t ultimately a test of our compassion — it’s a reflection of his. We love because he first loved us. We draw near because he drew near. The more we see what Jesus has done for us — how he saw us in our poverty and came with healing and mercy — the more we become people who see others the same way.
Where’s your heart today? Who have you passed by? And what might it look like, today, to stop, to see, to move toward someone with the mercy you've received?
Let’s pray.
