Ordinary People

How we deal with ‘ordinary’ people says a lot about us:

I am an ordinary guy. And you might be an ordinary guy or gal. There is nothing all that special about us and we just go about our daily routines. The world does not know about us and very few folks care about us. But in this fallen world, there is special honour and attention paid to all sorts of VIPs: the rulers, the movers and shakers, the elites, the Hollywood set, the rockstars, the top athletes, the glamorous, the rich and famous, and so on.

Thankfully we Christians know that God has a very different view of things. He sees us all as being special and worthy of attention. That is because we are all made in his image and we are all deserving of being treated with respect and dignity.

God is fully aware of each and every one of us and he treats us as unique and special individuals, and not some amorphous social mass. Indeed, he created us all as different and unique individuals, so he does not treat us as those coming off a cookie-cutter assembly line.

Reading through Scripture we see how often not just God, but great men and women of God, were willing to mix and have close relationships with ‘ordinary’ people. They had no problems in hob-nobbling with the hoi polloi. They went out of their way to be with those who were not recognised or cared about by the world.

The prophets of old were like that. Jesus was like that. The early disciples were like that. And we believers are to be like that as well. While we might be thrilled to meet and greet a Hollywood celeb, or a tennis champion, or a member of the Royal family, we should be just as eager to treat all we come across as being special and worthy of our time and attention.

Elisha, the widow, and no ordinary people

There are different ways in which I can go on to discuss all this. Let me do so by means of one familiar biblical story and some commentary. And allow me a brief preface to this. I am a big fan of biblical commentaries, and I have especially loved the more academic and scholarly critical commentaries. I have many hundreds of these, and will keep getting them.

But over recent years I have come to quite like good expository commentaries. The many sermons of Martyn Lloyd-Jones turned into book form come to mind here of course. And two sets of these sorts of commentaries I have praised before: the Preaching the Word series (Crossway), and the Reformed Expository Commentary series (P&R). See a write-up here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2020/12/03/on-expository-commentaries/

In that former series are 2 volumes on 1 and 2 Samuel by John Woodhouse. But here I want to focus on his two volumes on 1 and 2 Kings. His volume on 1 Kings appeared in 2018. The 22 chapters of that biblical book are covered in 800 pages by Woodhouse. I have used his commentary often, as in this piece: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2022/04/13/difficult-bible-passages-1-kings-31/

And his new volume on 2 Kings has just come out this year. Again, 800 pages are used to cover the 25 chapters of 2 Kings. As I was reading through his new commentary, I was quite impressed about what he said when he was discussing the life of the prophet Elisha.

So here I will quote from what he says about Elisha’s encounter with the troubled widow in 2 Kings 4:1-7. The story is this:

Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord, but the creditor has come to take my two children to be his slaves.” And Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me; what have you in the house?” And she said, “Your servant has nothing in the house except a jar of oil.” Then he said, “Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not too few. Then go in and shut the door behind yourself and your sons and pour into all these vessels. And when one is full, set it aside.” So she went from him and shut the door behind herself and her sons. And as she poured they brought the vessels to her. When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” And he said to her, “There is not another.” Then the oil stopped flowing. She came and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your sons can live on the rest.”

Woodhouse begins his comments this way:

The accounts of the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament are remarkable in many ways. One is the amount of space given to Jesus’s dealings with “ordinary” people. The greatest man who has ever lived clearly cared about the poor, outcast, and troubled individuals whom he encountered.

 

This is curious. Biographies of great figures do not usually give a great deal of attention to encounters with “insignificant” people. We are unlikely to find an account of Julius Caesar’s life with a lot of space given to how he dealt with powerless, unimportant individuals.

 

I have marked the words “ordinary” and “insignificant” because it is clear from the records that this is not how Jesus regarded such people. Again and again he gave them his attention. He listened to them. He helped them.

 

Mind you, my category of powerless and low-status people is problematic. Jesus was not a social activist who cared only for the downtrodden. He did not avoid the wealthy and influential. Think about his dealings with Nicodemus, “a ruler of the Jews” (John 3:1-21), the young man who “had great possessions” (Matthew 19:16-22), and Jairus, “one of the rulers of the synagogue” (Mark 5:22-43). I am simply drawing attention to the way in which the troubles of those without status or wealth were never dismissed as beneath him or unworthy of his attention. Indeed this aspect of Jesus’s treatment of people gained him a reputation as one who “eats with” and is “a friend of” “tax-collectors and sinners” (see Matthew 9:11; 11:19; cf. Luke 7:34, 39; 15:1, 2; 19:7). This was not meant as a compliment. (p. 101)

He continues:

And yet in this humble kindness Jesus was like his God and Father. Many of Jesus’s encounters with powerless, troubled individuals were the occasions for a mighty work by Jesus. He gave sight to the blind, strength to the lame, hearing to the deaf, and life to the dead. In Jesus the power of God magnified his kindness, compassion, and love toward ordinary individuals.

 

This aspect of the New Testament Gospels has a significant antecedent. The Old Testament stories of Elijah, and even more so the one who came after him, Elisha, include a surprising number of stories of the prophets’ encounters with “ordinary” individuals. These prophets were major players in the political life of Israel, confronting kings with their wicked ways and proclaiming the word of the Lord to the nation’s leaders at times of crisis. We have seen this most recently in 2 Kings 3. However, the record of their lives is also marked by stories of their dealings with suffering, “ordinary” individuals. Elijah met the widow of Zarephath, brought God’s provision for her in the drought, and prayed for her son (1 Kings 17:8-24). He also stepped in after the event to deliver God’s word of condemnation to Ahab and Jezebel for their unjust and scandalous treatment of one of his citizens, Naboth (1 Kings 21:17-24).

 

In 2 Kings 4-8:6 we find a series of stories about Elisha’s dealings with powerless people facing various troubles. The sudden movement from Elisha’s very public role in the major military campaign of chapter 3 to these stories of individual need is striking…. (pp. 101-102)

Toward the end of his chapter he says this about Elisha and about the widow:

Like the accounts of Jesus’s dealings with vulnerable people, the response of Elisha (the man of God) to the widow is a wonderful example and picture of the extravagant kindness of God. In our weakness and inadequacy, the story of this widow reminds us of the powerful kindness of God. He cares for us (see 1 Peter 5:7).

 

The story of the widow also presents a model of discipleship. She saw herself, like her husband, as a servant of the man of God. No doubt she, like her husband, “feared the Lord.” She brought her need to the man of God, listened to his word, and trusted and obeyed him. And she received more than she had asked for.

 

Christian believer, watch this woman closely. Follow her example, and just as she found the Lord’s provision surpassed anything she could possibly have hoped for, so you will find – as you come to the Lord Jesus, listen to his word, and trust and obey him – that the Lord is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). (p. 107)

There are no ordinary people. Or as Francis Schaeffer once put it in a sermon, there are “no little people”. See my discussion of this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/05/02/on-christian-leadership/

And the words of C. S. Lewis can also be highlighted here. As he said in a sermon called “The Weight of Glory” delivered at Oxford on June 8, 1942:

It may be possible for each of us to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden, of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

Please keep these truths in mind the next time you deal with the postman, a fellow motorist, or the local checkout chick.

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