"They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do" (Galatians 2: 10). I begin with Paul's report of what he was asked to do by the church in Jerusalem as a reminder that to be asked to remember the poor is an ongoing Christian obligation.
Yet, as Bruce Longenecker makes clear in his thorough analysis of the early Christian commitment to care for the poor, it is by no means clear who the poor were that Paul was to remember. Nor was how the poor were to be remembered made fully explicit. Money was to be collected from Gentile Christians to support the church in Jerusalem, but that collection does not seem directed for the poor as such.
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