Therefore, Your Majesty, be pleased to accept my advice: “Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue.” Daniel 4:27
“I proceed now to answer some objections which are sometimes made against this duty.
Objection #1: I am in a natural condition, and if I should give to the poor, I should not do it with a right spirit, and so should get nothing by it. — To this I answer,
First, we have shown already that a temporal blessing is promised to a moral bounty and liberality. This is the way to be prospered. This is the way to increase. We find in Scripture many promises of temporal blessings to moral virtues; as to diligence in our business, to justice in our dealings, to faithfulness, to temperance. So there are many blessings promised to bounty and liberality.
Second, you may as well make the same objection against any other duty of religion. You may as well object against keeping the Sabbath, against prayer, or public worship, or against doing anything at all in religion. For while in a natural condition, you do not any of these duties with a right spirit. If you say, you do these duties because God hath commanded or required them of you, and you shall sin greatly if you neglect them, you shall increase your guilt, and so expose yourselves to the greater damnation and punishment. The same may be said of the neglect of this duty; the neglect of it is as provoking to God.
If you say that you read, and pray, and attend public worship, because that is the appointed way for you to seek salvation, so is bounty to the poor, as much as those. The appointed way for us to seek the favor of God and eternal life, is the way of the performance of all known duties, of which giving to the poor is one as much known, and as necessary, as reading the Scriptures, praying, or any other. Showing mercy to the poor does as much belong to the appointed way of seeking salvation, as any other duty whatever.
Therefore this is the way in which Daniel directed Nebuchadnezzar to seek mercy, in Daniel 4:27, “Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor.”
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) in Christian Charity or The Duty of Charity to the Poor, Explained and Enforced (1732) Section IV.
I did not recall this interaction between Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar. He was to show his repentance by his showing kindness to the oppressed, mercy to the poor.
Edwards reasons that people can choose to refuse to show mercy to those in need. He helps us see the nonsensical nature of such a decision.
We “break off our sins by righteousness” and this must be understood not as redemptive (accomplishing our salvation) but our restorative responsibility (or part of working out our salvation) .
The rewards that come with obedience follow as we take the appointed way. Will you take it? That’s entirely up to you. With Edwards, I see it as a duty that brings life and blessing.