James Talarico, the Texas Democrat running for Senate and self-styled Presbyterian seminarian, has decided the New Testament is a policy brief for Medicare expansion. At a church town hall in DeSoto on July 20, he told the crowd that Jesus spent most of His time healing the sick, not preaching or teaching. Therefore, according to Talarico, government must guarantee health coverage through a public option. He leaned on Matthew 25: judgment comes by feeding the hungry, healing the sick, welcoming the stranger, and visiting the prisoner. Healthcare, he declared, is a human right, not a privilege. Finish Obama’s work.
It is a tidy little sermon for the progressive base. It is also a basic misreading of the text.
Contrary to this man child’s assertion there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that gives you the right to steal another person‘s labor. That is exactly what Healthcare for all does. https://t.co/TNh3SlFAHT
— Stacey (@ScotsFyre) August 2, 2026
What Jesus Actually Did
Jesus healed the sick. The Gospels record dozens of miracles: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised. These were not routine medical interventions. They were signs of the Kingdom of God breaking into the world, demonstrations of divine authority, often linked to faith and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus did not open clinics, draft regulations, or petition Rome for a single-payer system. He acted personally, with power no government possesses, and repeatedly pointed people back to God rather than to Caesar.
When the crowds tried to make Him a political king after the feeding of the five thousand, He withdrew. He paid the temple tax and told His followers to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s—and unto God what is God’s. He never expanded Caesar’s portfolio to include charity.
Government is not charity.
Jesus was talking about charity.
Hope this helps!! https://t.co/5a9KVSfBo5
— RBe (@RBPundit) August 2, 2026
Matthew 25 Is Not a Budget Resolution
Matthew 25:31-46 is the parable of the sheep and the goats. The King separates people according to how they treated “the least of these”—the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner. The acts are personal: “I was sick and you looked after me.” The judgment falls on individuals for their own conduct. There is no mention of voting for the right party, funding the right bureaucracy, or outsourcing compassion to a federal agency. The Good Samaritan stops, binds wounds, and pays the innkeeper out of his own pocket. He does not form a committee or demand the government seize the traveler’s neighbors’ money.
The New Testament consistently assigns care for the vulnerable to individuals and the church. James 1:27 defines pure religion as looking after orphans and widows in their distress. Acts shows believers selling property and sharing voluntarily. Nowhere does Scripture instruct the state to become the primary instrument of mercy. Romans 13 gives government the role of punishing evil and maintaining order. It does not deputize it as the national nurse.
The Category Error
Talarico collapses two different things. Christian charity is a personal and ecclesial duty—freely given, motivated by love, accountable to God. Government healthcare is compulsory extraction of resources through taxation, administered by distant bureaucracies, and enforced by law. One is voluntary; the other is not. One is relational; the other is systemic. Claiming that Jesus’ miraculous healings or the sheep-and-goats judgment require the second is simply reading modern progressive policy back into first-century texts that know nothing of it.
Jesus never said the measure of righteousness is the size of the entitlement state. He said the measure is how you, personally, treat the person in front of you. That is a harder standard, not an easier one. It does not let anyone off the hook by voting for a public option and calling it obedience.
Talarico is free to argue for expanded government insurance on practical or political grounds. Dressing it up as the clear demand of the New Testament is not serious biblical interpretation. It is campaign rhetoric in a clerical collar.
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