When Jesus says things like “to the extent that you did it for one of the least of these my brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me” and “whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me” and when John writes things like “the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen,” they are certainly using rhetorical devices to create moral instruction. But they might also be pointing to a metaphysical fact: If in God we live and move and exist, then loving people is literally loving God—and not just because we’re doing what He told us to (although very much that), but because other people are literally part of God (and some of us, at least, part of Christ).