Matthew 5:3—Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Well-intentioned people have taken the first beatitude Jesus preached in Mat.5:3, and determined that God’s will was that they be poor. Monks in monasteries have sworn vows of poverty forsaking all but minimal essentials by which to live. The belief is that possessions interfere with becoming Christ-like. Ironically, one can achieve poverty just as one can achieve wealth. But was Jesus really calling people to be materially deprived?
Nowhere in the Bible does God teach that people should be destitute (without possessions). Moses taught the Israelites, “However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, He will richly bless you” (Deuteronomy 15:4). The Bible says God “sends poverty and wealth; He humbles and He exalts” (1Samuel 2:7). Indeed He “secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy” (Psalm 140:12). But poverty in the Bible was primarily the result of not obeying God’s laws and suffering the consequences. In the New Testament, neither wealth nor poverty was the goal but rather contentment with what one had. So what does Jesus mean by poor in spirit?
King David wrote, “this poor man called, and the Lord heard him; He saved him out of all his troubles . . . Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me” (Psa.34:6, 40:17). Isaiah said to God, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:5). Poor in spirit indicates a person’s abject humility before an Almighty God. It is a healthy sense of inadequacy and need for the Lord. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones states,
It means a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and of self-reliance. It means a consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God. It is nothing, then, that we can produce; it is nothing that we can do in ourselves. It is just this tremendous awareness of our utter nothingness as we come face to face with God.
Jesus says the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor in spirit. What a fantastic call for povility—the blessed state of humbly recognizing my inadequacy before my Lord; His awesomeness my neediness. Something to think about . . . in
Inspiration
