(Isaiah 66:1-2; Matthew 5:3, Philippians 3:4b-12)
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” What do we make of that? What does it mean?
One common answer is to note that the parallel to this verse in Luke just says, “Blessed are the poor,” and then to read Matthew accordingly: “Blessed in spirit are the poor.” In the Roman tradition, this is an argument for monasticism—only those who take a vow of poverty have this blessing. In some strands of Protestantism, it becomes a call to social justice, or a promise of material prosperity for the poor.
The problem is, the idea that material poverty is a spiritual advantage isn’t biblical. Rather, we see Scripture—and especially prophets like Isaiah—using the language of the poor to refer to those who are humbly dependent on God. Thus Isaiah 66:2 reads, “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is poorand contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” The word is the one used in the Law of a person who has lost the family land, but our English versions translate it “humble,” because they understand that Isaiah’s not talking about what you have in your bank account; and so it is with Jesus here.
Taking this as a spiritual statement, some have read it as a command to self-denigration. That can result in false modesty, in people going on at some length about how they’re really quite unimportant and don’t have much to contribute; these are the sort who are humble and proud of it. More seriously, you’ll sometimes see people whom God has clearly gifted for his service hesitate to use their gifts, or even turn aside from them altogether, because they think that to do so would be to put themselves forward, and to call attention to themselves in that way would be wrong.
There are two problems with this approach. One, it misunderstands humility; we’ve talked about this before, and we will again, that biblical humility has nothing to do with putting yourself down. Two, being poor in spirit isn’t about our relationships with other people—though it certainly affects them; it isn’t about what people think of us. It’s about our relationship with God, and how we understand ourselves in light of that.
You see, we all have things that we value, and things that we treasure. I’m using the word “things” quite broadly here—stuff we own and money in the bank, yes, but also family, friendships, careers, skills, reputation, pleasures. By our natural human inclination, we think of these things as ours, and we build our lives on them. We make our major decisions based on them—will this give me a better career, will I make more money, will I have a more enjoyable life, will my kids do better in school, and so on. We put our trust in these things, and we look to them for meaning. Even as Christians, we do this. When we say we’re putting our trust in God, what that often really means is that we’re putting our trust in something we don’t currently have—new job, new relationship, good health—and we’re asking God to give it to us. Which is better than nothing, but isn’t the same as trusting God whether he gives us what we want or not.
By contrast, look what Paul says in Philippians 3. He lays out an abbreviated version of his CV—just the highlights are enough to tell you that he had a lot of reason to be impressed with himself. He was a Jew, one of God’s chosen people; more than that, he wasn’t just a good Jew, he was everything a Jew ought to be. He was the kind of guy you put in the ads and the recruiting posters. And what of it? “I count all of it as filth; I’ve lost all of it, and I’m glad to see it go.” Why? “Because of the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Compared to Christ, he says, it’s all worthless.
He uses strong language in this passage; in one case, the word the NIV translates “rubbish,” he’s flat-out vulgar. No G rating for Paul. He does this to hammer his point home: all his accomplishments, all his reasons for pride, all those things he valued and in which he put his trust, he now regards as disgusting and abhorrent. Was it bad to be a Jew, or to be dedicated to keeping the law? No, but: now he has seen the Lord, he has been captured by the glory of Christ, and he understands that even the proudest moments and the greatest achievements of his life are as vile trash in comparison.
What Paul is saying here is rather like Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen declaring, “I could show you hills, in comparison with which you’d call that a valley.” Alice tells her it’s nonsense—hills and mountains point up, valleys point down—but can you imagine the sort of mountain that would actually make you say that? That’s how good and great and glorious Jesus is, that’s how much it’s worth to know him, that set beside him, even the biggest hills we can pile up look like valleys.
When we see that, that’s what it means to be poor in spirit. That’s why Jesus says in Matthew 13, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” To be poor in spirit is to find all our riches in Christ—to be so captured by his glory and greatness and goodness that we realize we have nothing that can compare. It is to live without reference to our worldly goods, seeking only to follow Jesus wherever he leads.
This is what it means to be poor in spirit; and it’s not a matter of what we have or don’t have, or of acting in a certain way, it’s a complete change in our mental and emotional assumptions. The poor in spirit are those who have seen the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord, and nothing else in life ever looks the same again. It reminds me of taking Lydia to the zoo when she was younger than Iain. We were working on teaching her some signs, including a sign for “elephant,” since there were elephants in a couple of her books; she was interested in them, but hadn’t used the sign. We got out of the car, I was carrying her, and right at the front gate was an enclosure with this huge bull elephant. She looked at it, and just looked up and up and up, and with a look of complete awe on her face, signed “elephant.” She couldn’t stop staring at it. If that for an elephant, how much more for God?
This is not our work in our lives, it’s the Holy Spirit’s doing. Our part, to borrow from Spurgeon, is to look to Jesus until we cannot look away. It’s the Spirit who opens our eyes. This underscores the truth we talked about last week, that the Sermon on the Mount is not law. If you try to turn the Beatitudes into rules to be obeyed, you’re in a bind right from the first sentence, because you cannot make yourself poor in spirit. You can’t. You can try, but it’s the spiritual equivalent of performing heart surgery on yourself. We work on our lives from the outside in; this has to happen from the inside out.
This is God’s blessing in our lives, by his grace. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is true for eternity, because this is the essential characteristic of the citizens of the kingdom of God. This is the dividing line between those who bow before Christ in love as Lord, and those who only bow because they must. But Jesus doesn’t say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, because theirs will be the kingdom of heaven,” he says, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Not just someday in the future: now. To be poor in spirit, to count all things as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord, to care more about being faithful to him than about money or career or reputation or any of the things of this world, is to live the life of the kingdom of heaven now, in the midst of all the powers of this present age.