“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
—Matthew 5:3
The word “blessed” conveys the idea of happiness. Not simply a giddy kind of happiness. It carries the idea of being whole.
We’ve already touched on John the Baptist and Jesus’ general message of repentance and moving toward the coming Kingdom of God. The Sermon on the Mount shows us what kingdom life looks like, and it opens with the Beatitudes, the first of which establishes the entry point. It is tied to repentance in that it requires us to recognize our spiritual poverty—our need. In other words, we come with nothing.
We don’t like to talk about sin. Today, the word is considered demeaning and old-school. While we all know it deep down, we still refuse to recognize that there is something wrong with us, something broken deep within. This does not diminish our dignity as human beings. It simply acknowledges what is already there.
Instead, we spend most of our energy trying to cover it up while pretending that nothing is wrong.
As Tim Keller puts it in Encounters with Jesus:
We can’t understand the joy Jesus is going to bring unless we understand sin. We must understand that we are stained, that we need to be purified, that we have guilt and shame, and we need to be rescued from it—not conned into believing it doesn’t exist.
And then again:
You actually do know deep down that something is really wrong with you. Why are you working so hard? Why do you need to be right all the time? Why do you worry so much about how you look? It’s because you know there is something wrong and you’re trying to purify yourself, prove yourself, cover it up.
It’s the first thing Adam and Eve did when they realized they had messed up.
Why else do we try so hard to perform, if not to prove our worth? Could it be that, by filling our schedules and keeping our kids busy with activities or screens, we are avoiding the chaos in our lives and homes?
To understand what it means to be poor in spirit, let’s look at Luke 18:9–14:
Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else: “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector.
“The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’
“I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
The Pharisee, in refusing to acknowledge his poverty of spirit, had no other choice but to compare himself to others in order to lift himself up. There is no better way to avoid the chaos in our own hearts than by pointing a finger at the obvious chaos in the lives of those around us.
The tax collector, on the other hand, humbly recognized his spiritual poverty and his need for mercy. Don’t mistake this for denigrating our humanity. This is not self-contempt. It is awareness and honesty.
It is the only way to return home justified. Whole. At peace. Happy. It’s the only way to remove the need to perform and outdo others. It’s the only way to be free.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
When we come to Jesus, we don’t simply acknowledge him; we rest in him. We rest in what he has done, freeing us from the weight of performing and exhausting ourselves in an attempt to hide what is inside.