Blessed are the Poor in Spirit!
Tom Cole April 7th, 2009
Jesus says “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. We can see immediately that Jesus cannot be saying that the poor are rich and prosperous, blessed and full of unending joy right now, at this minute. I believe that the promised blessings of the eight beatitudes do have some fulfillment in this life, but the greatest fulfillment is in the Kingdom to come; when Jesus returns and rules on this earth as King of kings and Lord of lords.
The word that Jesus chose for “poor” in the Sermon on the Mount was one of two words the Greek language had for the poor. The first is “penes”, and speaks of the laboring poor. This group of people would work for their daily bread. They would have nothing left over at the end of the day to save and hope for a better future. This is a type of poor that is even difficult for us in the West to contemplate. The people that Christ spoke to (even the wealthiest) did not have running water, electricity, toilets and relatively safe water to drink and food to eat. The “penes poor” would have only enough to buy bread and drink for their family each day as it came. But Jesus did not use this word for poor. Instead, he chose the Greek word “ptochos”. This word means to crouch, bend down under a burden, to beg or to be absolutely destitute. This was a person devoid of any hope, let alone their daily bread. This person was at the complete mercy of those they bowed low to, begging for a scrap in order to survive. This is who Jesus says we must become. I believe that this Beatitude gave hope to the poorest of the poor, but it is also exhorting each of us to be in a place of spiritual poverty as well.
Spiritual poverty is recognizing that we are frail and weak; that outside of His grace we are capable of great darkness. In fact, even within His grace we will fail. We are not overly fond of being known in our weakness. But God is asking for us to be known by Him and by others; even in our weakness.
We must come to the Father with empty hands. We cannot think that we have anything worthy of offering to him. We must bow low and with upturned hands, receive from Him that which He desires to give us. The Eastern Orthodox church offers the Jesus Prayer to those who don’t know how or what to pray. The pray is this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This is the prayer taken from Luke 18. The Pharisee stands in the house of prayer and thanks God he is not a sinner like the tax-collector he sees bowing down in the temple. The tax-collector beats his chest and bows low and cannot look up to God and says “Lord, be merciful unto me, a sinner”. Jesus says that this man went away justified. He understood his true condition in relation to God. We are all destitute and without hope outside of the grace of God. His grace enables us to “come boldly to His throne of grace in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
Jesus promises “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. The literal translation, and one that Dallas Willard and others agree is the right one, is the “kingdom of the heavens”. It’s a plural word with greater promise. Our reward is not promised in this life. Our reward is in the Kingdom that is yet to come. When we are faithful to Him in the face of adversity, poverty of spirit, and even poverty of life, He will reward us with the Kingdom in the age to come. We will rule and reign with Him. All too often we think that this life is what really matters. But I’m telling you, the age to come is an eternal one. How we respond to things now will affect our position and fulfillment in the age to come. So ask the Lord to cause you to bow low; to make you poor in spirit, so that you might have a great reward in the Kingdom to come!
