“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.” - Matthew 5:3
This is the first of the nine macarisms, or blessings. In the strangest twist of events, Jesus is declaring that the insiders of His kingdom are not the Jews who have been above average in their Torah observance. They aren’t necessarily the Bible study filler-outters, the choir directors, the mission trippers. Neither are they the wealthy elite who don’t really need God because they’ve figured out how to make life work on their own terms.
No, Jesus says the poor in spirit are the insiders, those who are acutely aware of their inability to measure up, who know their need for God across the board. Interestingly, Luke’s Gospel simply says “the poor” are blessed, creating a bit of dispute around what Jesus means here. But I don’t think we have to choose between physical poverty and spiritual poverty. Both conditions can put us in prime position to experience the wealth of Christ’s kingdom because both conditions typically lead us to the end of ourselves.
I cannot claim to have ever lived in poverty, but my first several years in Nashville were—how shall I put this?—lean. I was a struggling musician on every front. There was at least one month when my landlord let me live rent free, and this was not for lack of my working at several tasks outside of trying to become famous. I was a fence-staining, lawn-mowing, garage-cleaning worker for whoever would have me. My college friends were all back in Virginia crushing it in politics or banking, getting married, and building brick homes. I was on a sinking vessel otherwise known as the music industry and, by middle-class standards, “poor.” I was not just financially so but equally struggling on the continuum of well-being.
During these years in particular, I discovered the reverse nature of the Beatitudes. As one clever thinker says about them, “Jesus here takes us through the sound barrier, where things begin to work backwards.”6 In other words, those in the most unblessed conditions are the ones Jesus describes as thriving because of His promise that the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Ironically, the poor in spirit (the ones who have little of what the world values) possess the belongings the rich in spirit (the ones who seemingly have everything) can’t acquire.
During this several-year stretch when I experienced this irony, I met Christ in a way I had never before known Him. If you’ve lived on this fallen earth long enough, you know what I mean. It’s those times when we lose our job, can’t pay our bills, fail at a dream, or face abandonment by a loved-one—and we don’t know what to do. Being poor in spirit can also mean reaching the top of our game and discovering we’re hauntingly unfulfilled. No matter how we arrive there, it often takes becoming “poor” in the world’s kingdom to understand what it means to inherit the true wealth of the kingdom of heaven.
In ancient times the materially poor had only God as their refuge. The term poor had taken on spiritual significance.7 Like when David said of himself, “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him from all his troubles” (Ps. 34:6). Or more significantly, when Jesus interpreted the prophet Isaiah’s hope for the poor as being about Himself, “He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18; Isa. 61:1).
For the ancient listener, this first beatitude didn’t come out of the blue. To be poor and know God’s favor was certainly in keeping with Old Testament values and prophecies. The radical part was that the poor in spirit were suddenly the flourishing ones because Jesus was bestowing His kingdom to them. This must have felt like the other side of the sound barrier for Jesus’s followers. It should feel like that for us, too.
In the strangest turn of events, it is the undeserving in need of grace for whom the King is holding open the door to His kingdom. The humble are surpassing the self-righteous and self-reliant on their way inside.
So, dear one, take heart in your struggle and hold your head high in the places where you tend to feel low. To be poor in spirit is to know the riches of God. It’s to know the kingdom of heaven that is yours in Christ.
Excerpt taken from The Blessed Life by Kelly Minter, B & H Publishing Group, Nashville TN. Copyright © 2023 Kelly Minter. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
Photo Credit: © Getty Images/Suwaree Tangbovornpichet
