The Poor in Spirit
1Seeing the multitudes, he went up onto the mountain. When he had sat down, his disciples came to him. 2He opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 4Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. 6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. 7Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 8Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. 10Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 11“Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
The people who were there when Jesus proclaimed the Sermon on the Mount were Jews who kept the law strictly: they kept the Sabbath and would not eat pork. But in the end this teaching is the word at the center of the spiritual life of Christians who have been saved, so you must keep it as spiritual teaching. Jesus said that when we become poor in spirit, we can hope for the kingdom of God and throw off our greed and our cravings for the world. The sad thing, though, is that if you live as one who is poor in spirit, the world will persecute you to take that faith away, just as it persecuted Jesus. Even so, when you become poor in spirit, you gain the wisdom and understanding to reflect God’s glory into the world, and you can become a holy believer who serves as a lamp and as salt. Persecuting a believer is in itself evidence that an evil spirit is setting itself against God. Even when persecution in the world makes you suffer, you must grow inwardly so as to lift up the name of God. If you lift up God’s name even while you are persecuted, it means you have matured that much in faith, and it is evidence that you believe God is alive and at work.
How should we live until we reach heaven? When a student who came first on a TV scholarship quiz program holds up the hotel vouchers and plane tickets for a trip abroad and beams, even people who have nothing to do with it smile. The student had not made a great effort just to win the quiz; the good result came from studying day by day. Just as that student rejoices with the travel voucher in hand, God wants us to receive our citizenship in the kingdom of God and be glad and happy. To be poor in spirit is not to believe in heaven only once you have seen it with your own eyes. It is to be a child who has received heaven as a gift in this world and lives gladly and joyfully, as though already living in heaven. Believing in heaven only after seeing it is a foolish faith, like Thomas’s. When you believe that heaven exists, God can give you richer grace in your everyday life. This is faith: assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen.
Colossians 1:15-17
15who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.
The passage says that all things in the world were created for Christ. If the authorities of the world that people fear — thrones and dominions, principalities and powers — were all created for Christ, then you too must think hard about how to live for Christ. When you hold on to this word and strive to live by faith in Christ, all the powers of the world become tools you use as you carry out your mission. But if you keep Christ at a distance in order to look good to authorities, thrones and rulers, you will be rejected by Christ, who created all of them. Only when you have the wisdom to judge what comes first can you receive the help of Jesus Christ, the Almighty, the King of kings.
To live in the world, believers certainly need money, health, and children who do well. But if we put life in the world ahead of God, the world can end up stealing our hearts until we live by our greed, so we must always be on guard. Jesus said that the poor in spirit receive the Kingdom of Heaven as their blessing. What, then, does it mean to be poor in spirit? The word for spirit here means the heart or the soul. To be poor in heart is to have thrown away everything that is useless. The Jews, however, had filled themselves full with the works of the law, so they probably could not understand what it meant to be poor in spirit.
To get to heaven, you must not fill your spirit with the world’s power and wealth and with human righteousness; you must fill it full with faithful trust. It is not easy to throw off greed and cravings, but if you fill yourself with faithful trust, you can have deep spiritual insight. Greed and cravings fill us naturally, by human instinct — how hard must it be to throw them off, for Jesus to say that those who do will receive heaven? For people who ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil out of greed, making the spirit poor in order to obey the word of Christ is certainly not easy.
The first thing you must do to live as one who is poor in spirit is to acknowledge that God is the owner of all things. That everything in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, was created for the glory of God means that nothing has any reason to exist except the glory of God. When you forget this, a desire to own things as your own takes hold. Do you believe that God, the owner of the universe and all things, has appointed people as stewards to look after all of it? People in the world will not acknowledge this, but you must. When they are suffering, people confess that everything they have belongs to God; yet once their prayers are answered and they have what they wanted, they stop Christ from coming into their lives and exercising his rights as their owner. It is this kind of faith that makes people pick out only the sermons they want to hear, and refuse even the word of Christ when it differs from what they think.
God freely gave the garden of Eden, which was his own, to Adam and Eve, and commanded them to obey his word. But they did not acknowledge that what was God’s belonged to God, and so they lost everything they had been given, even their lives, to Satan. In other words, they failed to see through Satan’s lie and lost the whole house the Father had given them to live in happily. So that Adam, that is, humankind, left homeless and wandering, could live in a secure home again, the Father paid the price with his own life. That price was the cross. The Father took on himself the sin of Adam, who was so unwise that he believed and followed Satan’s words over the Father’s word. Because Adam failed to look after the beautiful life God had given, God paid the price once more: that is the event in which he shed his precious blood to atone for original sin. Because Adam did not obey the word of God, Jesus came to this earth himself and died as the payment for sin. This world and all things were never humankind’s from the beginning, nor do they belong to Satan, who took them by deceiving humankind; they are God’s, and so it was God who restored them.
God will have entrusted things of the world to you as well, freely, and asked you to look after them. But have you forgotten that you are a steward? Have you torn off the owner’s name, stuck your own name on everything, and insisted that you will never give any of it back? Some people even do evil, taking other people’s lives and wealth to make what is God’s their own. That is what Satan did to Adam, so such people are the rich whose spirits are filled with what is rotten. People who need the grace of redemption cannot become God’s people if they go on living rich in spirit, unable to let go of their greed and covetousness. To be poor in spirit, you must acknowledge that your life, even your very breath, belongs to God, and only if you are ready to leave the world at any moment can you enter the heaven Jesus Christ has prepared. When I preach like this, some people now and then ask me a question. Does it mean, they ask, that if I want my children to do well at school, or work as hard as I can to be promoted at work, I cannot be poor in spirit? If they are asking whether you must do nothing but pray and live in poverty to be poor in spirit, that is not being poor in spirit; it is being lazy. There are basic things everyone must do in life. Living poor in spirit means living humbly, with the thought that nothing in this world is my possession and I am only a steward. Without money you cannot raise your children or live a proper life; you have a responsibility to help your children grow up to live rightly, and for that you certainly need money. Earning a lot of money and succeeding in the world is not wrong at all. But if you feel unhappy because you have less than other people, or lose heart because your child is no better than other children, that shows you are thinking of what you have as your own, not as a steward. The word to live as one who is poor in spirit tells you to set your hope on heaven and not to reach for more than is right; it does not tell you to leave undone even the basic things a person must do. If you work hard, know how to be content with what you have received, and devote yourself to the kingdom of God, God will entrust more to you so that you can work.
Matthew 6:20-21
20but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves don’t break through and steal; 21for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Living by God’s will means overcoming our evil human nature, keeping away from sin, and living good lives according to the word. Human effort cannot keep sin away, so only with the help of the Holy Spirit can we overcome evil thoughts and our nature. The hardest thing for a person to push out of the heart is wealth. On top of that, being told to think of what you have built up by your own effort as God’s may not even make sense to you. That is why some preachers say that giving a lot of offerings to the church is how you store up treasure in heaven’s storehouse, but that is not what this word means. This world belongs to God, and through his work of redemption Christ paid the price and bought my life, which had fallen into death, so Christ is the owner and the King. God, who has existed by himself from before eternity, created the world and all things by his word and has ruled them to this day without the slightest error. That this world has gone on being restored and healed for thousands of years without fail is itself the evidence that God is ruling it.
Genesis 1:1
1In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
If you cannot believe this verse, you will never be able to believe the word of the Bible. It is when you believe that God created the heavens and the earth that you come to believe in Christ’s atonement. The kingdom, the power and the glory, all of it, belong to Jesus Christ from the beginning, and so do the judgment and the second coming still to come. Those who first acknowledge and believe this with certainty can become believers who store up their treasure in heaven.
It is said that in Palestine people buried precious treasure by digging into the ground. Jesus saw this custom, and to make it easy for them to understand, he told them to store their treasure in heaven, because treasure buried in the ground is damaged by worms and mold. The rich did not share with the poor; they piled up wealth as much as their greed wanted and lived in fear that thieves would break in. So they built their walls higher and sealed their windows with bars to keep thieves out, and lived inside as though they had locked themselves in prison. Jesus spoke firmly to such people: however much property you have, he said, if I take your life today, you cannot be the owner of all that wealth. That is why the very thought that you are the owner and not a steward is itself sin.
The heaven Jesus spoke of has a greatness this earth cannot compare with, in its holiness that lasts forever and its worth that has no limit. The treasure you can store in heaven’s storehouse means the good works you do by faith on this earth. Good works cannot be done without sacrificing what is your own, so you must know that you are a steward, live by faith, and give. That is why the apostle Paul, in 1 Timothy 6:17-19, told the rich not to be haughty and not to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy; to do good, to be rich in good works, and to be generous. This word is the very way to store up treasure in heaven. Of course you may be afraid of having less, but if you live a good life according to the word, you will receive the blessing of being rich both in spirit and in material things.
A certain nobleman, when he went to a far country to receive a kingdom, gave ten of his servants one mina each and told them to make as much profit as they could until he came back. When the nobleman came back with his kingdom, he gave the servant who had made ten minas from one mina authority over ten cities, and the servant who had made five minas authority over five cities. This passage is about the reward that servants who obey the word receive. But one servant brought his mina wrapped in a handkerchief and said that he had done nothing because he was afraid he might lose it, and the master grew very angry, rebuked him as a wicked servant, and gave even that one mina to the servant who had ten. People who saw what the master did asked why he gave more to a man who already had ten minas, and he said that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. If that servant had not wrapped his mina in a handkerchief but had traded with it as hard as he could and lost even that, the king would still have commended him, because the king would have seen the heart that tried to do something for him. Had he understood his master’s heart and worked hard, the almighty king would not have let him be ruined. A good heart that devotes itself with a poor spirit for the glory of God is what it means to store up treasure in heaven. The servant who made ten minas fully understood that Jesus had carried the cross for him, and so he could carry out his mission with his whole life. A believer like this has a faith that looks to God alone. The servant who made ten minas knew how precious salvation is and worked hard to spread the gospel. That is why he received the blessing of one more mina. This is the heavenly reward that the faithful receive. Those who are poor in spirit serve God with all their soul, heart and mind, and care for their neighbors as they care for themselves. God does not hold back heaven and its reward from such precious children.
The blessing people want and the blessing God gives are different. The blessing people want is to pile up many possessions in the world, but the blessing God gives goes beyond the visible abundance of the body: it is the peace and rest enjoyed in the eternal world. Believers who live in the world yet hope for heaven do not need greed or cravings, because they believe God will supply everything. That is because they believe they already hold citizenship in the kingdom of God and will live forever in the dwelling God has prepared. Believers who rely on God fight the good fight by giving freely to the poor, and because they have stored their treasure in heaven, their life in the world will be at peace, like that of poor people who have nothing to guard. How could God not love such good children, and how could he not protect them? He will surely protect such believers from the evil one and from evil spirits, and send angels and people to make good surroundings for them. The new Jerusalem described in Revelation 21 is said to be so beautiful that human language cannot express it. It records that twelve angels guard the gates of heaven, full of the glory of God, that the wall is made of jasper, and that the city is made of pure gold, like clear glass. The twelve gates are pearls and the street of the city is pure gold, like transparent glass; the almighty God and the Lamb are its temple, and they light it so brightly that it needs no sun or moon, so nothing there is lacking.
You are children who will live in the new Jerusalem, full of such glory. It cannot be seen yet, but those who are poor in spirit live on this earth with joy, as if they were already living in heaven, so they do not give way to greed. You must tell the difference between doing your best and being greedy.
Colossians 3:1-3
1If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. 2Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. 3For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Jesus carried the cross, rose again, and sat down at the right hand of God so that we could live in beautiful heaven. Now all of us must stop thinking about the things of the earth, which will decay, and live with our minds on the things of heaven. The only way to enjoy such great glory even on this earth is to strive to become poor in spirit. Let me say it once more: you died on the cross with Jesus Christ, so you no longer have a body that can hold greed and cravings. Only if you have a poor spirit, believe fully in Jesus Christ and fulfill your role as a steward can you enter heaven. If you serve God as your master and carry out your mission with a good conscience, eternal life under God’s protection will be assured to you. I hope with all my heart that you will become believers who show the glory of God and enjoy the blessings of this earth and of heaven.