Matthew 5: Blessed are the poor in spirit

Major Howard Webber considers our spiritual wealth-being.

Key texts

• Matthew 5:3

I love the smell of a roast dinner cooking. As it wafts its way through the kitchen window to join me in the garden, I might not be able to describe what will be on my plate, but I know that what awaits me will be even better than what I am already experiencing.

There are those who think that Christianity is all about ‘pie in the sky when you die’ – that the Christian faith is only about the promise of a sublime life beyond death. The Beatitudes, however, describe Christ’s promise of a blessedness – a taste of Heaven – that we can experience in the here and now.

What we call ‘happiness’ often depends on circumstances – the result of having good health, friends, family, admiration, achievements or possessions. In the event of losing those things, however, that happiness disappears.

In the Old Testament, Jesus is described as ‘a man of sorrows’ (Isaiah 53:3 King James Bible). Indeed, in a number of ways he is.

First, right from the beginning of his ministry he is opposed, criticised, slandered, despised and treated with contempt.

Second, he empathises with others in their sorrows, as when he weeps with those weeping over the death of Lazarus (see John 11:33–35).

Third, on his last journey into Jerusalem he weeps over the city (see Luke 19:41 and 42), revealing the burden that God has always had for the lost – those who reject him (see Ezekiel 18:23–32).

However, Jesus also speaks of the joy he has – a joy he wishes to share with his disciples (see John 15:11). In his hymn ‘O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go’, George Matheson describes it beautifully: ‘O Joy that seekest me through pain,/ I cannot close my heart to thee;/ I trace the rainbow through the rain/ And feel the promise is not vain,/ That morn shall tearless be’ (SASB 616).

Jesus also speaks of a peace that he wishes to give his disciples, the likes of which the world cannot give (see John 14:27). Paul describes it as ‘the peace of God, which transcends all understanding’ (Philippians 4:7). Nothing and no one can rob a person of such peace, joy and assurance. This is a blessedness that does not depend on circumstances.

Pause and reflect

• Have you experienced knowing turmoil yet peace, sorrow yet joy, uncertainty yet assurance?

There is nothing in the Bible that condones poverty. Throughout its pages, we read that God’s people are responsible for alleviating poverty, giving to those in need and sharing what God has given them (see Matthew 25:34–40). Jesus says: ‘The poor you will always have with you’ (Matthew 26:11), therefore the measure of our love for Christ in terms of how we care for the poor will always be here.

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray ‘give us today our daily bread’ (Matthew 6:11), but we can so easily fail to see the responsibility we are taking upon ourselves in making such a request. We are not praying just for our own needs but also for the needs of others.

Pause and reflect

• What are we to do if God gives us the bounty we’ve prayed and we receive far more than we need?

In addition to everything that God says regarding people in poverty, he also has much to say about the dangers of being rich. In this world, riches empower people. Wealth can so easily inflate a person’s view of themselves, filling them with pride.

Riches can be money, but they can also be talents, qualifications, possessions, positions, friends, good health. All these can give someone an exaggerated, self-sufficient sense of their importance, sometimes at the cost of disdain for those less blessed.

It is the ‘poor in spirit’ – the people who are humble and lowly in their own eyes, lacking in pride and unattached to things – who know and experience God’s blessedness.

Paul had a rich spiritual heritage of which he was once so proud. Compared with knowing Christ, however, he sees it all as ‘garbage’ (see Philippians 3:4–8). He says of himself: ‘I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle’ (1 Corinthians 15:9).

Such humility – that lowly view of ourselves – has to be genuine.

In Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, Uriah Heep – in an effort to disguise the fact that he is anything but – is forever telling people: ‘I’m a very ’umble person.’

In his book Maximes, moralist François de La Rochefoucauld states that: ‘Pride is never better disguised and more deceptive than when it is hidden by the mask of humility.’

As Paul writes: ‘Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves’ (Philippians 2:3).

To be poor in spirit, writes Bible commentator Matthew Henry, is to ‘acknowledge that God is great and we are mean; that he is holy and we are sinful; that he is all and we are nothing.’

Those who are poor in spirit are devoted to the King – Jesus is truly their Lord and their Ruler. They live in obedience to him, seek his will, and are totally dependent on him. Such people are those who belong to the Kingdom of Heaven and to whom the Kingdom belongs.

They are the ones who look for the fullness of the Kingdom. Matthew 6:10 is their longing: ‘Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.’ 

Where does that leave you and me?