Thursday, July 5, ~ Miriam

Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is 2 Kings 12-13; 2 Chronicles 24.

Today's scripture focus is Matthew 5:1-3.

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, ² and he began to teach them, saying:

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I was interested in what is meant by "poor in spirit".  Obviously, I think, it doesn't mean that you are lacking in spirit because the Bible makes it very clear that each of us has a spirit, which is eternal, and a body, which is temporal.  So if each individual person has a spirit, "poor" in this instance cannot mean a lack thereof.  Does it mean weakness?  Not quite.  Strength of spirit  comes from how we nourish and care for our eternal selves, just as strength of body comes from nourishment and care.  So that leaves... what?  Humility.  Lack of arrogance.  A realization and recognition that we are not enough to gain entrance to the kingdom of heaven by any means of our own.  We can't be good enough or work hard enough.  Poor in spirit means, essentially, recognizing that all we are and all we have is by the grace of God.  This made sense to me.  Anyone else?


Mr. MacArthur says, in The Only Way to Happiness:


Jesus says if you're going to enter the kingdom and find true happiness, you've got to recognize that you have absolutely nothing, you are bankrupt. That's where it all begins. Poverty of spirit is the foundation of all other graces. Poverty of spirit is where everything starts. You may as well expect fruit to grow without a tree as the other graces to grow without this one. Nothing happens until this happens. As long as a person is not poor in spirit, that person is not capable of happiness in the sense that God offers it. That person is not capable of entering the kingdom. As long as I'm clutching my own self-importance and my own self-righteousness and my own accomplishments and my own religiosity and my own morality and as long as I'm holding on to this as if it somehow gained me access to God, as long as my hand is full of that dirt, it can never receive the gold of God's grace. Happiness is only for those who are unworthy.  (emphasis mine)


Until someone is poor in spirit, Christ is never seen for what He really is. He's never precious. Before you can see how bankrupt you are, you can't understand how valuable Christ is. You can never see His matchless worth until you understand the full extent of your own worthlessness. 

And why is this first? Because inevitably what prevents people from entering into the kingdom is pride. And at the very start pride must be broken. Proverbs 16:5 says, "Cursed are the proud." These things God hates, a proud heart...at the top of the list.

The first step in entering the kingdom, the first step to happiness is being poor in spirit, realizing your spiritual poverty. The second one is mourning over it. The third one is humbly falling down before the glory of God in your condition. The fourth one is then pleading for a righteousness which you don't have and hunger for. That begins then to manifest itself in an attitude of mercy toward others, a pursuit of purity and peacemaking in your own life, and creates hostility in the world. That's the flow of the Beatitudes.

Until we recognize and understand how poor or unworthy we are, we can't understand how matchless, how valuable, how precious is Christ.

Tomorrow's scripture focus:  Matthew 5:4-5.

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage:  2 Kings 14; 2 Chronicles 25.