Don’t Miss Out—Make The Beatitudes—Your “BE-attitudes!” PART 2 Poor in Spirit

Yesterday we learned that the beatitudes are blessings of joy which God gives to believers to presently experience! Today we will begin to use this key to unlock the blessing in each verse. As we approach each verse, we must remember: It is ONLY the presence of God which produces unshakeable joy in this fallen world! So each verse is directing us to build attitudes to bring us closer to God. The beatitudes set forth what our new nature in Christ should be and that’s why we’re calling them our “be-attitudes.”

Don’t you want to experience the incalculable blessings Jesus has planned for you?

I sure do, so let’s dig in! Jesus begins His teaching:

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

Matthew 5:3

Jesus begins by reciting an attitude of being “poor in spirit.” Does this mean He wants us to live feeling down-trodden, worthless, or insignificant? I mean who wants to be like that, right? Absolutely not! Rather, Jesus is laying a very important foundation for our relationship with Him. There are two foundational aspects to this blessing:

1. Being “poor in spirit” for salvation; and
2. Being “poor in spirit” for Christian living.

In order to BEGIN our relationship with Him, that is, to receive His gift of salvation, we must acknowledge we are completely helpless and sinful. We are utterly without adequate righteousness to reconcile ourselves to Him. This is the foundational attitude we must have in order to be born again.

To come to God for salvation, we must understand that we have no spiritual assets and thus, we are “poor in spirit.” 

My law firm used to handle bankruptcy cases. In the petition for bankruptcy, my client would list all the debts they wanted the court to cancel. If the judge believed they were qualified, every debt listed was forgiven by the court. To qualify for this forgiveness, my clients had to acknowledge that they were financially bankrupt. If they did not acknowledge this fact—the judge would not discharge their debt. According to the Bible, every human is morally bankrupt and thus, we cannot reconcile ourselves to God. (Romans 3:23) In fact, even our GOOD deeds are filthy and unfit to present to God.

“But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”

Isaiah 64:6

The poor in spirit are those who recognize their own abject spiritual bankruptcy. They recognize their absolute need for mercy. Unless we are poor in spirit, we cannot have our sin debt erased and reconcile to God because we will never truly believe we need Him. It is only those who acknowledge their own total spiritual bankruptcy who are also able to accept the full payment of their debt by Jesus. To believe we can pay our own debt (or even part of it) will prevent our salvation “by grace through faith” and rob us of the eternal life Jesus died to give us.

If we desire the blessings of God, it is critical we understand this foundational truth—both for salvation and for Christian living!

From the perspective of already being a born again Christian, being “poor in spirit” is a critical foundational attitude for living a blessed life. As a Christian, poverty of spirit is not some perverse form of self-hatred or self-flagellation. Rather, it is the work of the Holy Spirit producing the response of repentance to the sins we commit in our flesh. Jesus begins the beatitudes with our spiritual bankruptcy as the foundation for BOTH our reconciliation and our walk after we are born again. We are each subject to the awful consequences of the law of sin and death, and anyone who desires to enter into a relationship with God—or walk with Him thereafter—must begin here. Charles Spurgeon explained it this way:

“Not what I have, but what I have not, is the first point of contact, between my soul and God.” 

The foundation for our relationship with God is the recognition of our condition of absolute need because it causes us to constantly seek HIM for help. The poor in spirit are strongly conscious of their need for complete dependence on God. In fact, our truest estimate of our self-sufficiency is: Without God—we are blind, evil, weak, and have no hope. In the Garden, Eve was convinced she could do life without God. We often are as well! 

Our attitude of independence from God is the Christian’s daily battlefield. 

God knows this, and so to encourage us to develop an attitude of dependence, He has woven the theme of our need to be completely dependent upon Him throughout both the Old and the New Testament:

The Psalmist wrote:

“I will lift up my eyes to the hills—from whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.”

Psalms 121:1-2

Jesus said:

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”

John 15:5

The wisdom of Proverbs reverberates with this truth:

“Trust in the Lord with ALL your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in ALL your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Do NOT be wise in your OWN eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh, and strength to your bones.”

Proverbs 3:5-8

In the beatitudes, Christ begins by painting a picture of the citizens of His kingdom as those who have complete dependence upon Himself. The entire sermon is based upon this principle. Note that His teaching is at direct odds with our culture’s highly promoted principle of self-reliance. This be-attitude of “poor in spirit” will not be easy to learn and apply. But as Christ-followers, before we can move forward in capturing His blessing of our new life in Christ, our pride and self-confidence must be broken. It is a daily process.

The “kingdom of heaven” is experienced when Christ rules supremely in our heart. 

Our will is bowed to God because we know our desperate need for Him. So then, we must ask: “What is the connection between casting off self-reliance and experiencing the blessings of heaven on earth?” Well, as humility draws us deeper into the presence of God, He becomes the fountain of all we need and all that blesses us. It is a constant upward cycle. Spurgeon wrote:

“‘Poor in spirit;’ the words sound as if they described the owners of nothing, and yet they describe the inheritors of all things. Happy poverty! Millionaires sink into insignificance, the treasure of the Indies evaporate in smoke, while to the poor in spirit remains a boundless, endless, faultless kingdom, which renders them blessed in the esteem of him who is God over all, blessed for ever.” 

Isn’t that amazing?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus FIRST makes the call for us to be “poor in spirit” because all the other commands which bring us blessings are built upon this. We cannot fulfill these commands on our own strength or by our own logic. We must have a bankrupt person’s view of our own strength and wisdom so God can do it for us.

A be-attitude of complete dependence upon God is the foundation of the blessings for a full and glorious life.