Reading the Sermon on the Mount With John StottSample

Poverty of Spirit

When we read the first beatitude against the backdrop of the Old Testament, we discover that at first to be “poor” meant to be in literal, material need. But gradually, because the needy have no refuge but God, poverty came to have spiritual overtones and to be identified with humble dependence on God. The poor in the Old Testament are those who are both afflicted and unable to save themselves. These are people who look to God for deliverance, while recognizing that they have no claim upon him.

Therefore, to be “poor in spirit” is to acknowledge our spiritual poverty before God. We are sinners, under the holy wrath of God, and deserving nothing but his judgment. We have nothing to offer, nothing with which to buy the favor of heaven.

To those who recognize and acknowledge their spiritual bankruptcy before God—and only to them—the kingdom of God is given. God’s rule is a gift, absolutely free and completely undeserved. It has to be received with the humility and faith of a little child.

Jesus’ hearers must have been stunned by this statement. Right at the beginning of the Sermon, Jesus contradicts all human judgments and expectations about the kingdom of God. The kingdom is given to the poor, not the rich; to the feeble, not the mighty; to little children humble enough to receive it, not the soldiers who would take it by force.

In Jesus’ own day it was not the religious leaders and scholars who entered the kingdom of God—men and women who thought they were rich in merit before God by their meticulous keeping of the law. Nor was it the zealous nationalists who dreamed of establishing the kingdom by blood and violence. Those who entered the realm of God’s gracious rule were tax collectors and prostitutes, the rejects of human society who knew they were so poor they could offer nothing and achieve nothing. All they could do was cry to God for mercy—and he heard their cry.

It’s still true today: the indispensable condition of receiving the kingdom of God is to acknowledge our spiritual poverty. God still sends the rich away empty. The way up in God’s kingdom is the way down.

From Reading the Sermon on the Mount with John Stott by John Stott with Douglas Connelly.