The Beatitudes – Introduction and The Poor in Spirit

Welcome to Experience Commentary. We are excited to be back and to be sharing God’s Word with you! Over the next eight weeks, we will be in Matthew Chapter 5, looking at the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are a list of blessings that Jesus shared with His disciples at the beginning of His famous Sermon on the Mount. In the list, He first describes an ideal inner behavior or characteristic we should have, and then follows up with a blessing we receive because of that behavior or characteristic. Let’s take a look at Chapter 5 together: 

“When [Jesus] saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. Then He began to teach them, saying:

You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in Heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you’” (Matthew 5:1–12).

This list describes blessings that are far more important than the typical superficial “blessings” of our culture. Things many people consider blessings—like money, big houses, fancy cars, and the number of likes you get on social media—are not important here. The blessings that Jesus talks about in the Beatitudes are all intangible, spiritual rewards, and they are achieved through some things that many people would not consider pleasant or ideal characteristics: being poor, mourning, being persecuted, and being insulted. So what’s up? What does it all mean? 

This list describes blessings that are far more important than the typical superficial “blessings” of our culture. Things many people consider blessings—like money, big houses, fancy cars, and the number of likes you get on social media—are not important here.

That’s what we’re going to look at today and over the next several weeks. We will take each Beatitude, one at a time, week by week. The first three Beatitudes lay a foundation for true Believers, showing how we should respond to God: we must acknowledge our sin and need for Jesus (that is, our poverty), feel remorse and mourn for committing that sin, and humble ourselves, letting Jesus change us. So, let’s get into it.

This week, we have the very first Beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” 

Which begs the question, what does it mean to be poor in spirit? Why would we want to be poor in anything? We know what it means to be poor financially; it’s when someone has no money. Someone who is poor may be bankrupt and unable to pay off any of the financial debts they have accrued from their spending. To be poor spiritually is very similar. If we are poor in spirit, we have nothing within ourselves to pay off the spiritual debt that we have accrued from our sins. On our own, we have nothing to give God to pay for our sin debt. We can’t pay; we are bankrupt.

That doesn’t seem like a good position to be in. So how can being poor in spirit be considered a good thing and even a blessing for us? Well, there is a little bit more to it. It requires humility and honesty. When we acknowledge that we are poor in spirit, it means we have reached a point where we can admit that we don’t have what it takes on our own. We can admit that we need someone else to pay our debt for us—to restore us. We admit that we need help and restoration that only God can provide.

True Believers—those who are poor in spirit—realize that we are powerless to save ourselves and that we have to come to God, through Jesus, for our debt to be paid. Once we surrender to that knowledge and accept Jesus’ payment for our debts, then we are truly poor in spirit. Then we can receive the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven.

So, what is the Kingdom of Heaven?

The Kingdom of Heaven is not just a far-off, physical location where we (as God’s children) rule the universe with God in the distant future of our eternal existence. It is that. But, more currently, it is also the present existence that Believers have right now, being in a relationship with Jesus, with God reigning as the spiritual King in our hearts. It is the state of being where we have willingly given God spiritual control of our lives. That state of being is a blessing that brings joy, contentment, and peace. It is the present Kingdom of Heaven.  

Having said all that, the first Beatitude—“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs”—can be summed up by saying that when we are humble enough to admit we need Jesus to pay our spiritual debt, and we have accepted His gift of payment on our behalf, we get to experience an ongoing relationship with God as the King of our hearts and lives, here and now and into eternity. This is so foundational that it is no wonder Jesus started off His list of blessings with this one!

Please join us next week, as we look at the second Beatitude.