The Beatitudes – The Humble

Our focus in this article, as with the rest of the Beatitudes, is backward or upside-down from what the wisdom of the world says we should expect. In Matthew 5:5, Jesus says this: “Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.” What? Inheriting the earth sounds like global dominance upon first hearing. How are we supposed to preside over the whole world if we’re remaining humble instead of going out and taking it for ourselves? Here, just as in the rest of the Beatitudes, Jesus challenges us to reframe our expectations and rethink our definition of blessing.

In this verse, Jesus says that rather than finding blessing in wealth or status, we find it in being humble. Can we work for things while being humble? Sure. But humility takes attention off ourselves and puts it onto God and others, so it doesn’t leave much room to pursue everything we want or to achieve the ideals set by our society. We instead give our attention to serving others and growing to look more like Christ. Paul addresses this in Philippians 2:3–4, where he says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others.” That doesn’t leave much room for chasing blessings—at least not in the way we typically think about it.

Jesus says that rather than finding blessing in wealth or status, we find it in being humble.

What does Jesus say is the result of this humility? It’s inheriting the earth. Like we already said, that sounds like global dominance. But since Jesus just told us humility is a good thing, He must mean something else. (Also, from a practical standpoint, if all humble people inherit the earth, how could so many people dominate the globe at one time? They can’t.) What else might inheriting the earth mean? To come to a conclusion, let’s look to the Old Testament before turning back to the New Testament.

Psalm 37, written by David, says something very similar (and in fact, Jesus was probably thinking about this when He said what He did about the humble). Let’s look at verse 11: “But the humble will inherit the land and will enjoy abundant prosperity.” When reading this, it’s important to know that David’s audience, ancient Jews, cared a lot about land. They spent most of their history being displaced—either constantly moving around trying to find a place they could call their own, or later, after the time of David, being exiled and hoping to get back to their promised land. Many generations earlier, God had told their father Abraham that his offspring would be given a place to live forever (Genesis 17:3–8), and they had their hopes set on seeing that in reality. Now, hold that thought, because the fullness of that promise was clarified in the New Testament.

Now, jumping back to the New Testament, Paul wrote in Romans 4:13, “For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.” He was making the point that the blessing God offered was meant for the faithful. That sounds a lot like what Jesus was saying, that the ones who remain humble before God are the ones positioned to see blessing. Then, to pull all the pieces together, we need to look at one more passage of Scripture. At the end of the Bible, in Revelation 21, we read a description of what God says will come when the world as we know it has ended. A new Heaven and a new earth are described for us, along with a new Jerusalem, which is a new city where God will make His earthly dwelling among the people. In verse 7, the Lord says, “The one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and He will be my son.” So the ones who are faithful, who follow God in humility and will get to experience eternal life with Him, will one day get to see this new Heaven and earth. It wasn’t just the Jews that would get to dwell with God forever; that promise of stability and dwelling with God was for both believing Jews and Gentiles. How cool is that?

So, the next time we want to be self-interested and use our energy and resources to benefit ourselves while leaving others to struggle, we need to remember that God has already promised us the best things we could ever have. Right now, we have life with Him and the presence of His Spirit with us every second. And in the future, God will make everything new, including us, and we will get to live with Him forever. That should make us want to stay close to Him and share that hope with others, so that maybe one day they will get to live forever with Him too.