Beatitude The Story part 1(Matthew 5:3)

Beatitude The Story part 1(Matthew 5:3)

Are you struggling with thinking You need to be better, that you’re not good enough and each day you set out to try to be better than the next, only to fail?  It’s probably because you need to learn the difference between being mostly poor and all poor in spirit. You will struggle with Matthew 5:3 if you think you are anything other than spiritually bankrupt and dead?  We said in the “Back Story Article” that the word “blessed” is best translated in the Greek and Hebrew as “successful”. Jesus said, 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” If you think that you are a little good, or better than the guy next door that’s stealing satellite TV than you won’t grasp what it is to be poor in spirit. Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, not mostly poor. Miracle Max from the movie Princess Bride (watch the scene here), knew the difference when he said, “there is a big difference between mostly dead and all dead…” You and I are not mostly dead spiritually and morally. We are all poor, all dead spiritually, but there is more we can do than go through our spiritual pockets looking for loose change as Max suggests. When the fall occurred we lost it all, not a lot, but it all. Here is how Romans 3 puts it:

 

“9…For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”13 “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.”14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;16  in their paths are ruin and misery,17 and the way of peace they have not known.”18  “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 39-18).

 

Before you can move on with the rest of the beatitudes you have work this one out. It is not merely recognizing that you’ve done a few things wrong. You’re not born good and slowly or quickly reducing you goodness quotient. It’s not saying that you’re a good person and you just need this one piece from God that will complete you. It’s not suggesting that if you set out to make yourself poor and the more you struggle God will love you more. That would be a very co-dependent unhappy life of trying to create blessing out of misery. People like this keep a picture of George Constanza around just to feel better about their own life. It also means that this idea that someone is good apart from Jesus is a lie. Overtime we says, they’re a good person because we see them feed a sparrow on a snowy day, then saved a family from a burning car and started a non-profit to cure cancer, doesn’t make them good. They too have lost it all and are poor in spirit. They just don’t know it yet. There is a very real possibility that all their social acts of kindness and philanthropy could keep them from seeing their spiritual poverty.

 

Our misery from in this sin-nature, that we all share in,  followed from the first Adam (Romans 5:12) in the garden when mankind fell into sin. Genesis 3 acknowledges that man has been separated from God through the rebellion of our first parents. He was the (primus inter pares) first among equals he was merely the beginner and we are continuing in the same vein. From that point on the entire world was put into  rebellion against God, poor in spirit from God. We live in a fallen, broken poor world. But Jesus, second Adam, is made poor not by his own sins but by our sins being placed on him, on the cross, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (1 Cor. 5:21). In 1 Corinthians 5:14 Paul tells us Jesus is the eschatos Adam (the last Adam) not in relation to this time line of sin, but in that he is the first and true Adam by which we find our filling from emptiness and treasure from nothing.

 

Unless we recognize our sin has made us devoid of any goodness any righteousness on our own part, we can’t move forward with the beatitudes to become the city and light and salt that he moves to later in the chapter. Everything, and when I say everything, I mean exactly what it means in the Greek “EVERYTHING” hinges on this first one in Matthew 5:3. When you take hold of it, this changes everything. You’ll stop comparing yourself to others and finding excuses for why you are better than others. You’ll stop before you complain about someone who behaves in an immoral, or ignorant way, because whether they know it or not, they are poor in spirit and need Jesus Christ’s redeeming filling. Which means they need the truth and grace and time from you until they see what you already know. It will stop your cycle of working to be better so God will love you or bless you. He’s not looking for you to out do someone else in their “poorness” so you will be blessed more. That’s moving from keeping up with the jones’ to keeping up with Danny Bonaduce.

 

You can finally rest in what Jesus has done for you. Your situational poverty of not being able to afford medicine, or food becomes a means to understand and embrace your spiritual poverty and rather than curse someone with more physical wealth than you, you can rest assured that what you don’t have in stocks and bonds are more than made up for in Jesus Christ and the kingdom you are heir to. This brings up the question of what is the kingdom of God? That’s a question I’ll discuss later, but I will say it is more than just a place you go to when a Christ follower dies. It’s not some ethereal place where you play a harp or golf for eternity. The Bible has a different take on what secular books, Hollywood and cartoons have made heaven to be. The kingdom of God is something we can also experience here and now, but only when you embrace spiritual barrenness apart from Jesus can you inherit the kingdom blessing now through Jesus. 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3). Because we lost it all we are poor in spirit, but this opens up an incredible promise and truth to the one who has lost it all will also find it all in Jesus!