Picture yourself in the crowd that day when the Lord sat down on a little hill with the people gathered around, and He taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:3. The Word is so concentrated. How long do you suppose it took Him to preach that sermon? How did Jesus explain what it is to be poor in spirit? Is it the old idea of people beating you down and making you accept your lot in life? No, it is not that at all. It is a quality of spirit to be poor in spirit.
His is the Kingdom of heaven who is poor in spirit. He is poor, not because he has not been richly endowed or because there is not a rich flow from God to him; he is poor in spirit because he builds no dams. He is poor because he keeps nothing of it unto himself, and yet his is the whole Kingdom of heaven. He does not take the flow of blessing and grace that comes to him and dam it up for himself. A man who is poor in spirit is always poor because there is never an accumulation within him. Whatever he is and whatever he has is flowing on, and he is poor because he is only a channel. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
What does “Poor in spirit” mean? In Hebrew, the word poor means to “bend down.”
The prophet, Isaiah, in Isaiah 66 speaks the word of the Lord regarding true worship versus false worship. The Lord says, “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is the place of My rest? For all those things My hand has made, and all those things exists,” says the Lord. But on this one will I look; on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at My word. The Hebrew meaning of contrite is “remorseful or repentant.”
So when Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, he is looking for those who will revere Him, honor His word, and have a heart of repentance where repentance is due.
Let’s see what God really has for us in being poor in spirit. What is the opposite of being poor in spirit? Rich in spirit? No, the man who is poor in spirit is also rich in spirit—his is the Kingdom of heaven. He has it made; he has everything. We cannot say that a man who is poor in spirit is a poor man and has no riches of spirit. He has all the riches of spirit. His is the Kingdom of heaven. It is all his, so we cannot contrast the poor in spirit with rich in spirit.
We have to contrast the poor in spirit with strong in spirit. The man who is not poor in spirit is one who has an arrogant spirit, perhaps with a facade of phony humility; an arrogant, unteachable spirit; a self-assertive spirit; a ruthless spirit that drives to get what it wants; a sensitive spirit that is easily offended; a dominating, strong spirit; a pushy spirit; an ambitious spirit; a spirit of self-preservation, always looking out for number one; an image-guarding spirit which guards and protects his image before people; a defensive spirit, always on the defensive. All of these are the opposite of the poor in spirit.
How hard it is for a man who is strong in spirit to get into a walk with God. A man who is strong in spirit can quickly gather up a couple dozen people and bring them into the church—good, meek people looking for the Lord. While they are marveling, “Oh, wonderful,” Mr. Strong spirit who brought them in has taken off and left all the meek ones there to inherit the Kingdom.
To be poor in spirit means to be selfless, deliberately selfless, almost dedicated to failure: dedicated to failure from human viewpoints and unsuccessful by any human evaluation. I know what it means to be poor in spirit, and I also know what it is to be just plain poor. I was not always poor in spirit when I was poor because at times I was protesting it too much.
There are human evaluations of success and failure, but what are the human evaluations of riches—metals and stones of various degrees of preciousness, fabrics put together in some artistry? Dirt is considered riches if you have enough of it in the right location. A man could have just one block of dirt and be very rich, especially if it were in a downtown area. Wood and stone can be assembled together in various ways. Metals can be formed into different designs and shapes—automobiles, machinery, television sets. What we have in Christ has no value in the eyes of the world. So here we are, rich and possessing the whole Kingdom of heaven, but really poor because the world doesn’t regard what we have as being important.
These are true riches: a little child; being a member of the Body of Christ and feeling oneness and love with the people until you are not anything in yourself; examining your spirit by itself and seeing you are poor in spirit, yet you are so one with the rest of the Body that yours is the Kingdom of heaven. That is the promise. To be selfless is to be poor in spirit. There are people who are so lost in God that self is no longer their burden.
The man who is poor in spirit is not seeking his own. In a sense, he is poor in his spirit because he is always giving to the Body. He has no attitude of things being his own, but of everything belonging to the Lord and to the Body of Christ. A man who is poor in spirit is a man who has given his life to enrich his brother, to see his life become an extension of the Body, an extension of Christ, but conversely, his is the Kingdom of heaven. He has lost his desire for individual identity. All he wants is to be an extension of the Lord. It means that every man in the Body of Christ is an extension of one another and of Christ, and Christ is an extension of them. There is something beautiful in seeing the true riches. In this world, how beautiful, and of what great price, are a man and a woman of one spirit! He feels that the woman is an extension of himself, and at moments he sees himself as an extension of her. They are truly one being. It is like having extra hands to reach out with, an extra heart to feel with. They are one, and they become the extension of each other, a part of each other.
There is an arrogant and mysterious love that is abandoned to the will of the Lord and aggressively pursues it. That may not seem like a definition of being poor in spirit, but that is what is within the poor of spirit. A man who is poor in spirit is arrogant and ruthless in love, abandoned to His will, and aggressively pursuing that will of God in his life. To that man there is nothing in himself. He is poor because He is always giving himself to the will of God and to the Body.
To be poor in spirit means that you lose your fear of man, and consequently you lose the fear of consequences. If you lose the fear of man, you are no longer afraid of people; you are bold. It does not mean an aggressive boldness; it just means you are not afraid of man. You are so one with the Lord that you speak and minister in the name of the Lord. The thought of being afraid to speak up does not enter your mind. You are not afraid of consequences, whether people accept or reject you. To be poor in spirit has all the marks of being arrogant, doesn’t it? People may look at such a man and say, “Who does he think he is that he doesn’t have to be concerned with what people think of him? How dare he flaunt the rest of us? We, the members of society, will show him. We’ll reject him.” How angry they become when they reject him and he does not care one way or the other. To him it is more important to please God than to please man. Paul was without fear of consequences at the end of his ministry.
“Paul, don’t you know the prophecies say you are going to be bound and beaten at Jerusalem?”
“Don’t break my heart; none of these things move me.” “What’s the matter, Paul? We stick a pin in you and you don’t say, ‘Ouch!’ We say you are going to suffer; doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you have any fear of consequences? Are you stupid?”
“No, not stupid, just poor in spirit. No fear of consequences left.” Imagine the apostles standing before the lame man saying, “Silver and gold have we none.” They were really poor—yes, and poor in spirit. Theirs was the Kingdom, and they could say to the lame man, “Silver and gold have we none, but such as we have we give you. In the name of Jesus, rise up and walk.” He was healed right there (Acts 3:1–9). Those poor people, poor in spirit, but how rich in the Kingdom of heaven! It was all theirs, though they were devoid of the human standards of evaluation.
Today we have a bureau of standards. Everything has to conform. A pound of sugar has to be a pound of sugar; a pound of flour has to be a pound of flour; a quart of milk has to be a quart of milk. If a label says there is a certain amount in a can, the law says there has to be that much in that can. In many areas we have come to accept this world’s viewpoints and what this age says is or is not of value. To be poor in spirit also means that we are devoid of the human standards of evaluation, and that is important. There are some things that we do, having the things of this world, but not abusing them, as Paul says in I Corinthians 7:31. We are just stewards of them. It is a matter of having the right standard and evaluation of things. The world will never forgive you for the fact that you do not value the same things that they value.
We find a grave conflict between the generations now which we call a “gap.” The older folks are going on their way, and the young look at them and say, “Boy, are they materialistic, just living for the passing scene! I don’t want to be part of that rat race. Let me out! I don’t want to slave and work all my life for nothing, getting nowhere. I don’t see it!” And so they bemoan the folly of middle-class endeavor. The adults look down on the younger generation and say, “You long-haired misfits, who do you think you are, upsetting and destroying a civilization you didn’t even build? What right have you to reject it when you have been handed everything?” And so it goes on, back and forth. They are all wrong because they are using the wrong standards of measurements. They do not have the right sense of evaluation.
Only the poor in spirit is devoid of these human standards of evaluation and can work all his life to get a smile and a sentence.
“What percentage is there in that? When you work, you should get a good return for it. Here you are laboring, working, getting very little out of it except the satisfaction of doing the will of God, and what are you going to get when it is all over with?”
A smile and “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”: would that be enough? Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom; Solomon said, and with all thy getting, get understanding. Proverbs 4:7. To be able to understand what it is all about is to be a man who is poor in spirit. He has weighed the whole scene. He knows it all, forward and backward, and he does not get into the rat race because he has something else, another standard of values.
There is a time in everyone’s life when he would like to see what is on the other side of the fence. Would you? What is the world doing? Would you like to be there? Would you like to do what they do? You can’t be any warmer in a mink coat than in a rabbit skin, but it is much more expensive and a little softer. In the Body of Christ the day of conflicts of personality is disappearing. What stands in its place? A oneness—when you yearn and pray over the other person you become the real expression of the Body of Christ.
“Don’t you ever want to kick up your heels and take a vacation from God, at least a coffee break?”
What would we do?
“Well, go out to a nightclub—something real daring—and listen to their music” (until your eardrums burst). “Drink their drinks” (and get a tremendous headache).
Oh, you poor people out there in the world. You are biting on an empty hook, a hook that has no bait on it. In the third chapter of Philippians, Paul said, “You people with your poor evaluations—if any of you think you have anything to boast of, I had more than any of you. I was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. I had position, everything. I counted it all but dung” (that is putting it down, isn’t it?) “that I may win Him and be found in Him.” I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14. “I am living poor in spirit with arrogant and mysterious love, abandoned to His will and aggressively pursuing it.” That was you, Paul. By the grace of God, it is going to be so with us as well.
The man who is poor in spirit has a better chance than anyone else because he has discarded a human evaluation of things. He is foolish in that sense. Things may be given to him and he rejects them. My grandfather wanted to put me through law school. I did not have the proper sense of human evaluation because I would have promised to give up the ministry if I had accepted his offer. Instead, I traveled around the country preaching, hitching rides and hopping freights, until at the age of nineteen I ended up with a stomach bordering on ulcers. It was a cheap price to pay.
Is our standard of evaluating things different from that of anyone else? Those in the Kingdom have a different standard of evaluating things.
You have to live the life God has for you too. It does not matter what you have to do or sacrifice. That is not important. You live with things that have true value. A man who is poor in spirit has a different set of standards. He is a freak to the whole world system because he would rather please God and walk with God. Even if his life seems worthless and misspent in the opinion of everyone else, he knows what he has to do, and he does it in the name of the Lord.
The man who is poor in spirit reacts differently in any situation. When a man who is strong in spirit becomes sick, his reaction is, “Oh, I’m dying! Call the doctor! I have a headache!” The poor in spirit seem to suffer a lot, yet they know how to take it. Watch how a man who is strong in spirit receives offenses. “How dare that boss of mine speak to me like that!” Fuming, strong in spirit, he paces the floor. “No one can do that to me!” How does he take trials? The man who is strong in spirit does not bend with the stresses. The tree that stands in the storm is the tree that bends with the wind. The man who comes through the pressure is the man who is poor in spirit. When the winds and the storms beat against him, he bows with them, and yet he is immovable. When the storms hit the strong-spirited one, he bends the wrong way. He is uprooted and dies.
The man who is strong in his spirit rises up against tribulations as though they were a personal offense, until it becomes a battle between him and the universe, until he is stomped and killed. He watches the things of this world that he values with his false sense of evaluation that is so important. When they are swept away he does not realize they are not important. Many a strong-spirited man, when the stock market crashed during the depression, blew his brains out because he lost his money, not realizing his life and loved ones were still there.
A man who is poor in spirit says, like Job when he lost everything, …the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1:21. How do you take the losses and the stripping?
Blessed are the poor in spirit, because you can never impoverish them; they are always rich. Blessed are the poor in spirit, because they have the important things that no one can take from them.