“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3, NIV)
I am reviewing a few things with my golf instructor right now. I asked her to take me back to the beginning, so we started with some fundamental things. She checked my grip and stance and ball position. Her immediate diagnosis of my fundamental problem had to do with my posture—how I stood when I addressed the ball. I had become way too upright and that had changed everything about how I swung the club.
Thinking about how I addressed the ball and how very essential it was to have the correct posture reminded me of a foundational truth. Our verse for today is from the Sermon on the Mount, which is God’s instruction to us about the way of heaven. Jesus is teaching us the true way to live our best life. He starts with this first truth: “Blessed (or happy) are the poor in spirit.”
We have no means or ability to stand before the Creator without his help.What exactly does this mean? The best definition I have been able to find comes from John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church. He defined poverty of spirit not in terms of money but of our attitude toward God. How do we see ourselves when we address him? Do we stand up tall and offer him our efforts to be good or do we bow down in humbleness of spirit, recognizing just how evil we can be and how desperately we need a Savior?
“To be poor in spirit begins for us when we see ourselves as utterly helpless with regard to atoning for our past sins; utterly unable to make any amends to God, to pay any ransom for our own soul,” Wesley wrote. To begin our life with a new relationship to God we must first recognize our true need. We are helpless and hopeless without God. The Holy Spirit convicts our heart of this great void that separates us from God. We can attempt to bargain with God about living a good life, but until we assume the posture of being totally sinful and totally unable to do anything about it, we cannot receive entrance into the kingdom, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
Happy are those who recognize they need a Savior, because they will receive the kingdom of God. This is the foundation for all that Jesus had to say about living a life that pleases him.
We must start by recognizing that we are poor in spirit. We have nothing in us but the capacity for sin. We have no means or ability to stand before the Creator without his help. Our works of perceived good are meaningless in God’s economy. We can do nothing to earn a relationship with God. We are totally dependent on him to save us. That is what it means to be poor in spirit. We must acknowledge that only by God’s grace can we be saved. Not through our own efforts but by and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which purchased our salvation. No one can come to God except through his Son Jesus.
Recognizing that we are hopeless sinners standing before a holy God, knowing that we deserve death as our just reward and receiving instead a pardon, allows us to be a member of God’s kingdom as a redeemed son or daughter. Our life as God intended it to be begins in this moment of realization. It will continue every day thereafter, as God himself teaches us and empowers us to become all that he intended us to be. I, for one, want never to forget how poor in spirit I really am and what a great salvation I have received.
—
Linda Ballard
October 5, 2017
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.