In the last lesson, I introduced the beatitudes by discussing how to understand the depth of what Jesus was trying to convey in this important sermon. To summarize, Adam and Eve were created perfect, in God’s image. When they chose to disobey God, that image was marred as they lost the holiness aspect with which they were created. Instead, they took on a sin nature that is passed down from generation to generation. Where before they had spiritual communion with God, their sin created a separation between them and God as their spirits became corrupt.
When Jesus came He remained perfect even through temptations offered by Satan and the common temptations and testings experienced every day. Thus, He could be the perfect sacrifice, pure and holy. In a very real sense our guilt of sin was placed on Jesus when He was crucified, so that we were crucified in union with Him. When we receive by faith His saving grace, we become a New Creation, with a reborn spirit that is once again in His likeness. But just as an infant must grow and learn, so must we learn to grow up into a mature faith.
Video Version of This Study
This is the video presentation of the lesson below, formatted for teaching on YouTube. The written study continues underneath for those who prefer to read or study at their own pace.
The Beatitudes as a Spiritual Path
The beatitudes tell us how to do that. They teach a step by step process that we must follow to spiritually mature. That is why God calls those who become these things “blessed,” that is, happy and someone to be envied. Today, we are going to examine the first beatitude.
Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
How different this is compared to what many churches teach today! They love to shout, “We are King’s kids!” and then demand that God does what they want. They twist Scripture to make it all about them. Some even go so far as to claim that we are little gods. They rarely, if ever, promote true humility or repentance. They have a self-centered religion rather than a Christ-centered religion.
This is the polar opposite of being poor in spirit, which is the foundation of true spiritual growth. That attitude produces a lukewarm believer, at best … who, in Revelation 3, Jesus said He will vomit them out of His mouth if they do not repent and humbly go to Him.
Satan’s tactics to deceive believers remains the same as they were in the Garden of Eden. He deceived Eve into thinking she was not already like God, but if she ate from the tree, she would become like Him.
Today, Satan uses a similar trick in new packaging … because his bright, shiny lie still attracts the spiritual babies, just like the newest toys in the toy aisle.
Rather than humbly choosing to obey what God said, Eve chose to reach for the shiny fruit. When Jesus was tempted and tested, on the other hand, He chose to humbly submit to the plan of the Father and told Satan to go away.
Humility, The Beginning of Salvation
It says of those who are poor in spirit, that theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. THIS is the beginning of salvation. You cannot be saved unless you are first willing to humble yourself and acknowledge that you MUST be saved, that you cannot do it by your own strength and power. You cannot approach a holy God on your own terms, but only on His terms.
What does it mean to be humble, to be poor in spirit? Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart – These, O God, You will not despise.” We will look again at this verse when we look at the next beatitude, because mourning and contrition are built on humility.
Notice that humility is the FIRST beatitude. It is the foundation on which all the other attitudes are built. We must continue with this as our foundation … if we tear out the foundation, the rest of it collapses. A sinkhole forms under a building and starts weakening the foundation; Eventually, the whole house falls down and is swallowed by the sinkhole. Likewise, if we aren’t careful to keep our spiritual foundation for growth secure, we will eventually crash. Scripture says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Prov 16:18)
In Matthew 19:14, Jesus said to not turn away the little children who were coming to meet Jesus, for of such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven. One of the things about young children is they are usually more humble and straightforward than teens and adults. They rely on adults to guide and teach them, and are dependent on the parents to train them up. They also watch them and see what they do, and learn from them that way as well.
Jesus said we must become like the little child in this respect. Jesus said in the gospel of John that He does what He sees the father doing (John 5:19). He did not just go out and do His own thing apart from God’s plan. He is our example, the one whom we must follow in humility. When we choose to remain poor in spirit, then we can begin to learn from Jesus how to live a life pleasing to God. This is not accomplished by being perfectly sinless, but by being humble and learning to grow to a mature faith.
Question for reflection: Are we living with a foundation of humility? Do we go to Jesus to learn from Him, and to receive life from Him?
Looking Forward: Contrition
We have seen that humility is the beginning of salvation, and the foundation for all spiritual growth. And as we saw earlier, God does not despise a broken and contrite heart. That leads us right into the next beatitude.
In the next lesson, we will look at what it means to mourn in Matthew 5 – not just with emotion, but with a heart of true contrition. I hope you will come check it out, because if flows directly from what we have learned today.
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Portions of this Beatitudes study were previously published on an older blog of mine. I’ve reorganized and expanded the material for greater clarity as part of my new teaching series on The Bible Stop.
