What Does it Mean to be Poor in Spirit?
How Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3)
Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount by speaking of the “poor in spirit.” They are blessed or genuinely happy. The “poor in spirit” receive the blessing and favor of God.
What Did Jesus Mean by Poor in Spirit?
To be poor in spirit “means a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and of self-reliance. It means a consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God” (Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 40).
It is to think of God as Isaiah describes Him.
For thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. (Isaiah 57:15)
Those who are poor in spirit realize how insignificant they are in the presence of the LORD God Almighty. He is the “High and Lofty One.”
When Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up” (Isaiah 6:1), and he heard the ones around the throne crying out, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” (Isaiah 6:3), and when he felt the posts of the door shaken, and saw the smoke fill the house, he realized his “poverty of spirit.”
“Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5)
To be poor in spirit is to realize how much greater God is. To be poor in spirit is to see ourselves as we truly are in comparison to God - small, weak, sin-stained, guilty.
This is where Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount. No one can enjoy the blessings of God or the kingdom of heaven without being poor in spirit.
Being “poor in spirit” is the beginning point of Jesus’ sermon.
We will gain nothing from anything Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount - or anything God says in His Word - if we are not first “poor in spirit.”