Introduction

The beatitudes are those declarations of blessing by Jesus Christ that took place at the very beginning of what is commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus went away into a mountain, and there he could view the multitude that had followed him. While there might have been others off in the distance, those disciples of the multitude were the audience proper for this sermon. Those disciples who gathered and came to Jesus were not only the twelve whom Jesus had chosen and whom he would later send to preach, but the disciples were also those who had heard Jesus and followed him. There on the mountain the Lord Jesus took a seat and preached to those disciples, for it was often customary in those days for teachers in the synagogue to instruct their audiences in a seated position.

However, it is far less important for us to know the setting in which the sermon was preached than it is to know the central theme of the sermon, which very simply stated is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven was the constant refrain of Jesus throughout the sermon. Indeed, the kingdom of heaven would be of particular importance throughout the rest of Matthew’s gospel account. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to the reader that Jesus’ preaching of his own kingdom-doctrine came at the very beginning of this first sermon recorded for us in the book of Matthew.

In the first beatitude Jesus declared that the poor in spirit are blessed. And what is the reason for their blessedness? “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). In verse 19 we read regarding the kingdom of heaven,

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

And then again in verse 20, we read, “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Reaching near to the end of Jesus’ sermon in Matthew 7:21, we read, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” The gospel that Jesus preached was always the gospel of the kingdom of heaven (Mark 1:15).

The coming of the kingdom is the essence of the gospel message. The gospel is the good news of the kingdom, for in the coming of the kingdom is revealed the salvation of the entire elect church. This kingdom of heaven was promised throughout the entire Old Testament, was typified in the type and shadow of the Davidic line, and came in its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. One might say that the kingdom of heaven was right under the noses of the Jews or before their very eyes. And while many in Israel claimed that they were looking for a coming kingdom, they were not looking with the eyes of faith and thus were only seeking a carnal, earthly kingdom.

Meanwhile, there was Jesus, the prince and only true king of his church, who came with a different kingdom-doctrine than the kingdom-doctrine that the Jews were accustomed to hearing from the religious leaders of the day. Therefore, Jesus instructed the people on the most basic principles of the kingdom and its citizens in order to instruct those who were ignorant of the truth and to expose those who would not preach to the people the truth but preached merely an earthly kingdom, emphasizing man and his will and works over against the will and salvation of Jehovah God.

Beginning in Matthew 5:3 Jesus Christ gave the first, most basic principle of those who are citizens of the kingdom of heaven: they are poor in spirit. For a man or woman to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven means, first, that he or she is poor in spirit. Only the one who is poor in spirit is blessed. That much is clear from the text. Not all men are poor in spirit, but only those who are blessed are poor in spirit. What must be noted first about the poor in the text is that they are God’s elect. They are those in whom God delighted from all eternity and whom God appointed unto salvation in Jesus Christ and thus to citizenship in the kingdom before they were even born or had done any good or evil. The eternal choice of God is determinative for the blessedness of the one who is a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. This must be kept in mind throughout the rest of the beatitudes as well. According to the eternal decree of election, Jesus Christ pronounced blessings upon the disciples. Those pronouncements of blessing were not offers or pleas for the church to do something to be blessed, but they were declarations of blessing upon those whom God willed to bless. Some God blesses, and they are poor in spirit. Others God curses, and they are not poor in spirit.

Additionally, it is of crucial importance for us to understand these beatitudes in their proper context. Some seemingly well-intentioned theologians have made the issue more complicated than it needs to be by describing the beatitudes in their connection to one another as a series of steps in Christian virtues. This understanding can easily become a snare to the exegete. While there is a logical connection that exists when one considers the beatitudes in relationship to each other, that connection is not to be understood in a temporal sense. For example, a man or woman is not to be considered poor in spirit who does not also mourn or is not merciful. Logically, no man or woman mourns who is not also poor in spirit. One must also necessitate the other. However, the beatitudes are not to be treated as steps in the Christian experience as rungs on a ladder, so that a man ascends higher and higher up that ladder until he has reached the very top or the pinnacle of Christian virtues.

Instead, all the beatitudes relate to each other and belong in their totality to the citizens of the kingdom as the beatitudes are all the manifold blessings of God that he gives to those who are made the citizens of the kingdom in Jesus Christ. A man or woman who is lacking in any one of these blessings is in no wise to be considered a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. It is in this first beatitude that we consider what is the most basic principle concerning the citizens of the kingdom: they are poor in spirit.

The Identity of the Poor in Spirit

First, what does it not mean that one is poor in spirit? It does not mean that one is poor in this world’s goods. There is a certain idea that tends to float around in the church from time to time that it is more virtuous for someone to suffer want than to be wealthy. This idea at the very least suggests that it is harder for the rich man than the poor man to enter the kingdom. This is simply untrue and a gross misrepresentation of scripture. God has determined from eternity to make his power known in saving rich and poor, bond and free, male and female, and all without distinction or respect of persons. The kingdom of heaven possesses those who have much of this world’s goods and those who have little.

The thought that the blessed man is the one who is poor in this world’s goods is simply ludicrous. For if that were true, then we would have to say that men such as David and Solomon were lesser members of the church because they possessed exorbitant amounts of wealth. Indeed, Solomon possessed so much wealth that the queen of Sheba said, “The half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard” (1 Kings 10:7). There is nothing inherently more holy or righteous about someone who is poor in this world than someone who is rich in this world. It is this kind of superficial interpretation of the text that lends itself to attacking the church’s liberty in Christ, which is a threat to the very foundation of the kingdom. One might have little of this world’s goods and not be poor in spirit. Neither is the text teaching that voluntary poverty itself is something to be honored. That is the teaching of Rome. Rome has its patron saints whom Rome regards as the only persons who alone conformed to the rule of being “poor in spirit” because they deliberately made themselves poor. However, they were conceited and simply do not fit the scriptural definition of spiritual poverty that we read of in Matthew 5:3.

What then does it mean to be poor in spirit? The key word of the phrase is “spirit.” This is crucial for a proper understanding of this verse. In the beginning man was created a physical-spiritual creature. Unto every man belong both a physical side and a spiritual side. Man’s physical side is that aspect of man’s existence in which he stands in relationship to the earth. Man is of the earth earthy—taken up from the dust of the ground. Yet man also possesses a spiritual side. The spiritual side of man is that other aspect of man’s existence in which he stands in relationship to God. It is this spiritual side of man that distinguishes him from the animals, which also live, move, and have their being but are not spiritual. The spiritual side of man is the innermost part of man’s being, or what is also referred to by the Canons of Dordt as “the glimmerings of natural light” (Canons 3–4.4, in Confessions and Church Order, 167).

The idea of man’s spiritual side is not the same as being an image-bearer of God. The devil and his demons are also spiritual creatures, although they are not physical. However, it would be blasphemous to suppose that for the mere reason that the devil and his hosts are spiritual creatures that they bear the image of God. For one to be spiritual is not sufficient to make one an image-bearer of God. To be an image-bearer of God requires that one be made after the likeness of God in every respect in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness to will and to do in perfect agreement with the will of God. Rather, man as a spiritual creature is a rational, moral, and ethical creature who possesses a mind, will, and a conscience. As a man’s spirit is, so is that man.

In the beginning God created man good and upright, so that in all his thinking and willing he existed in perfect harmony with the living God. Adam and Eve stood in relationship to God in covenant fellowship with him because Adam and Eve had been created in God’s image and likeness. They possessed the ability and the desire to live in perfect conformity to the will of God. They were filled with the knowledge of God, so that they saw God in the creation in all the beasts, birds, plants, trees, and the starry heavens; glorified him as God; and were thankful. For the goodness of Adam and Eve was that they knew God and themselves in relationship to him. And it was in Adam and by means of Adam’s transgression in the garden that man became utterly impoverished and lost all that original goodness.

In Adam man became a debtor. That was quite a debt! God judged all men in Adam, so that in him and on account of his transgression, death passed upon all men (Rom. 8:12). In all man’s thinking, willing, and planning, man by nature became the servant of sin and the devil. The will of man was bound under sin, so that man can only ever produce corruption. Forfeiting the image of God, which was man’s goodness, man was wholly stripped of all those qualities and powers that God had given man to serve God.

However, it does not end there. In Adam man was not merely brought, as it were, to ground zero. Man was not merely made nothing. Surely, man is nothing. A man who thinks himself to be something when he is nothing is insane and puffed up in his own conceits. But nothing is not all that man is. Man by nature is a debtor. Man by nature owes an infinite debt to God that man simply cannot begin to repay. And it goes even further than that. Man, as he stands in relationship to God, is set at enmity against God and only ever increases his debt. Here we begin to see the greatness of man’s misery. Man has been in arrears for some six thousand years and only ever daily increases his debt. This debt is a debt that man has no right or ability of himself to repay. For this reason there is no more garden of Eden. The way into the garden was closed off to man. There is no more tree of life, so that man cannot go back to the garden and say, “I can make it up with God. I can do better next time.” No! For man only ever increases his debt.

How utterly poor is man! This poverty is also true of those who are regenerated. We do not deny that God’s elect people who have been regenerated do good works. Later in the sermon Jesus went on to declare the blessedness of those who mourn, who hunger and thirst after righteousness, and who are peacemakers. However, even by the very best of our good works we only ever daily increase our debt. It could even be said that it is especially by our good works that we only ever increase our debt. As soon as we begin to think otherwise, we deceive ourselves.

Moreover, it is because man’s debt is with God that man’s condition by nature is utterly hopeless as far as man is concerned. For if our debt were merely with another man, then perhaps we could wiggle our way out of repaying that debt. Men can be impressionable. Men can also be bribed. Eventually, it could even be possible to fully pay off a debt if that debt were with another man. However, this is not the case with God. Having our debt with God, we cannot so much as lift a finger in the hope of paying off our debt. When the law comes and condemns even the best of our works, we concede to the law’s judgment that it is good and exclaim, “Who shall deliver us?”

Indeed, with what can we repay God? We are not only nothing, but we also have nothing wherewith to commend ourselves to God. We have only our miserable selves—spotted, tainted, torn, broken, and utterly polluted with all the filth and defilements of sin. How then could we even begin to measure out the debt that we owe to God on account of both our original and actual transgressions? For such a debt that is against the infinite God is of inestimable cost. Even an eternity of hells could never fully satisfy the debt that we owe to God, for on account of even a single sin, we deserve to perish everlastingly. Before we ever sin once, we are worthy of condemnation in Adam. That is the reality of the debt that we owe to God. That is some debt!

The identity of the one who is poor in spirit is not discovered by merely stating an abstract fact about mankind’s condition in Adam. For then all men would fit the description of the blessed poor. Certainly, the one who is poor in spirit is not rich in spirit. Neither is a man who believes that he can merit with God poor in spirit. The one who is poor in spirit is not the same as the person who is constantly berating himself in public, nor does he go out of his way to let everyone around him know how much of a nobody he is.

Rather, the identity of the one who is poor in spirit is revealed because the one who is poor in spirit knows himself as poor. The one who is poor in spirit is one who knows himself by nature and by very deed to be a debtor with God. The one who is poor in spirit does not busy himself with trying to make up his sins to God. He knows his own nothingness, that he is only a debtor. That man confesses about himself that he has no righteousness with which to commend himself unto God. That man does not merely confess this about himself to other men, but he confesses this about himself to the living God. That man who is poor in spirit as he has been made to stand before God acknowledges his sins and misery and that there is no hope of salvation in himself or in his works. He confesses that he is worthy only of condemnation on account of his sins.

The Explanation of This

What then explains that there are those who are poor in spirit? The poor in spirit are blessed according to eternal election. Those whom God chose from eternity and to whom he willed to reveal himself savingly in Jesus Christ, they are the poor in spirit. The poor in spirit are such according as they are blessed by God. That blessing of God is not temporal, but the blessing is eternal, rooted in God’s sovereign will and good pleasure. Eternally, God willed that he should bless his elect people whom he would make poor in spirit.

How is that will of God made manifest? We read of this when the text says, “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Those who are poor in spirit are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. They are poor in spirit who belong to the kingdom. The kingdom has laid hold upon them and translated them out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. The kingdom is heavenly. The blessings of the kingdom are from God unto men, so that God reaches down from heaven in his grace and blesses those who are the citizens of his kingdom. It is the kingdom that God conceived of in his eternal counsel. The kingdom of heaven is the gracious rule of the covenant God in Jesus Christ. As such we can make a distinction between that rule of God over all created things by his sheer might and his rule of grace in his church. Especially with that in view, we consider the kingdom of heaven. The most basic principle about the kingdom of heaven is that it is a kingdom of grace.

Being a kingdom of grace, the kingdom possesses those who are poor. There is grace revealed. This is what the Lord Jesus would have us know about the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is a gracious gift to men and women who have nothing in themselves except for a mountain of debt. Citizenship in the kingdom means to have salvation and every blessing in Jesus Christ. The first benefit of the kingdom is that work of God whereby God by his gracious rule confronts the man who is running far from God and lays hold upon that man. Laying hold upon that man, God causes him to stand in God’s presence and to confess his own nothingness. God causes that man to confess the immensity of his debt and the utter hopelessness of paying that debt to God.

The kingdom of heaven possesses those who are poor in spirit, so that they become the proper citizens of that kingdom through the forgiveness of their sins. For the poor in spirit know about themselves and confess that by nature they have no right to a name and a place in the kingdom of heaven. That is their confession about themselves, not merely in the presence of other men but also unto the living God before whose presence they have been made to stand. The poor in spirit confess that their name and place in the kingdom of heaven were merited for them by Jesus Christ. They who are themselves poor are made rich. They alone are blessed. Only the poor in spirit are blessed.

The Blessedness of the Poor in Spirit

The poor in spirit are blessed because they have been given a wide entrance into the kingdom in Jesus Christ. This is the ground of their blessedness and of their comfort. The hope and confidence of the poor in spirit are not in themselves, for the poor in spirit know themselves to be debtors. Rather, the hope and confidence of the ones who are poor in spirit is Jesus Christ. For their sakes Jesus Christ became poor—unspeakably poor. The Lord of glory traded the sapphire throne of heaven for the humble cattle trough of Bethlehem. The Lord from heaven came into this world as nothing and with nothing. “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” the people said. His whole life long, Jesus humbled himself and was made nothing before the eyes of God and men. Christ’s humiliation culminated when he went to the cross. There at the cross Jesus Christ truly became nothing, even less than nothing. Jesus Christ became a debtor. For the sake of God’s elect people, whose debt Jesus bore, he made himself responsible for their sins and thus liable to temporal and eternal punishment on account of those sins.

At the cross Jesus Christ bore the immensity of the wrath of God that was due against our debt. All the debt that God’s elect people accumulated during the six thousand years that fallen man has been in arrears and which debt has increased daily throughout the lifetimes of God’s elect people was nailed to that cross. There was the perfect satisfaction of the infinite justice of God for all the original sin and actual transgressions of all of God’s people. There was forgiveness of all our debt. It was there on the cross that Jesus Christ established for us perfect righteousness on account of which a wide entrance was ministered unto us into the everlasting kingdom of heaven.

For our sakes Jesus Christ became poor in order that we might be made rich—unspeakably rich. Here we can see the other side of the blessedness of those who are poor in spirit. Christ has entered into their hearts by his Spirit and word and applies to them all the riches of the kingdom of heaven. The blessings of the kingdom are heavenly blessings. The poor in spirit are given to know the full and free pardon of their debt and that righteousness is as certainly theirs as if they personally had obeyed all the commandments of God. The poor in spirit are blessed. They are not blessed because they are poor in spirit. Rather, it is the living, indwelling reality of those whom God eternally blesses that they are poor in spirit. That they are poor in spirit is itself the blessing of God. They know themselves and their own indebtedness before the righteous tribunal of God. They are blessed. And they know it. The poor in spirit know that whereas they deserve only temporal and eternal punishment on account of their sins, God has reached down to them in his grace and has revealed himself graciously in Jesus Christ as the one who has paid for all their debt. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”