Matthew 5:3 (ESV)
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
There is a tendency in the hearts of men to approach the devotional life seeing Jesus only as Teacher. They hear the teaching. They read the rules. They try hard to improve. They sense their failure. They fail. The cycle is relentless. It has trapped us for years.
We do more. We try harder. We squint and squeeze. We try to hold on and walk in grace. Jesus as a teacher tells us what to do, and we recoil at our profound inability to consistently follow His rules.
The work of the gospel has never been to teach us new rules. The gospel has never been a self-improvement program. The gospel comes to us not to make us better men, but to make us new men. It comes to save us from our sins.
The gospel opens our eyes to see that we don’t need a better plan or more teaching. We need a Savior.
If we are going to be poor in spirit and live in the Kingdom, we will get there because we know our poverty. We have surrendered. We trust in Him. We turn to Him. We look at His face. We now see Him looking at us. When the veil is removed and we look at His face, we are transformed by the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:16-18).
We need to meet Jesus as men who are poor — men who have tried and failed, men who have posed and been exposed, men who now know their desperation, men who have been caught. We wake up to our spiritual poverty.
Only then can we rest in the one-way love of our Savior. Now we can sit at the feet of the Teacher. Loved. Forgiven. In unbreakable Union with Him. He does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
This is salvation.
This is when the Kingdom of God becomes ours.
This is living in the Kingdom.
The Next Question:
• Do you see yourself as poor in spirit?
• Do you see your need to surrender? Everyday?
• Who is walking with you through your surrendering?