“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
What does it mean to be poor in spirit? What does it mean to possess the kingdom of heaven? The phrases are not exclusive. The former is a condition for the latter and the latter only happens by the means of the former. What does it mean to be poor in spirit? Two things: 1. To repudiate every external thing. This is not simply a verbal rejection, but a heartfelt refusal to be associated with everything external. 2. To cleanse the heart from desires of possession. It is not enough to simply repudiate those things which are external when your heart is still attached to them. A distinction, therefore, needs to be made between having things and being possessed by them. A person could have nothing but be utterly possessed by their desires. Likewise, a person could have everything but still possess nothing. Abraham provides a depiction of being poor in spirit. When God commanded the sacrifice of his one and only son, God was testing his possession. If Abraham possessed anything, it would have been his one and only son; the son who God promised to bless Abraham with. God’s test was to see if Abraham’s heart was possessed by anything other than Himself. The final result of the test was that Abraham was a man who had many things, yet possessed NOTHING. Only one thing mattered to Abraham. We have to ask ourselves, are we possessed by anything? If so, are we fighting to extract it by grace from our hearts? That might be the problem. It is not fighting that will extract the idols from the grasps of our hearts, but rather surrender. By surrendering all, we gain everything. Thats not what the world says, but it is what the Bible promises.
