Blessed Are the Poor

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

BLESSED ARE THE POOR

Luke 6:20-23

20 Looking at his disciples, he said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. 23 "Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.

NIV

If we were looking at the gospel according to Matthew, we would be looking at what is called the beatitudes, eight or nine of them, depending on how they are counted. Here, Luke gives us three or four, but again, as we are looking into the record of Luke, let us deal with each one of these. First, Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours of the kingdom of God.” First, the word blessed would include happy, content, satisfied, fulfilled, and complete.  Now. we do have to include “poor in spirit” as that is how Matthew records it. We would not think that Jesus excludes people of wealth from the kingdom of God, although it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom than a camel going through the eye of a needle. Material wealth gives a person the ability to provide all their desires and perhaps it might be more difficult to depend on Jesus. However, to be poor in spirit would include all people no matter their personal financial picture. When we yield our spirit, when we face the fact, that we are a poor wretched soul, lost in this dark world, with no strength to save ourselves from death, then we see the light of Jesus and understand that He is the only way to life, we yield ourselves to him. It is just as Paul puts it, we offer our bodies, our self, as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is our act of spiritual worship. How can we ever think that we are rich, and yes, rich in spirit? Spiritual vanity would be our ruin, even after we have accepted Jesus and are given the right to be called children of God and have abdicated our citizenship in the world and become a citizen in the kingdom of God because of our poorness in spirit, we could be in danger of beginning to have a certain level of spiritual vanity. We could be in danger if we begin to think our education or knowledge of the scriptures or our position in the body of Christ make us better than others, boasting in a sense, then spiritual vanity is our downfall. Let us always approach our lives in Christ always seeking him and his kingdom above all else, looking only to Jesus for everything, knowing we need Jesus and only Jesus because we see how poor we are.