There's so much that Jesus said about the difference between rich people and poor people
and yet this is the part of his teachings that is most blatantly distorted by corrupt leaders
at virtually every level in the church world today.
The opening verse to the Sermon on the Mount says
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
And I don't know that I have ever heard that verse taught correctly.
The most common distortion is to claim that the verse really means, "Blessed are the humble."
That's right: "Blessed are the humble."
Well, it is good to be humble, but how did they get "humble" out of being "poor in spirit"?
Well, they take those two words, 'in spirit', and they do a clever little trick with them.
They say that Jesus is actually blessing people who are more or less spiritually bankrupt.
Poor in spirit. Spiritually bankrupt. See the similarity?
Both talk about being poor, and both have words that include the word 'spirit'.
So if you're not careful, you could actually be sucked into believing that.
But is that really what he is saying?
Is Jesus promising to give the Kingdom of Heaven to people who are spiritually destitute
to people who are almost totally lacking in anything of spiritual worth?
Such a shocking statement must surely call for some closer study.
Does Jesus really like materialistic people more than spiritual people?
And does he do that because he has found that materialistic people are more humble?
Come on! Open your eyes to what is happening.
Unfortunately, most of us don't want to believe otherwise.
We don't want to think that Jesus would rather we be poorer than we already are.
So, what a wonderful, convenient doctrine!
If you just change "poor" to being kind of "spiritually off the rails"
"Blessed are those who have learned it spiritually! Yes!"
Such a doctrine implies that the more greedy we are, the closer we are to heaven.
Greed may be the root of all evil, but ultimately, it's what God is looking for
wealthy people who are spiritually lacking.
And the reason he is looking for such people is because their sinfulness makes them so much more humble.
This is precisely opposite to what James, Jesus' brother, said in chapter after chapter of his epistle.
In the second chapter of James in particular, he says
"Has not God chosen the poor of this world who are rich in faith?"
Can you see how James totally contradicts the most popular distortion of Matthew 5:3?
It is the materially poor who are rich in faith.
And he goes on to say that it is the materially rich who blaspheme the name by which we have been called.
All of these sermons telling you that the first beatitude is about being materially rich
and thus spiritually poor, are nothing short of straight-out blasphemy.
Like with every false teaching
you only need to back off a step or two and get things into perspective before the distortion comes to light.
Over in the sixth chapter of Luke's Gospel, Luke gives his version of what Jesus said in that great sermon.
It's much shorter than Matthew's version
but Luke records Jesus are simply saying, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
So which is it? The poor, or the rich?
Who really is Jesus blessing here?
In reality, what Jesus says in the 6th chapter of Luke is totally consistent with what James said in his epistle.
God has chosen the poor. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor, not the rich
not some warped perversion of greed which is supposed to make people humble
at the same time that it makes them rich.
But what about this little phrase, "in spirit"?
Does that really mean spiritually poor?
These two words, 'in spirit', can be used in conjunction with any number of other descriptions
to emphasize the spiritual nature of that description.
If we said, for example, that a person has a gentle spirit, we are simply restating that the person is gentle.
If they have a mean spirit, we are restating that they are mean.
And if they have a selfish spirit
you don't say that they themselves are very spiritual because they are selfish.
You say that they are selfish, and that this selfishness shows itself in many ways.
They are selfish in spirit.
Likewise, if someone has a greedy spirit, or if they are greedy in spirit, they are not spiritual.
They are greedy, and that greed shows in the way that they live.
So what Luke recorded Jesus as saying: "Blessed are the poor"
is the same as what Matthew recorded him as saying
"Blessed are those people whose spirit is that of a poor person."
Matthew's version says everything that Luke's version says, but then a little bit more.
As Luke has noted, the simple aim is to be poor
but it is possible for a person to be poor and still be greedy.
They can have a rich or greedy spirit, and thus lose out on the blessing that Jesus offered to the poor.
You see, Jesus saw something beautiful in poor people
that I have also discovered as I traveled around the world.
Often, in some of the poorest countries in the world, you can find some of the most beautiful smiles.
A beautiful spirit.
When followers have John the Baptist came to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah
he told them to go tell John that the Gospel was being preached to the poor.
So that must have been the theme of many sermons that Jesus preached.
"Good news for the poor. Heaven belongs to you guys."
These first 10 verses of the Sermon on the Mount are often called the Beatitudes (or the Blessed attitudes).
Certainly, the attitude being praised in this first verse is one of cheerfully accepting poverty.
One could be poor simply because they were too lazy to work
or because they lost all their money gambling in an attempt to get rich.
Such people are often full of bitterness towards others who have more than them.
In attitude, such people are as greedy as any Wall Street stockbroker
and they can become some of the most miserable people on the planet.
They may technically be poor, but they are not poor in spirit.
They hate being poor, and that hatred gets sprayed around on a lot of other people as well.
Something I have found about being really poor in attitude (or in spirit)
is that it involves actually setting out to learn how to be content with less and less.
Such people hate to see waste.
They hate to see the world ravaged to satisfy the luxurious demands of a greedy world.
Now, there is a small revival of that kind of attitude in some parts of the world today.
"Minimalism", they call it.
Ask yourself, "What is the minimum that I can get by with?"
You may be able to live like a millionaire until your creditors catch up with you.
You may even have enough hard cash to live much more comfortably than you do now.
But if you are poor in spirit...if you have learned to be happy without those nice things
you will always have more than enough to meet those minimal needs, and still help others as well.
That is the kind of freedom that greedy people imagine they will achieve by working harder and harder
for more and more.
And yet it comes so naturally just by learning to live on less
by learning to be poor in spirit...poor in your attitude.
Ironically, those people who are rich in spirit
keep arguing that they won't have anything to give to the poor
unless they make a lot more money than what they can spend on themselves.
And yet they never quite reach that point.
In fact, the richer the spirit, the more in debt they usually are.
They never have enough.
All over the world, we have what is being called a rat race
where everyone snarls and growls at one another to get a bigger and bigger slice of the pie.
No one is happy, and no one is satisfied...like angry seagulls fighting over scraps.
By contrast, there are the little sparrows that Jesus also spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount.
He said that his heavenly Father knows that the sparrows need food, snd so they never starve.
They are free to chirp and sing, getting by with the tiniest crumbs that have been left by everyone else.
What a beautiful picture of someone who is poor in spirit!
This minimalist spirit breeds contentment and creates greater feelings of security.
We have discovered that we have very few needs, and so we know that there will always be enough.
All we need to do is relax and rest in the loving care of our heavenly Father.
People are often amazed when I tell them that even though none of us works for money
we have never had to fundraise.
Our needs are so simple, and God not only meets them day after day and year after year
but he does so abundantly, giving us more funds than we can responsibly give away.
We often straight-out refuse donations, either because they are not being given in a good spirit
or just because it's so much hard work trying to get them to the most needy people of the world.
Just about every week, someone else comes and spends some time with us
as they seek to gain a better appreciation for just how real this miracle of God's provision is.
Simple needs met to overflowing from an abundant God.
Please write to us if you would like to find out more about such a lifestyle.
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God bless you.