[Great Verses] Jesus, the Son Made ManSample

What’s life really all about? 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Writer Lee Strobel relates the story of Dr. Alexander Zaichenko, who was a prominent economist in the former Soviet Union. He was an atheist, from a family of atheists, living in a country of atheists. But, he began to ask himself the kinds of questions that many people ask themselves as they get older. “What’s life really all about? Is this all there is?”

As he groped for answers, he obtained a black-market Bible and began reading it with an open mind. He started at the beginning of Matthew and was surprised by how boring it was. After reading the genealogy of Jesus, which began with, “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,” and so forth, he began to think, “Maybe atheists are right. Maybe there’s nothing to this stuff.” But he kept reading, and finally he reached Matthew 5, where Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount. This towering intellect, who had studied all the classics, all the philosophers, all the great thinkers, later declared, “It took my breath away.” 

When Zaichenko read the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, he realized that those words were not the words of a mere man, and he came to Christ. The Sermon on the Mount, which is commonly considered the greatest speech in history, begins with the simple line, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Not the poor in resources or money or body; the poor in spirit.

The poor in spirit are those who recognize how much they need God. They recognize that they need God desperately. They are dependent on God. They are spiritually poor, spiritually bankrupt. Poor in spirit is the opposite of self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-righteous.

Why did Jesus begin here with spiritual poverty? 

Perhaps because the root sin is pride, and the worst form of pride is spiritual pride or self-righteousness. Spiritual poverty is the opposite of spiritual pride, so Jesus begins with the poor in spirit. The first beatitude focuses on recognizing how desperate you are for God, how much you need God, and how dependent you are upon God.