Every kingdom has a rule of law. Here in the United States, we have the Constitution that enshrines certain rights and obligates how government is to be orchestrated. Likewise, the Heavenly Kingdom of Christ is also founded upon the mandate of a Spiritual Constitution that coveys Jesus’s authority and outlines how the free gift of His righteousness is to be manifested among His people. This Spiritual Constitution is referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, which is the first public sermon Christ preached after His baptism and temptation.
The first section of the Sermon on the Mount is entitled the Beatitudes. It is a series of eight statements of how obedience to Christ will bring joy to the life of believers. He begins each statement with the word “blessed” which comes from the Greek word meaning happy or fortunate. These eight statements are how Christ intends to make His people joyful while living out the Kingdom of Heaven on earth through the grace of His Cross.
Listen to the first words our Lord proclaimed to His disciples and the crowd gathered around Him as this mountain became the Lord’s drafting table for His Kingdom.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:3
This great multitude of people gathered to hear Christ included both the rich and the poor, though in this statement He is not referring to physical richness and physical poverty. Christ is referring to the interior life of a person, the inner man. The inner man, or human spirit, is where Christ interacts with us. It is where one believes, feels, and trusts in Christ. The terms poor and rich are associated with monetary value, so what is the spiritual unit of currency? Righteousness.
Paradoxically, this statement claims that the poor in spirit are blessed, rather than the spiritually rich. What then does the spiritually rich have in deficit? They are not rich in righteousness but rather self-righteousness. There is a significant difference.
“But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are like filthy rags.”
Isaiah 64:6a
If you saw a man clothed in filthy rags and covered in mud exclaiming loudly that he is clean and clothed in golden raiment, you would say that he is arrogant and objectively wrong. Except that is how the self-righteous are in Christ’s eyes. They are ignorant of their own unrighteousness and call their evil good while demeaning others they see lower than themselves. The believers in a town called Laodicea grew to be exactly like this. Listen to this stern rebuke from the Resurrected Savior to the compromised Church of Laodicea.
“For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing’, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.”
Revelation 3:17
This is the song of the self-righteous: I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing. Oh, what a scary place to be in. To be in a place where you believe that you no longer need Christ because you have all the righteousness you need. To be in a place where you have grown content and think your righteousness thus far can save you. To be in a place where you are not hot but also not quite cold. Where you casually live on as Christ matters just enough to make you feel better about yourself and slightly better than others. How blind we can become of our own state, and what a miserable state that is. Prayerfully listen to what Christ says next.
“I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.”
Revelation 3:18
Oh, how poor we are compared to the infinite richness of Christ! How merciful He is to see us in this arrogant and evil state of self-deception and then apply Himself as the cure. The heavenly gold won by the fiery crucible of the Cross. The garments of salvation that He clothes us in. The salve for our eyes that we might rightly see Him and see ourselves. It is to the poor in spirit He grants these things to. The Kingdom of Heaven itself. What a joyful state it is to be free from self-righteousness and compromise.
*This blog was written by Tucker McDonald. He is the Teaching Assistant at South Wesley.*
