Blessed Are the Poor?

I’m sure you will agree we’ve often been captivated by the apparent inconsistencies of Scripture, so that you begin to wonder why a certain passage will say one thing and another parallel passage seem to say something else. I know I have. One such inconsistency has kept capturing my attention over the years. It is in the difference between Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20b in the Sermons on the Mount and the Plain respectively. Matthew says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Luke’s Gospel says: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

Now, I am not foolish enough to exegete the passages in all their contexts for that would take someone much more learned than I as well as several volumes worth of writing. Rather, I just want to talk about a few things I find interesting and perhaps develop one theme a little further in this and future posts.

Two things pop out at me initially. First, in the verse from Matthew’s Gospel, Christ is speaking to people in general. He is being somewhat hypothetical. On the other hand, in the verse from Luke’s Gospel, Christ is being very specific and is addressing His listeners directly; He says “blessed are you.” One wonders what gave rise to the directness of His speech in Luke. Had someone moments before come to Him to complain of his lack of worldly goods, or about the oppression of the tax collectors? Perhaps there were fewer listeners on the occasion of the Sermon on the Plain than there were for the Sermon on the Mount and so Christ could afford to be personal. Most of the commentators I’ve read believe that Christ was speaking directly to His disciples, not so much to the crowd. This works for me.

But, in any event, He seems to be saying plainly that in poverty, there was a certain kind of blessing to be had and the blessing of poverty was not the same as the blessing of wealth. It is here that I’m in danger of biting off more than I can chew, because there is so much to say and not near enough space to say it. For now, I just want to focus on this idea of poverty as an apparent blessing. One thing that comes through loud and clear—at least to me—is that Christ saw wealth as major hindrance to salvation. But more importantly, he saw poverty as a kind or type of condition for salvation. The Sermon on the Plain has eschatological implications lacking in the Sermon on the Mount. It was a sermon based on the coming advent of the Kingdom. Christ made it plain that heavenly rewards would come later, or rather after. He said in the Sermon, as He says elsewhere many times, that the wealth one pursues and obtains, is the reward one receives. For the wealthy, the wealth enjoyed here and now is the reward, perhaps the only reward, of what they desired most! In the writings of Paul we have a somewhat expanded explanation of the wealth/poverty dichotomy. He said: “[be] not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money”; “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (1 Tim. 3:3; 6:10, emphasis added). And from Hebrews, “Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have” (Heb. 13:5a, emphasis added).

So we see that it is not so much the wealth but the love one has for it, the hankering after it, which is so destructive. Now granted, many who are wealthy have gotten that way through no love of money on their part, as through an inheritance. And too, there are those who love a challenge, love to work and so amass wealth as a by-product of something other than the love of money. But that begs the question: Why then did Christ warn us of pursuing and being wealthy?
It seems unavoidable from my reading of Scripture, and especially the Gospels, that poverty was a condition that Christ considered in some way actually favourable for one’s spiritual life. Not that one should pursue poverty, for that would be as bad as pursuing wealth, in a perverse sort of way. No, what Christ had in mind, according to my understanding, was that one should be content with whatever it was God’s good pleasure to give. Paul certainly thought so, “Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Php 4:11, see also 2 Cor 12:10; 1 Tim 6:8; Heb 13:5).

I believe Christ extolled the virtue of poverty because it accomplished three related goals: it removed the alluring distractions that the desire for and possession of money inevitably brings about; it mitigated the inexorable sin that accompanies the pursuit as well as the possession of wealth; it rendered one helpless and dependant and therefore more willing to submit to the idea of a divine providential Creator and Sustainer. That is, it removed the self-assurance and smug, self-satisfaction that is such an obstacle to our spiritual lives.

So when Christ said “poor” as reported by Luke, it had, on the one hand, a reference to real material poverty but on the other it referred to all those who had not yet found (or rather, been given) the Kingdom of God or Heaven. This was the real poverty that Christ came to earth to eliminate. In the Gospels, it is clear that Christ expects us to help and support the oppressed, exploited and poor in our midst. I believe this is illustrated by passages showing that He was aware of the need of the poor and was prepared to help that need and expected His disciples to do likewise (Matt. 25:34-36; John 13:29 for instance). However, in His inaugural speech in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19) and again in answering the questions of John the Baptist’s disciples (Luke 7:22) Jesus loosely quotes Isaiah 61:1-2. This quote refers to the people of Israel. This and other references like it, referred to the whole unsaved people of Israel who were so much in need of God’s mercy, even as they once had been in Egypt.

The eschatological bias of the Sermon on the Plain actually reinforces the notion of the Gospel as intended for the spiritually poor, as when Christ says, “Blessed are you who hunger now for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh (Luke 6:21, emphasis added). The implication being that the poor, the hungry and the mourning shall all receive a spiritual reward at some future time. This is reinforced when Christ says of the rich that they are receiving their comfort in full; of the well-fed that they shall be hungry and of the laughing that they shall weep (vs. 24-25). Clearly, Christ had more in mind when He spoke these words than defending poverty or denouncing wealth. He was speaking to all those who could hear His message and the message was, “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:1-3).

In Luke 6:20-26, we hear Christ giving examples of what to expect from life in the Kingdom. In these verses He repudiates the pursuit of wealth and the idea that wealth should rightfully be considered as a demonstration of God’s special blessing. By Jesus’ time, most people in Israel were as worldly as any other people and had taken the promise of wealth and prosperity, given by God (as in Deuteronomy 15:4) as something to be expected and which was a kind of entitlement and a mark of special favour (similar to the “health, wealth and happiness" gospel that is so prevalent in our own time). Christ was taking all these kinds and types of assumptions and standing them on their head, and not by any new message. The Gospel is not new; it is eternal and finds expression throughout the OT in one form or another. Christ was reversing what had come to be considered the norm and as a kind of entitlement, by actually fulfilling the law, by living out in complete obedience what God had truly wanted for His people all along. This reversal seems so different because we are so caught up in our own worldly pursuits that even though we have eyes to see, we are blind and have ears to hear, but are deaf. We have each of us become complacent. We have each of us come to expect an entitlement. We live as though we might not die at any moment. The New Testament does not extol material prosperity. It does not describe a “name and claim” gospel. Rather, it proclaims a complete surrender to the will of God. It proclaims the way, not of plenty, comfort and complacency but of poverty, sacrifice, and struggle until those who do not fail, those who overcome, will finally receive their reward in heaven, not on earth (Rev 12:11). This radical idea or values reversal is so deeply entrenched in the NT that most people (most of the time) gloss over it. We demonstrate by our love of life and the world that we don't truly understand the absolute nature of what Christ has been telling us. I'd like to explore this idea further in future posts but let me close with one final question. If we, as self-professing Christians, are not ready to die at any moment, nay--are not actually looking forward to our death--then I ask, "Are we really Christ's true disciples after all?"

Soli Deo Gratia.