Blessed are the poor in spirit

by John Crosby, Pastor Emeritus 

At CPC we want to reveal how Jesus matters in our lives, and we’ll explore that by spending much of this ministry year studying His most famous teaching, the Sermon on the Mount. His first words, “Blessed are,” point us to His first lesson: that we are meant to be blessed, to flourish in life as we follow Jesus into His Kingdom. God’s Word is meant to fill us with “life in all its fullness,” rather than to punish or guilt or harangue us.

Secondly, we’ll continually observe how Jesus contrasts the way of modern life or religion and His path toward that blessed life. He literally turns our life upside down with His proclamations, beginning with His statement that the poor in spirit—those in need, those overwhelmed in life, those at the end of their rope—are recipients of God’s endless, abounding love. Through the Beatitudes, we are reminded to live life on God’s terms, not our own. Life’s circumstances change daily. But the Beatitudes that bless the pained and the poor and the despised of the world remind me that the God of heaven and earth is unchanging.