Luke 6:20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be you poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Acting on the established and valid principle that we must interpret the less by the more complete, we determine the meaning of this passage by the words as recorded in Matthew's Gospel, "Blessed are the poor in spirit,' etc.; and thus taking it, we conclude - I. THAT NARROWNESS OF MEANS IS NOT A DESIRABLE THING. Our Lord could not have intended to teach that the poor (in outward circumstances) were necessarily blessed, for poverty itself means privation, inability to command the various bounties and treasures our Creator has provided for our enjoyment and enrichment. Moreover, it by no means constantly or certainly leads to anything which can be called "the kingdom of God;" on the contrary, it frequently conducts to dishonesty, servility, demoralization (see Proverbs 30:8, 9). Neither, therefore, in the present nor in the future can such poverty be pronounced blessed (see, however, homily on Luke 4:18, "to preach the gospel to the poor"). II. THAT POOR-SPIRITEDNESS IS A DECIDEDLY UNWORTHY THING. A "poor-spirited" man, according to the common usage of the term, is a man no one can esteem, and he is a man who cannot respect himself. Christ could not have intended to commend him as the heir of the kingdom of God. He did indeed say much in praise of the meek, the enduring, the merciful, the forgiving; he did say much in deprecation of violence and retaliation. But meekness is a vastly different thing from meanness or cowardice; and a man may be nobly superior to mere violence who fights bravest battles for truth and righteousness. All struggle is not soldiership; and he who has most of what Christ meant when he blessed the poor in spirit may be very valiant and very aggressive at his post as the champion of all that is true and pure. III. THAT HUMILITY OF HEART IS THE DESIRABLE THING FOR SINFUL MEN. Blessed are the men who have in their hearts a deep sense of their own unworthiness. And they are so because this is: 1. The true and therefore the right thing. Truth is always and under all circumstances to be preferred to error. It would make a man much more comfortable in his mind to persuade him that he is everything that is good, and that he had done everything that was required of him. But what a hollow and rotten thing such a satisfaction would be, if the man were wrong and guilty! How much better for him to know that he was guilty, in need of cleansing and of mercy! How pitiable (not enviable) the Church or the nation that supposes itself to be rich and strong when it is utterly poor and weak! How enviable (not pitiable) the man who has come to understand that he is in urgent need of those resources which he may have if he will seek them, and which - now that he knows his necessity - he will not fail to seek! To have a deep sense of our unworthiness before God is to know ourselves as we are; it is to recognize our lives as they have been. It is to perceive how far we have failed to be that which we should have been to our Divine Father; it is to realize how much there has been in our lives which God's Law condemns, how much there has been absent from them which his Word demands. It is to hold the truth in our hearts; it is, so far, to be in the right. It is a blessed estate as compared with its opposite - that of error and delusion. But it is also: 2. The receptive and therefore the hopeful thing. When a man imagines himself to be safe he admits no Saviour to his heart; when he knows and feels himself to be in danger and in difficulty he opens his door wide to one that will befriend him. The man in whose heart is a true humility, who finds himself to be wrong with God, who sees how far he is from perfect rectitude, is the very man who will welcome Jesus Christ in all his gracious offices. (1) Conscious ignorance will welcome the Divine Teacher. (2) Conscious guilt will rejoice in an all-sufficient Saviour. (3) Conscious weakness will lean on Almighty Power, and be ever seeking the upholding grace of a mighty Spirit. (4) Conscious error and insufficiency will yield itself to the guidance and direction of a Divine Lord and Leader. And surrendering ourselves to Christ, we enter the kingdom of God. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. |
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