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Spirit-Led Identity Change
In The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), Jesus gives a quick summary of what a healthy spirit and soul look like. These verses are a snapshot into the sort of person the Holy Spirit is transforming us to be.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
To be poor in spirit is to recognize that without God’s grace, our spirit, soul, and body lack what we need. We were created to live in a relationship with Him in which we display His goodness and power in the earth, but sin has marred us. Apart from a work of His Spirit, our spiritual lack and dysfunction (our poverty of spirit) will always keep us from being the people we should be.
We can only find the inner wealth required for our assignment by seeing our lack, repenting from settling for it, and pursuing Him for His riches. Many of those who heard Jesus when He walked on the earth didn’t do this.
Then He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades; for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.”
In these statements, Jesus condemned the cities that had seen His ministry and walked by without repenting. On a first reading, we might think that the Israelites who lived in these cities must have been horrible sinners. After all, Sodom was full of wickedness. If the Israelites would face a stricter judgment, they must have been worse.
If we look more closely, however, we see that they didn’t fit our normal image of “horrible sinners.” Most of them weren’t murderers, thieves, or adulterers. Very few, if any, raped and plundered others. Many followed the Law of Moses strictly. They were probably basically nice people.
Aside from their outward religious dress and activities, I suspect that they were a lot like us. They did their work and treated others with basic respect. A large number of them probably even liked Jesus. In other parts of Israel, many praised his teachings in the synagogues (Luke 4:15 NAS). Great crowds came to see Him. At one time, they wanted to make Him king (John 6:15).
This wasn’t true for all of them, of course. The religious leaders especially rejected Him, but Matthew 11:20-24 pronounces judgment on more than the religious leaders. Jesus condemns everyone who didn’t become His disciple.
What great sin did the common people commit that was going to make it so intolerable for them on Judgment Day? It was that after God sent His Son to show miraculous power and character, they didn’t take the time to find out what Jesus was really about. They looked at God’s greatest gift, His only begotten Son, and didn’t reflect on why He was there and what He required of them. They didn’t put in the effort to face up to their poverty of spirit, so they didn’t see the need to rearrange their priorities to pursue Him with all their hearts for as long as it took to find Him.[27]
The Dance of Darkness
Jesus gave more detail about His generation in Matthew 11.
”But to what shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their companions, and saying: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we mourned to you, and you did not lament.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ …”
When our hearts are set in our own ways, we want God’s servants to play our tune. We make up rules about how they should speak, and then we expect them to play along.
The generation who lived at the time of Jesus wouldn’t listen to John the Baptist. He was too weird. He ate locusts, had fashion issues, and spoke with nasty sounding words like, “Repent.” They thought he was a madman and concluded that God couldn’t be with him – “He has a demon.”
When Jesus came, he wasn’t like John. Aside from the large number of miracles, he was a normal guy. Even the tax collectors and sinners liked him. The people demanded someone a little more religious. The down to earth preacher with the funny accent from Galilee wasn’t otherworldly enough – “’Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!”
Both men were bringing a message from heaven. The voice of God was broadcast like an antenna blasting on two different frequencies, but the people were tuned to the wrong stations. They thought they knew what kind of person God would use, and neither John nor Jesus fit the mold. Their expectations had made them insensitive to God’s word, and they missed their chance to receive God’s greatest gift.
What about our generation? Are we listening, or are we demanding that God speak to us on our terms? I cringe when I hear people talk about how boring church is. In some cases, those who are complaining are hearing the Bible preached. Churches are not perfect, but they also may not be the main problem; the problem may be that our hearts have become dull.
We often don’t realize that we are letting our culture kill us. We have become trained to hear the entertainment industry, popular music, and advertisers rather than the word of God. Our expectations and personalities have become shaped around an excitement level and style that few churches can duplicate. We think that if God loves us, He will talk to us in a way that inspires us to pay attention, but He often has other ideas.
Some of us also expect answers that are well packaged and easy to apply, like products from a supermarket. Though there are some answers like that, others require us to take journeys into the unknown. Tough choices are involved, and we must experiment so we can learn through experience. We slowly piece together an understanding of God and His world.[28]
If we are poor in spirit, we will realize that we don’t have the luxury of waiting for God to fit our expectations. We have to take His word in whatever form He gives it and let Him adapt our hearts to His ways rather than expect Him to adapt to ours. We have to seriously consider the amazing gift being offered and the incredible loss we could experience if we fail to respond well. We must make decisions that will allow us to lay hold of the hope set before us (Hebrews 6:18).
The first four steps I listed in Chapter 4 are based on being poor in spirit:
I stand in the truth that I am loved and accepted before God through the sacrifice of Jesus. This is true no matter how sinful my emotions and actions might be.
In this principle, we believe that we are accepted before God through nothing but the sacrifice of Jesus. We could never be good enough to prove our worth, so right from the first moment of salvation, our poverty of spirit is embraced.
I recognize that in spite of being accepted and loved, I need to change.
In this second principle, we recognize that even though we are loved and accepted, our lack of obedience to Jesus is still a problem. If we don’t change, we will continue to display the wrong message to the world, hurt others, and miss out on the tremendous blessing He could make our lives to be. In response to God’s promise to save us from this, we humble ourselves and ask Him to show us His way to transformation.
I also stand on the truth of who I am in Jesus, even when my experience tells me a different message. His word teaches that my real identity is that I am a new creation in Him. I can love Him and walk in His ways, even if I have not yet learned how to do that.
In this third principle, we recognize the weakness of our self-perceptions. We might have a thousand justifications for believing that we are incapable of being the person God calls us to be, but we choose to see those justifications as lies that leave us in a state of spiritual darkness. We don’t trust what we say about ourselves; we trust what God says about us.
I press into whatever I can that will help me to change. I seek God, study His word, listen to others, read, try to obey, look for practical wisdom, and learn from experience. I do this even if obedience throws my emotions into pain and confusion for periods of time. I do what I can to walk in faith, wisdom, and truth – trusting that He will lead me into how to handle any difficulties that show up along the way.
In this fourth principle, we practically apply ourselves to the answer for our spiritual poverty. We do what we can to step into God’s infusion of wealth. We aren’t trying to prove our spirituality; that would be the opposite of being poor in spirit. Instead, we are attempting to walk into the riches He offers through the work of the Holy Spirit.
In Galatians 6, Paul tells us to “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). He then lets us know the context in which bearing one another’s burdens works:
But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load.
When we see our spiritual poverty, there can be a temptation to think, “I need more people to bear my burdens, because I am too weak to bear them on my own.” Unfortunately, this often leads us to try to replace faith in God with faith in people, and they were never intended to be our saviors.
Galatians 6:4-5, however, tells us how to avoid this. When it comes to our attitude toward the load that God has given us to bear, we should each seek to do what we can to carry it on our own (with God’s help). We may feel it is too heavy for us, but we must realize that if it is too heavy for us, it will certainly be too heavy for those who weren’t intended to carry it.
And this makes sense – the Christian life requires practical decisions to surrender to Jesus, seek Him, and endure. No one else can do these for us.
Yet if we do our part to bear our own load …if we recognize our poverty of spirit and pursue Jesus with our whole hearts …if we examine our own work and seek God’s help to make changes …He will not only enable us to bear it, He will also send others to help us bear those burdens. They might not give us what we feel we need, but they will become part of what He knows we actually do need.
We see from this that being poor in spirit is not the same as helplessness. It doesn’t lead us to say, “I am so weak that I need to give up and hope some other person will take care of my problems.” It instead leads us to say, “I am so weak I must press deeper into Jesus so His Spirit can lead me into what is impossible for me on my own. He may use others to help, or He may not. Either way, it is my responsibility to find His path forward.”
As we are poor in spirit without excusing ourselves, Jesus gives us His kingdom (Matthew 5:3). He meets us in our faith, and we are transformed.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
(Matthew 5:6, NASV)
Being poor in spirit leads naturally into hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Righteousness is a huge part of the wealth that God gives us to meet the needs of our spirit.
It starts with grace and faith:
But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.
The amazing message of the gospel is that we don’t have to earn right standing with God. It is a gift He gives us through faith based on the fact that He paid the penalty for our sins (Romans 3:23-26).
Then once He has made us righteous in this way, He becomes involved in our lives to change us into people who do righteous acts. He touches us in the middle of our ingrained sin and helps us to find answers for our brokenness.
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
His mercy and grace lead us into a lifestyle of righteous works (Ephesians 2:10). Matthew 5:6 tells us to hunger and thirst for this experience. Its value is so great that we should desire it as we would food and drink. And in the end, we will be satisfied.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
In Chapter 8, I wrote about knowing Jesus. I said that He is the most amazing prize available on this earth. We find Him as we become poor in spirit, hunger and thirst for righteousness, and walk into purity of heart. This process opens our eyes to who He is.
We learn to hear when He is speaking, and we walk into a supernatural relationship with Him that surpasses all else. Our identity is transformed as His thoughts, decisions, and feelings are worked into us. We discover the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), and He becomes real in our experience.
This is the outworking of the eternal life He gives us: we know and see God (John 17:3). It changes everything. There is nothing more valuable …and it continues forever!
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matt 5:8).
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