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Blessed [fortunate] are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [1]

~Jesus (Matthew 5:3)

Being poor in spirit is spiritual poverty and not physical poverty. This kind of spiritual poverty is specially commended in Isaiah. The ‘poor’ are also described as people with ‘a contrite and humble spirit’; to them God looks and with them he is pleased to dwell.

  • It is to such that God’s anointed would proclaim good tidings of salvation, a prophecy which Jesus consciously fulfilled in the Nazareth synagogue:
  • ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.’
  • Further, the rich tended to compromise with surrounding heathenism; it was the poor who remained faithful to God.
  • So wealth and worldliness, poverty and godliness went together.[2]

At work, we should be seen as poor in spirit. Haughtiness and superiority have no place in our world. We should always acknowledge our weaknesses, mistakes, sins and foibles. That will allow us to point to the mercy of God to our colleagues.

This is the language of the poor in spirit. We do not belong anywhere except alongside the publican in Jesus’ parable, crying out with downcast eyes, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ As Calvin wrote: ‘He only who is reduced to nothing in himself, and relies on the mercy of God, is poor in spirit.

What is the blessing of being poor in spirit at work? To such the kingdom of God is given. For God’s rule which brings salvation is a gift as free as it is utterly undeserved. It must be received with the dependent humility of a little child. The kingdom is given to the poor, not the rich; the feeble, not the mighty; to little children humble enough to accept it, not to soldiers who boast that they can obtain it by their own prowess. It is not the elites at work who enter the kingdom.

[1] New American Standard Bible. (2020). (Mt 5:3). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[2] Stott, J. R. W., & Stott, J. R. W. (1985). The message of the Sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian counter-culture (p. 39). Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.