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Matthew 5
“Seeing the crowds, [Jesus] went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
“And he opened his mouth and taught them.”
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Does this describe you? Poor in spirit? Feeling like you just don't measure up to what's expected of you? Struggling to live the Christian life you know God has called you to? Finding yourself falling again and again?
This is the good news of Jesus – if you can't measure up, then you are blessed! If you are struggling, count yourself blessed! God has his eye on you. He sees your struggle. He isn't watching so He can judge you, He is watching to give you blessing. Take heart: You're on the right path!
It might not seem that way to you. Perhaps you look at your life--your brokenness, difficulties, weaknesses, and you think: "Why would God want to bless someone who can't get it right?" But what we see here is it's those who have reached the point where they realize they can't live up to what's expected that are poised to receive God's very holiness and strength as a free gift. It's those who are poor in spirit – who just can't do it anymore; who have given up on the path of progress and self-sufficiency and self-righteousness – who God is ready to bless, and bless abundantly.
The Kingdom of Heaven does not belong to the winners and the strong and those who can take life and sin and weakness “by the horns” and wrestle it to the ground. Oh, a thousand sermons will tell you it is! They'll tell you that you've got to pull your bootstraps, get it together, play your part, and get your weaknesses in order! But God does not work like that. Rather, the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are poor in spirit. Those who are needy. Those who “hunger and thirst” for righteousness, rather than those who believe they have, or can conjure up, righteousness for themselves. It is not the strong willed who need God's grace, it's those who are weak!
The life of progress
Most of the time we tend to think of sin as bad things we do or think. We see it as something that revolves around morality - and we see holiness as the perfect, moral good. If we can change what we think and what we do, we believe we will finally see progress in our spiritual life. But all of these terms are not always helpful and can lead us to the wrong conclusions. Sin is not primarily about morality. Holiness is not primarily about morality. The path of moralism is often just a guise for the path of self-righteousness. Moralism comes in all forms. Political activism today often spirals into just a different kind of moralism. It's all about who is right and who is wrong - so wrong that they ought to be condemned. The good news of Jesus, however, is that we are not supposed to walk by morality and ethics but walk by His Spirit - the path of his healing, love, and order, encapsulated in Jesus. It’s not until you realize the depths of your own self-righteousness and your continual self-justification before God, yourself, and others, that the Spirit can do what He does: save you from sin.
The path of moralism is often just a guise for the path of self-righteousness.
“Progress” is not what the Christian life in the Spirit is about. "Progress" means "things get better". This is not really true about the Christian spiritual life. What's in view, rather, is *growth* and *maturity*. A lot of that does not come via "progress" but often comes just when it seems things are not progressing at all.
But we want to see *outcomes*. We want to be able to measure if we're less weak today than we were yesterday. We want to say, "I've become a better person". However, is "progress" an adequate way of thinking of a relationship with God? You see, this desire to be a "better person" is often a quest to acquire our own righteousness! Progressing in the spiritual life is a never-ending goal that is often layered with our own self-righteousness, not God’s righteousness, who is Jesus - who we are to live in. The great irony--or should I say, *beauty*--of the Christian spiritual life is it's not usually the moments of strength when you grow, but the moments of weakness!
God has a holy agenda with sin. He has a plan to use it for His glory. In these posts I will unpack this concept, showing how life by the Spirit is not often what we think it is. It’s not until you realize that you’re incapable of dealing with sin at its root that you let Christ step in and deal with it. This is because sin is not what seems obvious - and holiness is not what seems obvious. Let me explain what I mean.
What is sin?
Sin is firstly a force of non-being. It corrupts "being". As human beings, we were made in the image of God but we have something that exists in the world that corrupts this image, that slowly morphs us into non-beings over time. (Genesis 1:27.) That's why we all, from our birth, are “under sin” (Romans 3:9)--we are all subject to the corrupting power of sin. No single human being escapes it because we live in a world where sin abounds.
Sin abounds in our world because sinful actions do. Sin is how we are, but it's not who we are. God created mankind good (Genesis 1:31) and upright, as Ecclesiastes 7:29 puts it, but (as the scripture continues to say) we have "sought out many schemes" (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Living in a corrupt world corrupts us all. However, after we come to faith in Christ, the scriptures tell us that our “body of sin” no longer dominates us as our “old man” is crucified with Christ (Romans 6:6) and now we are in Christ. Once we come to Christ we are no longer under the corrupting power of sin and no longer slaves to it. We are free to walk away from it. Romans 5 - 8 is one long exposition of this fact, reiterating again and again that we are new creatures who are not under sin’s power.
But many of us don’t experience it all quite so easily, and the question is: why?
Part 2 will be released on the Lofi Theology podcast.
Fridays, 10pm CST.
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