Meditation on the Text of the Week

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses.
Look upon me in my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.
Psalm 25: 16—18

The Kingdom of God is surely not of this world. We do not mean to imply by this some platonic heresy which sees the Kingdom as an ethereal, other-worldly, cosmic abstraction. Rather, we mean that the Kingdom of God is utterly unlike anything which the fallen world of sinful man could conceive, let alone create.

The kingdoms, the principalities and powers of this world—to the extent they refuse to kiss the feet of the exalted Son of God—are of this world in the ethical and spiritual sense. They are of sin and evil. The Kingdom of God, whilst in this world, is instituted and established and ruled by the Son of God, and is not of this world and its systems. Consequently, the Kingdom is unlike anything else the world has ever seen.

One of the distinctives of the Kingdom is portrayed in our text. Its subjects and people are lowly of heart, afflicted, weighed down. They are troubled and distressed. They are burdened with the consciousness of their sins and disobedience and unfaithfulness. In pronouncing the arrival of the Kingdom, the Son of God declared, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” In the Kingdom of the Son, this mourning is not just an affectation, a mere public mask of hypocritical humility; it is deeply and genuinely known and felt.

The kingdoms of this world of Unbelief are based on mana, power, and gravitas. The Kingdom of the Son is one where its subjects—even those holding high office—know and confess themselves in truth to be lowly, humbled, and wretched. Their hope is in God Who saves and forgives their sin for the sake of the Son who was punished in their place. They do not look to the mana or power of men.

So, David, in this Psalm—one of the greatest kings of all time, one of the few whom Christ honoured by acknowledging that He was and is David's son—confesses his weakness and affliction. He was far from the man he ought to be.

In his life, David suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune at the hands of wicked men. Even Michal, his own wife, despised him. Some of his sons hated him so much they sought to kill him. But His enemies had “just” cause to conspire against him. They had grounds for slander, ridicule, and calumny against him. For his sin and shortcomings were not mere foibles or slips: they were extreme and gross. David was the ultimate hypocrite, non?

Here is where the Kingdom is utterly unlike the principalities and powers of this world. The Kingdom of God is made up only of gross sinners. It is a Kingdom made up of the vilest of characters, the most evil of men. It is also a Kingdom of men who know this to be true for a fact. It is a Kingdom full of ashamed and broken people, without exception.

But, in confessing this truth about themselves to God, and in looking to Christ alone as the satisfaction for their evil thoughts, words, and deeds, God declares them holy, sinless, and righteous. God declares them to be a people of mana and power. They become the holy and righteous ones, in whom He delights. Since God is now for them, for Christ's sake, who can prevail against them? Nothing and no-one, says He.

John Bunyan, in his peerless Pilgrim's Progress, introduces several characters to us who have determined to enter the Kingdom by “another way” than the wicket gate. But that narrow way is the only way. Only those afflicted by their sinfulness can enter. That is what makes the gate so narrow. And the gate is low. To enter, one is forced to bow down. Those who wanted the Kingdom to be different or who sought to negotiate via another entrance were lost.

This is what makes the Kingdom utterly unlike any power or principality of this world.