Ever since my
journey through the Beatitudes quite some years ago, I often find that other
Scriptures I am reading make sense when I factor in this description of God’s
blessings.[1] I
can always expect to see that some new lessons from Scripture will show how God
is leading me to some new experience of the poverty of spirit that continues
God’s work of conforming me “to the image
of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”[2]
As
I took another look at the Beatitudes this morning, my mind was set on Jesus words,
“These things I have spoken to you, that
my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”[3] This passage has been adding to my understanding of why we cannot
allow any grumbling or disputing in the church.[4] Grumbling and disputing are expressions of the sark, or the flesh,
and the sark cannot experience Jesus’ joy. The sark is selfish, and only
selfish. It can only think of self-dependent, and self-produced mirages of happiness.
It can only think of the worldly pleasures that satisfy the flesh. It is unable
to conceive of pleasure that has to do with God because it has no connection to
God, and no ability to conceive of God doing a better job of leading us through
life.
With
this thought in mind, that living by Jesus’ words will fill us with his joy and
bring our joy to the full, it is interesting that the Beatitudes take us on a
journey to joy that withstands everything the world throws at us. Let me share
with you the brochure to this joy-filled, joy-maturing, journey.
First,
we accept our poverty of spirit,[5] seeing that our sarks have made us bankrupt towards God. We realize
that, in spite of the sark’s protests, we have utterly failed to be good
people. The poor in spirit see that “None
is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have
turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even
one.”[6]It is a great gift of grace when the blessing of God breaks a person’s
heart, shows us our poverty of spirit, and brings an end to the mirage of the
flesh that has lied to us and deceived us about our goodness. There is no
goodness in the sark, and it is the blessing of God that brings us to
understand and feel this.
Second,
on our way to fullness of joy, we come to mourn the condition of our lives.
Instead of the sark facing our poverty and trying to come up with all kinds of
good things that we can do to fix what we have done wrong, to do good things to
make up for our bad things, the Holy Spirit works on the prideful heart of man
and so exposes our poverty that we mourn our condition. We are in a mess. No
matter what good the sark has produced in appearances, the mournful heart sees
quite a different picture behind the scenes. It cannot look at what it has
done, and the mess it has made of our lives, without grieving the sin, and the
effects of sin, and the consequences of sin.
Third,
as the poverty of spirit erodes and demolishes our faith in our own sarky
goodness, and we feel an unrelenting mournfulness over the mess we have made of
our lives, we begin to feel this Spirit directed meekness enter our souls. It
is like those times when we have such a time of crying, of sobbing, of weeping,
of bawling our hearts out to God, only to end up feeling as if we have no
strength left to do anything at all about whatever was breaking our hearts. So it
is with the poverty of spirit that causes us to mourn our condition. Once the
mourning has done its work, we have no strength left to rely on the sark to
lift us out of our sin, or to make up for all our bad decisions, or to fix what
we have broken. We are spent. There is a resigned meekness that has no thought
of self-reliance, but only a strange wondering when Messiah will come.[7]
What
distinguishes meekness from hopelessness is that the work of God in our lives
that takes us through our poverty, to mourn our condition, and meekly accept we
are not the ones to fix ourselves, next brings us to a hunger and thirst for
righteousness that we have never felt in our sarks. It is not the drive of the
sark to be a good person, but the hunger of the poor in spirit to have the experience
of righteousness they cannot fabricate in themselves. They see this in God;
they see it in Jesus; they hear that it is a gift offered to those who repent
and put their faith in Jesus, and they hunger and thirst for this
transformation of the soul. As the two blind men heard that Jesus was passing
by and felt an incessant longing to have their eye-sight, and so cried out
desperately for him to hear them,[8] so the hungering heart cries out for the righteousness it does not
have. It wants what it cannot create. It wants what it cannot see. It wants
what it hears is out there, walking by, sent from God, given to those who
humble themselves before God.
As
God continues to bless people in this way that leads to joy, the fifth thing
that happens is that those who experience the mercy of God satisfying them with
the righteousness of faith as a free gift of his grace, become the merciful
people who show the same mercy to others as they have received from Jesus Christ.
No longer do they rely on their sarks to puff them up as better than others. No
longer do they allow their sarks to judge others as inferior to themselves.
They have already accepted that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory
of God.[9]They are no better than anyone else. The righteousness that has
satisfied their souls came as the gift of grace, working through faith, with no
works of their own added to the picture that would give them reason to boast.[10]
This
meek acceptance of their own condition, along with the satisfaction of
righteousness they feel only because they hungered for it, has so transformed them
with newness of life that they see everyone around them as in the same mess
that they were in before. They now feel mercy towards everyone because of the
transforming power of God’s mercy in them.
The
sixth characteristic of God’s life-changing work is that the mercy that
transforms the poor in spirit into the merciful, also purifies the heart.
Instead of people doing good out of bad motives, or trying to mix self-reliance
with devotion to God, the heart becomes pure in its dependence on God for
everything. It grows in first love, seeking first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness.[11]It desires to keep in step with the Spirit instead of giving any
room for the sark.[12]No matter how immature its love, it is the single-minded love of the
Spirit working to change a person into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ
from one degree of glory to another.[13]
The
seventh stage of this journey of growth in Jesus Christ is that the merciful
children of God, whose hearts become pure in seeking first God’s kingdom and
righteousness, find that they are drawn into a way of life that makes them
peacemakers. They have this one thing on their minds, that they now have in their
hearts and hands the gospel of Jesus Christ that brings people to have peace
with God.[14]They have lost their desire for peacekeeping, a way of life that was
produced by reliance on the sark. Instead, they want people to have peace with
God, and can’t help speaking of this gospel of peace with a no-matter-what kind
of attitude they never felt when they were in their sarks.
As
these pure-hearted people seek to bring everyone into this gospel-centered
peace with God, they invariably get in trouble with all the people who are
still living in sin, and relying on their sarks to figure out what to do. As
God’s word says, “Indeed, all who desire
to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”[15]To present that Jesus is “the
way, and the truth, and the life,” and that no one comes to the Father
except through him,[16]is to speak scandal against the world, the flesh, and the devil. To
claim that, “there is salvation in no one
else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must
be saved,”[17]is to declare every other religion, and philosophy, and worldview,
debunked, false, and counterfeit. As James said, it is the wisdom of the world
that is, “earthly, unspiritual, demonic.”[18]
The
peacemakers who cannot stop announcing to the sarky, sinful world that Jesus saves,
and that he is the one hope of eternal life, get in trouble. The gospel gets
the peace-preaching church in lots of trouble. The Prince of Peace got in
trouble with the sinful people of his day; the apostles all got in trouble for
their exemplary lives of proclaiming the gospel of peace. History is full of
the stories of persecution against the church that has told the world that it
needs Jesus. Our present day is filled with stories of the world seeking to
kill the gospel of peace because it denounces the sinful pride of the human
heart.
The
point is that, those who are peacemakers, and who are persecuted because their
lives have been so transformed that they must attempt to bring people to have
peace with God, are not the downcast, despondent people of the world. Rather, they
know Jesus words, “Blessed are those who
are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,”[19]and so they rejoice in the blessing they have in Christ while they
grieve that their persecutors are lost in sin. They know that, “Blessed are you when others revile you and
persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,”[20]and so they rejoice in the blessing that is theirs in their present
persecution, while their persecutors are still under the curse of their sin.
The
peacemakers recall Jesus words, “Rejoice
and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the
prophets who were before you.”[21]They know that persecution is the lot of the believer in Jesus Christ.
They know that the reward of their heavenly joy is so much greater than the
loss of anything else in this world that they can now rejoice in what they have
in Jesus Christ, even while their persecutors blindly carry out their hopeless
work of demolishing the church Jesus is building.[22]
The
point is that, when we enter into the life of the Holy Spirit, the presence of Jesus
to the church, we experience the fullness of Jesus’ joy in us, and our joy
brought to the full. That does not mean that persecution never feels heavy. It does
not mean that people are feeling joy while being tortured. It does not mean
that our joy is perfect and rising every moment of our persecution.
Rather,
it means that we know where our joy lies. We long to live in a deeper and
deeper experience of knowing God, and resting in his joy. We can delight in our
salvation now. We can “rejoice with joy
that is inexpressible and filled with glory,” because we are “obtaining the outcome of your faith, the
salvation of your souls.”[23]
No matter what
we are going through Jesus said that he has spoken to us the words that will
fill us with his joy, and bring our joy to the full. And, as he has said
completely in his letters in the book of Revelation, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”[24]
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Matthew 5:3-12
[2]
Romans 8:29
[3]
John 15:11
[4]
Philippians 2:14
[5]
Matthew 5:3
[6]
Romans 3:10-12
[7]
Jesus talk with the woman at the well brought her to the place that she told
him that everything would be made clear to her when Messiah came (John 4:25;
see John 4:1-42 for context).
[8]
Matthew 20:29-34
[9]
Romans 3:23
[10]
Ephesians 2:8-9
[11]
Matthew 6:33
[12]
Galatians 5:25; Romans 13:14
[13]
II Corinthians 3:18
[14]
Luke 2:14; Romans 5:1-2; Ephesians 6:15
[15]
II Timothy 3:12
[16]
John 14:6
[17]
Acts 4:12
[18]
James 3:15
[19]
Matthew 5:10
[20]
Matthew 5:11
[21]
Matthew 5:12
[22]
Matthew 16:18
[23]
I Peter 1:8-9
[24]
Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22
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