Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
BLESSED!
"This is a fine, sweet, and friendly beginning for His instruction and preaching. He does not come like Moses or a teacher of the Law, with demands, threats, and terrors, but in a very friendly way, with enticements, allurements, and pleasant promises.
"Blessed are the poor. Yet the little word 'spiritually' is added, ... so be poor or rich physically and externally, as it is granted to you -- God does not ask about this -- and know that before God, in his heart, everyone must be spiritually poor. That is, he must not set his confidence, comfort, and trust on temporal goods, nor hang his heart upon them and make Mammon his idol. David was an outstanding king, and he really had his wallet and treasury full of money, his barns full of grain, his land full of all kinds of goods and provisions. In spite of all this he had to be a poor beggar spiritually, as he sings of himself (Ps. 39:12): 'I am poor, and a guest in the land, like all my fathers.'
"Look at the king, sitting amid such possessions, a lord over land and people; yet he does not dare to call himself anything but a guest or a pilgrim, one who walks around on the street because he has no place to stay. This is truly a heart that does not tie itself to property and riches; but though it has, it behaves as if it had nothing, as St. Paul boasts of the Christians (2 Cor. 6:10): 'As poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.'"
With might of ours can naught be done, Soon were our loss effected.
But for us fights the Valiant One. ...
-- Martin Luther
