What It Means to Be Poor in Spirit (Matthew 5:3)

Inside: True blessing begins when we come empty, knowing we have nothing to offer but our need. Jesus meets us there, with mercy, righteousness, and the kingdom of heaven.

The Riches of Poverty

Matthew 5:3 — “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

It’s easy to look at the word blessed and think it simply means “happy” or “fortunate,” but when Jesus uses the word here in the Beatitudes, He’s speaking of a deep, lasting joy that comes from being in right relationship with God. It’s not rooted in how things are going in our lives. It’s rooted in Him. It’s an inner contentment that flows from knowing our place as His child, forgiven and loved.

And so Jesus begins His Sermon on the Mount with a surprising statement:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

What Does It Mean to Be Poor in Spirit?

To be poor in spirit is to recognize our total spiritual poverty before the Lord. It’s realizing we bring nothing to Him except our need for mercy. It’s the opposite of self-reliance or self-righteousness. It’s saying, like the hymn Rock of Ages, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones called this the foundational beatitude, the one that all the others flow from. We can’t mourn over our sin, hunger for righteousness, or show mercy if we haven’t first seen our great need for grace. Without a right view of ourselves before a holy God, we’ll never truly understand our need for Jesus.

This is where true blessing begins: in the emptying of ourselves so we might be filled with Christ.

It’s not about being downcast or walking around like Eeyore. It’s not shyness or thinking we have no value. It’s not even about personality. It’s about coming before the Lord with a contrite heart, knowing we have no righteousness of our own and throwing ourselves completely on His mercy.

Isaiah 66:2 reminds us:

“This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

The Gospel Invitation in Matthew 5:3

And this is where the gospel meets us.

We all fall short of God’s perfect holiness. To be poor in spirit is to see that we have no righteousness of our own to stand before Him. But the good news—the gospel—is that Jesus came to live the perfect life we couldn’t live and died the death we deserved. At the Cross, He took our sin and gave us His righteousness. When we repent of our sin and trust in Christ alone, we are forgiven, adopted into His family, and made citizens of His kingdom. This is the heart of the gospel: not that we make our way to God, but that He came to us in Christ—offering grace to the spiritually bankrupt and life to the dead in sin.

And the beauty of the gospel is that we’re not left in that place of emptiness. The Lord fills the humble with Himself. The promise attached to this beatitude is astonishing:

“Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Why the Kingdom of Heaven Belongs to the Humble

Not will be—but is. Even now, those who are poor in spirit belong to God and are citizens of His eternal kingdom.

F.B. Meyer put it beautifully:

“Earthly thrones are generally built with steps up to them; the remarkable thing about the thrones of the eternal kingdom is that the steps are all down to them.”

When we stoop low in humility, we rise in Christ.

So today, if you find yourself feeling spiritually empty, weak, or aware of your shortcomings—don’t resist it. That is the place where God meets us with His grace. That is the heart posture He blesses. That is where the kingdom of heaven belongs.

Being poor in spirit shows up in the everyday moments of life. It’s admitting when we’re wrong and asking for forgiveness. It’s resisting the pull to compare ourselves with others. It’s choosing to pray for help instead of pushing through in our own strength. We see it in quiet dependence on the Lord when we’re tempted to worry, and in humble gratitude when we remember that every good thing we have is from Him. It’s letting go of prideful self-sufficiency and learning to say, “Lord, I need You”—not just once, but moment by moment.

Fix your eyes not on your failures or efforts to measure up, but on the Cross. There we see the Savior who took on our poverty to give us His riches. There we find mercy, righteousness, and a place in the family of God, not because of anything we’ve done, but because of everything Christ has done.

If you haven’t yet come to Him in faith, come empty-handed. He welcomes the weary, the broken, and the humble. And if you already belong to Him, rest in the truth that you always will, because Jesus is enough.

Where in your life is the Lord inviting you to lay down self-reliance and embrace a deeper dependence on Him?

If you’d like to go deeper into this passage, I walk through it more fully in Episode 87 of the podcast, The Riches of Poverty. It’s part of the Sermon on the Mount series on the podcast and I’d love for you to listen in. You can read more devotionals from the Sermon on the Mount here.