We’re all poor

 We’re All Poor

 

No one is righteous — not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.

ROMANS 3.10-12

 

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.

EPHESIANS 2.8-9

 

You say, “I am rich. I have everything I want. I don’t need a thing!” And you don’t realise that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.

REVELATION 3.17

 

Is there something you really want? Something that you want so much that you are willing to work for it and save for it so you can buy it?

What if what you really want is to be in good standing with God? Can you save up enough good works, enough proper behaviour, enough denying yourself to buy God’s favour? Unfortunately not. God doesn’t accept people who think they have some sort of spiritual currency or money to be able to buy his blessing. In fact, he says that the only people he accepts are those who recognise that they not only don’t have enough to offer God but that they have absolutely nothing to offer God. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus said (Mt 5.3, NIV). He wasn’t talking about people who are financially poor but people who are spiritually poor, people who are spiritually bankrupt.

Only when we see that we have nothing to offer God to gain his favour — no family connections, no self-sacrifice, not even any natural tendency to love him — only then are we in a position to receive what God wants to give to us. And then he gives us everything. Jesus is the one who receives all things from God the Father, and he shares all those good things with us — when we come to him with empty hands and empty pockets, empty of our own efforts, with nothing to offer him.