Matthew 5:3

I. CHRISTIAN PIETY, AS DISTINGUISHED FROM IRRELIGION.

The Nine Benedictions, Matthew 5:3-12.

3. Blessed The Gospel opens with a blessing, again and again. There are more than the sacred seven. There are the thrice three; the well rounded nine benedictions. How many were the woes which solemnly echoed to them we know not; for Matthew omits them, and Luke gives them, perhaps, incompletely. This word blessed conveys not an opinion or a prayer, as human benedictions do, but a sentence or a decree. Such things are blessed, not because he says they are merely, but because he makes and pronounces them so. It is an anticipation of that final, “Come ye blessed,” which he will pronounce upon his judgment throne. Our Lord here truly speaks with authority, as the one who will be the final judge of human destiny.

Blessed means not merely happy, as even Mr. Wesley renders it. As happiness is higher than pleasure, so blessedness is higher than happiness. Blessedness is more truly divine. It is the more than happiness produced by God’s sunshine in the soul.

Poor in spirit The spirit is the immortal nature in man; and especially the moral part of the human soul wherewith a man is religious and receives and communes with the Divine Spirit. He whose spirit the Gospel finds already supplied and falsely rich with something else than the Gospel, cannot receive the Gospel. If the spirit be full and satisfied with some false religion, or pride, or earthly good, or moralism, it has no room or receptivity for the Gospel, and no blessing from Christ. So the outright, self-conscious sinner, morally poor in fact and poor in spirit, is often more likely to receive the Gospel than he who has something that is not religion in the place of religion. Blessed, then, is he who has a receptive vacancy, a poverty, real and felt, for the Gospel.

Kingdom of heaven A very bountiful filling up of the vacuity. The pauper shall be a king; his empty box shall be filled with royal treasures.