Jesus taught a ton of theory, like “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” the obvious intention being that we try it to find out. Because in trying it out, or “putting it into practice,” as Paul said in Philippians 4:9, the promise that comes with it is “the God of peace will be with you.”
And it’s the same with being “poor in spirit,” because it has a promise that comes with putting it into practice too: it’s being “Blessed,” Matthew 5:3, which in Greek, makarios, means “divinely blessed.” So this is more than just human happiness on offer, it’s God’s direct and very personal way of forming what we’re seeking into something absolutely real in our very own day-to-day experience.
He’s flung open the doors of heaven so we’re living in a world we never knew existed. But that’s exactly what Jesus said would happen in verse 3, when he promised “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” That now becomes ours. The streets of heaven are ours to tread and shop freely for all that Jesus offered.
And it’s ours for simply wanting to put what he taught in this verse into practice – but even that was stirred in our minds by God too. When Jesus promised he’d give us his peace in John 14:27, for instance, he said in the verse before that “the Holy Spirit will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” (26). So it’s the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven by the Father himself, who stirs the interest in what Jesus taught, to get us off our duffs to try it out, so we get to experience the loaded promises that come with it.
The reality and beauty of all this must have hit Paul with a whomp, because it stirred him to write in Philippians 2:12, “You don’t need me around to get you working out your salvation with fear and trembling, because it’s God (13) who is at work in you, giving you the will and the power to achieve his purpose.” You know the ropes, he’s saying: keep putting what Jesus taught into practice, that God stirred in you in the first place, because he then, by his divine blessing, will make it real.
Which explains why Paul talks of “fear and trembling,” because in the Greek it’s hinting at panic, the ghastly thought that life is going by and what Jesus taught is all just theory and it still isn’t real. But God has an ace up his sleeve to make it real when it dawns on us we’re “Doing the impossible”….(next blog)
