The start of discipleship
The life of discipleship begins with poverty in spirit. Jesus said: “So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:33. “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” Luke 9:23-24. No one can become a disciple of Jesus without declaring themselves bankrupt, without personally signing off on the description Paul gives of mankind in Rom. 3:10-18: “There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. . . . There is none who does good, no, not one. . . . And the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
In 1905, Johan O. Smith worked with his brother Aksel to bring him to this point. In a letter, he wrote: “The question is whether you see yourself as totally inadequate, whether you have laid everything on His altar and are waiting for His fire, whether you are the clay and He the Potter so that He can mold you as He pleases. You can’t manage to live like a Christian; it would only be hypocrisy to try. You can never be pure, devout, and good. You are as black as soot and rotten to the core. All your best works are like filthy rags. Can you endorse all this? Swallow these pills, and let them work the sentence of death in you. Put your hand on your mouth, and never try to answer back.”
A disciple is “poor”
A disciple is quite simply “poor” (Luke 6:20). He cannot rely on or take comfort in his own spiritual strength, experience, or insight. He has given up everything, including “himself,” and has thereby lost everything that could have made him rich. And it is to such disciples that Jesus says: “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” In the midst of their poverty, they possess the kingdom of heaven. The treasure is hidden, but they have already received it, in the complete poverty of the cross.
The life of discipleship continues in this same poverty of spirit. It is not a beginning stage that they move past—no, if they do, there is a great danger that they will begin to think like the angel in Laodicea: “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing.” Rev. 3:17. The truth was, the verse goes on to say, that he was wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. That was not a problem in itself; the problem was that he did not know it! Had he known of his poverty in the midst of the glory of grace, he would have made use of grace to lay hold of the glory of righteousness, which surpasses the glory of grace by as much as what one acquires surpasses what one borrows.
As we received Christ Jesus, so we should also walk in Him. When we continue to be poor in spirit, we become weak, and then we can continually partake of the power of the resurrection. When Jesus is the way, then we can’t just sit down on a chair along this way, well satisfied with what we have received. Then we are no longer poor in spirit; then we are proud and have begun to think that we are rich and have need of nothing.
Notice that what is meant here is being poor in spirit, in one’s own spirit—not poor regarding the Spirit of God! In their own eyes, they are continually poor in what is right and good in the eyes of God: poor in righteousness, truth, love, purity, mercy, etc. They are truly a disciple of Jesus, He who said of Himself: “I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.” John 5:30.
The kingdom of heaven belongs to such ones!
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References
Johan Oscar Smith. Summary of a Bible Study Held in Oslo, December 28, 1921. Skj. Sk. 12/1922.
Elias Aslaksen. Bible Studies in the Gospel of Matthew. Published as a series in Skjulte Skatter between 1936 and 1941.
Johan O. Smith. Wretched, Miserable, Poor, Blind, and Naked. Skj. Sk. Jan. 1916.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship.
