Intro to Chapter 24: The Poor in Spirit
Tax collectors responded to Jesus, though they were both worldly and corrupt. Pharisees, who established the synagogue system to provide religious instruction, who worked to apply God’s law to every aspect of life, did not.
The tax collectors knew there was something missing from their lives. Having both money and privilege, they knew too well that neither could provide any lasting satisfaction. In Jesus, they found the water to quench their spiritual thirst, the bread to feed their spiritual hunger. Poor in spirit, theirs was the kingdom of heaven.
The Pharisees, familiar with the scriptures and devoted to the law, knew no such emptiness. The law had, perhaps, become joyless, and the Word had lost its life-giving force, but, as a dead virus has the power to inoculate us against the living disease, they were enough to inoculate the Pharisees against the Living Word. Dead religion is worse than no religion at all. When Jesus appeared to John on Patmos, the message Jesus gave him for the Christian church in Laodicea was, “Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.”
It is God who redeems us, not church attendance or even Bible reading. Our relationship with Him must remain fresh and vital.