December 2016
The Blessedness of
Possessing Nothing
A.W. Tozer
Mat 5:3 - Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.
Before the Lord God made man upon the earth
He first prepared for him by creating a world of
useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and
delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these
are called simply “things.” They were made for man's
uses, but they were meant always to be external to the
man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the
man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to
come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts
which God had showered upon him.
But sin has introduced complications and has
made those very gifts of God a potential source of
ruin to the soul.
Our woes began when God was forced out of
His central shrine and “things” were allowed to enter.
Within the human heart “things” have taken over.
Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts,
for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the
moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight
among themselves for first place on the throne. This
is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of
our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human
heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature
is to possess, always to possess.It covets “things”
with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns “my”
and “mine” look innocent enough in print, but their
constant and universal use is significant. They
express the real nature of the old Adamic man better
than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They
are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of
our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare
not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have
become necessary to us, a development never
originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of
God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the
monstrous substitution.
Our Lord referred to this tyranny of things
when He said to His disciples, “If any man will come
after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross,
and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall
lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake
shall find it (Mk 8:34,35).” Breaking this truth into
fragments for our better understanding, it would
seem that, there is within each of us an enemy which
we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it “life” and
“self,” or as we would say, the self-life. Its chief
characteristic is its possessiveness: the words “gain”
and “profit” suggest this. To allow this enemy to live
is in the end to lose everything. To repudiate it and
give up all for Christ's sake is to lose nothing at last,
but to preserve everything unto life eternal. And
possibly also a hint is given here as to the only
effective way to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross:
“Let him take up his cross and follow me.” The way
to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely
valleys of soul-poverty and abnegation of all things.
The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they
who have repudiated every external thing and have
rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. They
are “poor in spirit.” They have reached an inward
state paralleling the outward circumstances of the
common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that is
what the word “poor” as Christ used it actually
means. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the
tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the
oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but
by surrendering. Though free from all sense of
possessing, they yet possess all things -“Theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.”
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