My community includes people who are both materially poor and “poor in spirit.” However, what exactly does it mean to say that people are “poor in spirit”? To be “poor in spirit” is not the same as being economically poor, yet both kinds of poverty matter, and the church must address both. In his commentary on Matthew, John Nolland interpreted the phrase like this: “The poor in spirit would be those who sense the burden of their present (impoverished) state and see it in terms of the absence of God; who patiently bear that state, but long for God to act on their behalf and decisively claim them as his people.”

Nolland understands the poor to be the impoverished who are looking for God to rescue them from their pov­erty. This means the church, as God’s representative here on earth, has the responsibility to do the same. Therefore, one of the first ways we can serve the poor is by genuinely loving them. I know this sounds like an overly simplistic cliché, but we need to love the poor as much for them as for ourselves (Leviticus 19:34, Deuteronomy 10:19). Pastor Jim Cymbala, in his book Fresh Wind, Fresh...