Treasures

Only Those Who . . .

1) mourn over themselves, over the fact that it has not gone better than it should have, can receive the true comfort and help, which they need in order to do it better. Matt. 5:4.

2) sense their poverty of spirit—their poverty in all the godly things they ought to be rich in—have a share in the glorious promise to become rich in God, rich in everything that is divine. Matt. 5:3.

3) hunger and thirst after living righteously according to the standards of the New Testament, only those will have their hunger and thirst quenched.

Only those people will be transformed from a life of unrighteousness to an increasingly deeper degree of divine righteousness in all areas. V. 6.

All this is a unanimous testimony to the fact that one is humble, which is and remains the main law for making it possible to succeed; otherwise it is totally impossible according to God’s perfect nature and being. 1 Pet. 5:5-6; Jas. 4:6.

Everyone is treated according to this foremost, perfectly just, law.

When you do not want to or cannot acknowledge your lacks and your folly, and when you protest and excuse and explain away all your misery, you cannot be saved in this proud, high-minded, arrogant, conceited, and puffed-up state. This applies to everyone. Everyone is equal before the law. There is no partiality with God. His great and holy name be highly praised!

Entertaining exalted thoughts about yourself in spite of your abject state is—in the deepest sense of the word—madness!