So Jesus chooses this to start His ministry. It is kind of interesting. It is the most critical attitude of our hearts that must come before anything else. It is a precursor, a prerequisite attitude, the most essential element that opens the door to our relationship with God.
Only those who are poor in spirit will be in God's Kingdom. But being poor in spirit is maybe not what we would think on the surface. It has nothing to do with finances. Jesus uses a play on words here with an adjective most often associated with the physical to describe something spiritual.
He uses the Greek adjective to describe our underlying spirit that is translated rather poorly as poor, pun intended. It is Strong's 4434, ptochos, and it carries a much more severe meaning than the English word poor, and that is why I say it was poorly translated. The real meaning here is someone that is a beggar, a pauper, completely destitute, helpless, wretched, powerless, much more significant than just being poor.
Jesus is saying, "Blessed are those who understand they are spiritually bankrupt and spiritually destitute. Blessed are they who come to understand that we have earned nothing of spiritual value."
And now we are actually going to read verse 8, which we could argue is the summation of verses 3 and 5—3 + 5 does equal 8, after all. When we are poor in spirit and meek, our heart is just like Jesus Christ's. He tells us that His heart is meek and lowly, right? And that heart then is what? It is pure.
