We are beggars

We have absolutely nothing to offer to God. It seems to me, that often we are so close to committing the Galatian heresy (Gal 3:1-5) thinking that our sanctification is wrought in the flesh, even though we know and affirm that our justification was by grace through faith. We plead with God to justify us in Christ Jesus, yet in our sanctification we do not come before the Word as beggars, eager for a few crumbs of God's wisdom. We do not enter into prayer with an attitude of desperation, knowing that we are spiritually bankrupt apart from the grace of God. We have lost a begging mentality in prayer and there is no sense of our bankrupty in reading.

Martin Luther, at the end of his life said, "We are beggers. This is true." If in church history (after Paul), there was a man who could more boast most his ahcievements, his knowledge of Scripture, his boldness against opposition--it would be Luther. Yet he said at his death, "We are beggars." That is the way he lived, the way he prayed, and the way he studied the Scriptures to shatter the man-centered salvation of the Catholic Church.

Luther had nothing to give to God and we certainly have nothing to give to God for we are beggars, and as such, we come before His Word trembling and asking for the illumination of the Spirit. In the Word, we get a sense of God's fullness and majesty and our emptiness and depravity, which compels us to beg earnestly for God's grace and mercy. And he is in no way obliged to answer us--think of how you responded to the last beggar you met, and think of how God responds to the desperate plea of a humble man, lavishing him with grace and all the riches in Christ Jesus.

Reading, then, is the reminder that we are beggars and prayer is the very act of begging, pleading, crawling to the throne of grace.

Have we forgotten that we are beggars? Are we unconvinced that we are poor and destitute? Then read the Word until His Spirit softens your heart to realize that you are nothing, then beg and beg and beg in prayer that perhaps God might spare some change, and then watch as the treasuries of heaven come pouring out upon you, for that is the gospel of Jesus Christ and it is beggars who receive it and believe in it.

To be a "believer" and yet not a beggar is a contradiction in terms. May the Lord be pleased to raise up a generation of beggars who live and pray and read in utter desperation.