God’s Constitution, Pt 3: Mourn
Matthew 5:4 4Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Isaiah 61:1-3 1The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, 2to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, 3and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.
Luke 18:9-13 9To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
Matthew 19:23-24,26 23Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” … 26Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
The first Beatitude, found in Matthew 5:3, speaks of the poverty of spirit found in the person who realizes he or she just doesn’t have the personal strength to reach the righteousness required by God. And it follows from that lack to wonder just what one’s response would be in that circumstance. Would a person fall back on his or her own strength, basically deciding not to even try, or would one realize the shortfall, mourn over one’s personal weakness, and seek God’s help?
It is easy to understand mourning for the loss of a loved one, and one can imagine the comforting of such a person, but it is difficult to grasp the connection between being poor in spirit with mourning unless we think of it in terms reconciling our weakness with God’s strength. The parable in Matthew 19 is a little enigmatic and will have more discussion later, but it seems clear that its point is that our baggage hinders our growth towards Christ. The problem hindering the rich person’s entry into heaven is he starts with more baggage than the rest of us. But lest we become overconfident, let’s remember we all have baggage of some kind.
Just what is mourning? Many would say mourning is just another word for sadness, but it is more than that. Mourning is more than sadness over the loss of something or someone; it is the deepest state of sorrow. Yes that can exist at the loss of a lifelong companion, but in context here on the heels of those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn refers to those who realize the depth of their spiritual bankruptcy. In context mourning refers to the grief one feels over personal sin and the offense that it is to God. I have read there are nine Greek words for grief and Jesus uses the most severe of them here. This grief is fully manifested, so intense that it cannot be hidden. The present tense indicates it is also continuous; the believer is in a continuous state of mourning over his sin. Such a person falls to his or her knees, crying out to God, realizing his deeply offensive sinful condition. Consider this conversation Paul is having with himself about his sinfulness (from Romans chapter 7):
15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
19For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Try to put yourself in Paul’s place here. Can you hear the anguish and tears? This is indeed Paul mourning over his spiritual condition.
But Jesus says, ‘blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted’. How is that possible? It occasionally happens that when a person accepts Jesus as his Savior he thinks, “Well now my problems are solved.” But that soon runs into the reality of his sin nature. He finds himself with a dilemma: His sins are forgiven, but he still keeps sinning. What’s the problem here? 1John 3:9-10 says,
9No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child,….
‘Continue to sin’ is referring to that unsaved person who is still fulfilling his lusts and wonton desires rather than submitting his life to God. But it is different for the believer. When God saves us, he forgives us and changes our relationship to sin. The believer will fall and make mistakes, but the direction of his life is forever changed. He tries to live for God while, at times, stumbling along the way. At salvation, a believer receives God’s nature which exerts a strong influence on a believer toward holiness. It is so radically transforming that a true believer cannot continue in a life of sin.
This is the comfort referred to in this Beatitude. In accepting Jesus as our Savior, we entered the Father’s family. The Father became our Father, and it is comforting to know that our heavenly Father is fully invested in our holiness. So even though we occasionally stumble, and occasionally get disciplined by our Father, perhaps receive a spanking, we still recognize God has ‘got our back’. He will not let us fall. He will guide us, put the occasional obstacle in our path, always with the intent to steer us to greater holiness. That truly is a comfort!