“Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.”
Mourning is hateful and irksome to poor human nature: from suffering and sadness our spirits instinctively shrink. It is natural for us to seek the society of the cheerful and joyous. The verse now before us presents an anomaly to the unregenerate, yet it is sweet music to the ears of God’s elect: if “blessed” why do they “mourn”? If they mourn, how can they be blessed? Only the child of God has the key to this paradox, for ” happy are they who sorrow” is at complete variance with the world’s logic. Men have, in all places and in all ages, deemed the prosperous and the gay to be the happy ones, but Christ pronounces blessed those who are poor in spirit and who mourn.
Now it is obvious that it is not every type of mourning which is referred to here. There are thousands of mourners in the world today who do not come within the scope of our text: those mourning over blighted hopes, over financial reverses, over the loss of loved ones. But alas, so far from many of them coming beneath this divine benediction, they are under God’s condemnation; nor is there an promise that such shall ever be Divinely “comforted.” There are three kinds of “mourning” referred to in the Scriptures: a natural, such as we have just referred to above, a sinful, which is a disconsolate and inordinate grief, refusing to be comforted, or a hopeless remorse like that of Judas; and a gracious, a “godly sorrow,” of which the Holy Spirit is the Author.
The mourning ” of our text is a spiritual one. The previous verse indicates clearly the line of thought here: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Yes, “Blessed are the poor,” not they are poor in purse, but the poor in heart: those who realize themselves to be spiritual bankrupts in themselves, paupers before God. That felt poverty of spirit is the very opposite of the Laodiceanism which is so rife today which says, “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.” In like manner, it is spiritual mourning which is in view here. Further proof of this is found in the fact that Christ pronounces these mourners “blessed.” They are so because the Spirit of God has wrought a work of grace within them, and hence they have been awakened to see and feel their lost condition. They are ” blessed ” because God does not leave them at that point: “they shall be comforted.”
“Blessed are they that mourn.” The first reference is to that initial mourning which precedes a genuine conversion, for there must be a real sense of sin before the remedy for it will even be desired. Thousands acknowledge that they are sinners, who have never mourned over the fact. Take the woman of Luke 7, who washed the Savior’s feet with her tears. Have you ever shed any over your sins? Take the prodigal in Luke 15. Before he left the far country, he said, “I will arise and go unto my Father and say unto him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son’”–where shall we find those today with this sense of their sinnership? Take the publican of Luke 18. Why did he “smite upon his breast” and say “God be merciful to me a sinner”? Because he felt the plague of his own heart. So of the three thousand converted on the day of Pentecost: they were “pricked in their heart, and cried out.”
This “mourning” springs from a sense of sin, from a tender conscience from a broken heart. It is a godly sorrow over rebellion against God and hostility to His will. In some cases, it is grief over the very morality in which the heart has trusted, over the self-righteousness which has caused such complacency. This “mourning” is the agonizing realization that it was my sins which nailed to the Cross the Lord of glory. It is such tears and groans which prepare the heart to truly welcome and receive the “balm of Gilead,” the comfort of the Gospel. It is, then, a mourning over the felt destitution of our spiritual state, and over the iniquities that have separated between us and God. Such mourning always goes side by side with conscious poverty of spirit.
But this “mourning” is by no means to be confined unto the initial experience of conviction and contrition for observe the tense the verb: it is not “have mourned,” but “mourn”–a present and continuous experience. The Christian himself has much to mourn over. The sins which he now commits–of omission and commission–are a sense of daily grief to him, or should be, and will be, if his conscience is kept tender. An ever-deepening discovery of the depravity of his nature, the plague of his heart, the sea of corruption within–ever polluting all that he does–deeply exercises him. Consciousness of the surgings of unbelief, the swellings of pride, the coldness of his love, and his lack of fruit, make him cry, “O wretched man that I am.”
Yes, “Ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves” (Romans 8:23). Does not the Christian groan under the disciplining rod of the Father: “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous” (Heb. 12:11). And is he not deeply grieved by the awful dishonor which is now done to the Lord Jesus on every hand? The fact is that the closer the Christian lives to God, the more will he mourn over all that dishonors Him.
But let us return to the primary thought of our verse: “Blessed are they that mourn” has immediate reference to the convicted soul sorrowing over his sins. And here it is most important to note that Christ does not pronounce them “blessed” simply because they are mourners, but because they are such, mourners as “shall be comforted.” There are not a few Christians today who glory in their grief and attempt to find comfort in their own inward wretchedness–as well seek health from our sicknesses. True comfort is not to be found in anything in self–no, not in perceiving our own vileness–but in Christ alone. Distress of soul is by no means always the same thing as evangelical repentance, as is clear from the case of Cain (Gen. 4:13). But where the Spirit produces in the heart a godly sorrow for sin, He does not leave him there, but brings him to look away from sin to the Lamb of God, and then he is “comforted.” The Gospel promises no mercy except to those who forsake sin and close with Christ.
“They shall be comforted.” This gracious promise receives its fulfillment, first, in that Divine consolation which immediately follows sound conversion (i.e. one that is preceded by conviction and contrition), namely the removal of that conscious load of guilt which lies as an intolerable burden on the conscience. It finds its accomplishment in the Spirit’s application of the Gospel of God’s grace to the one whom He has convicted of his dire need of a Savior. Then it is Christ that speaks the word of power, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Observe that His language clearly presupposes the feeling of sin to be a “burden” that impels to Him for relief. It is to the sin-sick heart that Christ gives rest. This “comfort” issues in a sense of a free and full forgiveness through the merits of the atoning blood of Christ. This Divine comfort is the grace of God which passeth all understanding, filling the heart of one who is now assured that he is “accepted in the Beloved.” First God wounds and then heals.
Second, there is a continual “comforting” of the mourning saint by the Holy Spirit, who is the Comforter. The one who sorrows over his departures from Christ is comforted by the assurance that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). The one who turns under the chastening rod of God is comforted by the promise, “afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. 12:11). The one who grieves over the awful dishonor done to his Lord is comforted by the fact that Satan’s time is short, and Christ will bruise him beneath His feet. Third, the final “comfort” is when we leave this world and are done with sin forever. Then shall “sorrow and sighing flee away.” To the rich man , Abraham said of the one who had begged at his gate, “now he is comforted ” (Luke 16:25). The “comfort” of heaven will more than compensate for all the “mourning” of earth.
From all that has been before us learn, first, the folly of looking to the wounds which sin has made in order to find consolation; view rather the purging and healing blood of Christ. Second, see the error of attempting to measure the helpfulness of the books we read or the preaching we hear by the degree of peace and joy they bring to our hearts. Yet how many there are who say, “We have quite enough in the world, or in the home, to make us miserable, so we go to church for comfort.” But it is to be feared that few of them are in any condition of soul to receive comfort from the Gospel: rather do they need the Law to search and convict them. Ah, the truth friend, that very often the sermon or the article which is of the most benefit is the one which causes us to get alone with God and weep before Him. When we have flirted with the world or indulged the lusts of the flesh, the Holy Spirit gives us a rebuke or admonition. Third, mark then the inseparable connection between godly sorrow and godly joy: compare Psalm 30: 5; 127: 5; Proverbs 14: 10; Isaiah 61:3; II Corinthians 4: l0; I Thessalonians 1:6; James 2:13.
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