Since, becoming like Christ is foundational to our mission, we have been studying these attitudes as Jesus described them in the Sermon on the Mount. Today we come to Matt 5:4. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
When we realize that “blessedness,” MAKARIOS refers to heart satisfaction, well-being, and joy, the startling paradox of Jesus’ words becomes apparent. It is as if he is saying, Happy are the unhappy. Happy are the sad. So, we must ask, “What kind of sorrow can it be that Christ wants us to experience, and which brings the joy of Christ’s blessing?
Let me say, emphatically that Jesus is NOT talking about human pain in general; he is not a masochist!
- He is not talking about the sadness of losing a football game or not getting offered the job
- He is not talking about the sorrow that comes when your mate divorces you
- He is not talking about the grief of losing a loved one.
He is talking about the grief of repentance. He is talking about godly sorrow over sin and the devastation it brings. We know this is the kind of mourning Jesus has in mind for two reasons:
1. The context. The first beatitude is acknowledging our spiritual poverty as those enslaved by sin. The second beatitude quite naturally follows, i.e. grieving and mourning over that spiritual poverty—that sinful tendency. Using theological terms, we say the first beatitude is about confession. The second beatitude is about contrition. The first beatitude is about our mind acknowledging sin, the second beatitude is about our heart grieving over that sin.
2. The second reason we know that the sorrow Jesus commends is grief over sin is the verb tense of the word, mourn. The verb tense indicates “habitual action,” a regular mourning that is part of everyday life. It is unlikely that Jesus was saying, “happy are those who must go through the agony of losing a loved one over and over again.” It is more likely that he was referring to those who deeply grieve over their sins as a regular part of their walk with him. This attitude of mourning over sin is explained by James, who writes,
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you (4:8-10).
It is our attitude towards sin that James and Jesus are concerned about.
When thinking about having the right attitude, it is helpful to realize that our attitude is always determined by our perspective. For example, if I am on my phone crossing the street and a stranger, grabs me shoving me to the street where I tear my pants and cut my knee, my attitude will be anger….until, a split second later I see a Mack truck go flying over the spot on the road where I was just standing. With that perspective, my heart attitude becomes gratefulness.
The godly sorrow Jesus talks about results from changing our perspective about sin.
Three Ways our Perspective About Sin Needs to Change to Mourn As Jesus Mourned
A. Realizing that the godly sorrow Jesus calls us to results from owning my sin. David wrote: When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin. (Ps 32:4-5).
The normal human response to accusations is not to take responsibility for our sin, but to deny it, excuse it, rationalize it, or minimize it. We are children of Adam whose first response to God’s accusation was—the woman, whom YOU gave to me, she gave me the fruit and of Eve whose response was—the serpent gave me the fruit. But spiritual health, i.e. MAKARIOS, begins with taking responsibility for our actions. Christian counselors, Cloud and Townsend, in their excellent book, Boundaries With Kids, writes:
One of the hallmarks of maturity is taking responsibility for one’s own life, desires, and problems. If we show up late for work, we don’t blame the freeway. If we want to advance our career, we take courses. If we are angry, we deal with whatever made us angry, instead of waiting for someone to soothe our feelings. Mature adults see themselves as problem solvers, instead of trying to find someone else to blame or solve problems for them. Immature people experience life as victims and constantly want someone else to blame or solve their problems.
As Christ followers and just healthy humans we need to own our sin.
B. The second perspective that will produce godly sorrow for our sin is this: I need to stop seeing my sin primarily as BREAKING A RULE and start seeing my sin as the VIOLATING OF A RELATIONSHIP, namely my relationship with God.
Christianity is not about a bunch of rules. It is not even primarily a way of life. It is primarily about a relationship. From the beginning, God’s covenant with his people has been a relational one—one of belonging to each other. The covenant essence is, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” And keeping his commandments has always been personal with God. In Deut 6:5, we read Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Jesus repeated the same principle, If you love me keep, my commandments (John 14:15).
God puts a relational context around the issue of our obedience or disobedience to his moral law. Our sin is not just a matter of breaking an impersonal rule: it is a violation of our relationship with God. David understood that his sin against God was personal. After he’d committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered Uriah, he confessed his sin with these words: Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment… Hide your face from my sins (Ps 51).
These words are remarkable since he had also sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba. Yet he saw his sin almost entirely as a matter of disloyalty to his God. When you violate a rule, your conscience bothers you, you confess, and it is not big deal. But when you violate a person because of your sin, especially a person who is very precious to you, it tears you up inside. That is the grief Jesus is talking about. It is the result of remembering that when I sin, I wound the very heart of God with my disloyalty. I grieve his heart. I bring shame on his name. I trample into the mud the precious blood of Jesus shed for me.
C. The 3rd perspective we need to mourn the way Jesus wants us to is to realize the price tag of sin. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we see, in Jesus, a heart that mourns over the cost of Jerusalem’s sin:
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation” (19:41-44).
Jesus wept over the consequences of Jerusalem’s sin. Their sinful, hardened hearts caused them to refuse to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus saw the cost of that sin and when he foresaw that pain, he wept.
Kingdom people, says Jesus, are those who weep inwardly over sin…their own sin and the sin of others. Sin is spiritual cancer. It always destroys. The wage it always pays is spiritual, emotional, physical destruction. Paul wrote to the Galatians, Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own sinful nature will FROM THAT NATURE REAP CORRUPTION, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (6:7-8).
There are many ways we can respond to evil in the culture. 1) We can envy those who seem to get away with violating God’s law—like couples in love who just sleep with each other instead of fighting the tough battle to wait until marriage for sex or the non-tithing neighbor who just bought the Jaguar convertible. 2) We can be judgmental towards the sinners around us who don’t go to church, use bad language, sleep around, and corrupt the morals of our kids. 3) We can be angry and hostile towards the sexually broken members of the LGBTQ community, especially the social activists who are ruining our country by pushing their destructive, immoral agenda. We need to stand against their efforts, but when Christ reigns in our hearts, our attitude towards evil in the world is to weep. Weep over our own awful disloyalty to our creator and Lord—and weep over the horrible devastation and pain that sin brings into the lives of others.
John Stott, in his book, Christian Counter Culture, writes:
Jesus wept over the sins of others, over their bitter consequences in judgement and death, and over the impenitent city which would not receive him. We, too, should weep over the evil in the world, as did the godly men of biblical times. “My eyes shed streams of tears,” the psalmist could say to God, “because men do not keep your law.” Ezekiel heard God’s faithful people described as those “who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in Jerusalem.”
If we would be like Jesus, we must be hostile towards evil but compassionate toward evil’s victims.
In the second half of the beatitude, we read that part of the blessing for this kind of mourning is BEING COMFORTED. What does Jesus mean by this statement? I believe that Scripture teaches that God, himself, will comfort us and he will comfort us three ways.
A. We will be comforted by total, complete forgiveness. For the one who has owned up to his sin, with a contrite heart, recognizing his spiritual poverty and need of the shed blood of Christ to cleanse him from his sin, there is TOTAL forgiveness. We are doubly declared righteous (justified). Christ-followers trust Christ’s death as payment for the punishment we deserve. The law has no further claim against us because our debt is paid. But also, Christ’s perfect life of obedience is imputed to us, meaning that at the top of Christ’s straight A moral report card, his name is erased and ours is written in. The judge of the universe has declared us doubly righteous in the eyes of the law!
Obedience to the first half of the beatitude—deeply grieving over our sin must be accompanied by celebrating the second half of the beatitude—we are comforted by the Judge of the Universe, saying, “Your sin is completely forgiven.” And as we saw last week in the story of the prostitute washing Jesus feet with her tears, one who is forgiven much loves much. Much forgiveness FROM Christ means much love FOR Christ.
B. The second way God comforts us is giving us hope that God can still weave together the dark threads of our sin into a beautiful tapestry that glorifies him. Our comfort lies not only in forgiveness, but in the fact that even though every decision we have made to disregard God’s law has brought destruction into our lives, if we repent, God has given us his amazing promise to turn those ugly scars into beauty marks. Jesus came not just to forgive but to restore, beginning his ministry by reading the great messianic text, Isaiah 61 that described his ministry of restoration. Notice the words, comfort, and mourn.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified
No matter how badly we mess up, God can put our lives back together again.
C. The third way God comforts us is with the joy of our future destiny, when there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain. The more sin breaks our hearts because of its destruction in our loved ones, our world, and in our own hearts, the more precious is the truth that IT DOES NOT WIN. John in his great vision of the destiny of those who belong to Christ wrote:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
In the second beatitude, Jesus says to us, O, the bliss of those who mourn over sin knowing that when we sin, we don’t break GOD’S LAW so much as God’s law breaks US. But they will not despair but find great comfort knowing that Christ has come to fix everything broken by sin.
