Those Who Mourn

Matthew 5:4

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“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)

Now when we think of mourning, we usually think of death, the sorrow that someone experiences, the pain that someone feels when they lose a loved one.

And while this second beatitude can be talking about mourning in that sense, when Scripture talks about mourning it can involve sorrow and sadness over a lot of other things as well. Certainly we mourn when we are affected and pained by death, but we also sorrow over sin.

We see how the second beatitude is linked to the first. All men are poor in spirit, but not all men recognize that. When we recognize our sorry state, when we recognize our spiritual condition, that we are poor in spirit, we are led to this attitude of mourning. As we look at the world around us and its fallenness and its brokenness, as we look within ourselves and see our sin, we are led to mourn, to sorrow over the evil that surrounds us and is even inside of us. So to those who mourn, to those who recognize their status as poor in spirit, Jesus offers this comfort, and the comfort that Jesus gives us is the reversal of all of the things that would cause us sorrow and sadness.

To those who mourn because they are affected by death, Jesus offers the comfort and promise of the resurrection. How by His death on the cross He defeated death, and by His rising again showed that it is powerless, that the promise of the resurrection gives to us the hope of life everlasting, that this world is not all there is, but we have life in the world to come.

And this comfort extends to all the things that would cause us to mourn. As we look at Jesus, as we mourn over our sin, we see our sins are forgiven. As we look at the fallenness of the world around us, we have the comfort and the promise of the kingdom of heaven when all wrongs will be righted.

But there is a distinction between the first and the second beatitudes as well. In the first beatitude, and notice the difference here, Jesus says, “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” By faith we receive the blessings and benefits of that kingdom now. But here in the second beatitude, Jesus says, “They shall be comforted.” He’s pointing forward towards a future comforting because the fact is that even though we receive some of this comfort in this life, we’re still surrounded by sin. We still have to deal with sin inside of us. Even after we come to faith and receive this comfort from Christ, we’re still stuck in this fallen world. The comfort we receive is only in part.

To those who mourn over their sin, to those who mourn over the world’s fallenness, Jesus offers the future comfort, a full and final promise, the end to all mourning, when death will be no more and God will wipe away the tears from every face.

Although we mourn in this life, we look forward to the life to come where mourning will be no more. Everything that causes us sorrow will be taken away.

Amen.