Comfort comes to those who mourn through the Holy Spirit, for it is the Spirit who enables us to be Christians. The Spirit convicts us of sin in order to lead us to repentance. The Holy Spirit comforts us by giving us strength to die to self on a daily basis.

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept, I dreamed a Dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a Man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a Book was in his hand, and a great Burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the Book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?

So begins John Bunyan’s great spiritual tale, The Pilgrim’s Progress. The man with the book in his hand and a burden on his back is named Graceless, though soon his name would be changed to Christian. The story is an allegory for the Christian life with Christian obviously representing a Christian on his way to heaven, the Celestial City.

You will notice that, even within that opening paragraph, that Bunyan’s vision of the start of the Christian life matches the first two Beatitudes of our Lord. His poverty of spirit is allegorically displayed through the rags he wears and the great burden upon his back. But what is most striking is his sorrowful disposition. This man is not okay. He is exceedingly troubled. And rightly so, given his great poverty of soul. As we shall see, such godly mourning is an initial and continual marker of a Christian.

THOSE WHO MOURN

Since each Beatitude begins with the word blessed, we should also begin by recalling what it means. Remember that the plain meaning of the word is happy, but it is a much deeper and richer happiness than we think of today. We might say that it is a transcendent happiness, one that goes beyond our material circumstances. Specifically, it is a happiness that only God, the Blessed One, is able to give, for it is the shining, favorable face of God looking upon us.

The Beatitudes, therefore, are less virtues to cultivate and more characteristics for assessment. And being poor in spirit was the first that we observed. As I have already mentioned (and will mention again!), the Beatitudes come as a sort of chain reaction, each one flowing from the previous. So it is with those who mourn. Just as the financially poor have plenty of reasons for sorrow, so it is with the spiritually poor. And this is indeed sorrow. John Blanchard notes that:

the verb “to mourn” –pentheo– is the strongest word for mourning in the Greek language, one that would be used when describing the desolation felt by someone mourning the death of a loved one. When Jacob was tricked into believe that his son Joseph had been killed, he ‘tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days’ (Genesis 37:34), and in the Septuagint, the first Greek version of the Old Testament, the verb pentheo is the one used for ‘mourned’… There is an equally telling illustration in the New Testament. When Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to Mary Magdalene, she immediately went and broke the news to those ‘who were mourning and weeping’ (Mark 16:10), and once again the word is pentheo. These illustrations show that we cannot soften the impact of what Jesus said by toning down the force of the word he used. The mourning of which he spoke is not a touch of sadness, but deep, heartfelt grief. (93)

But what kind of grief does Jesus mean? As we did with the poor in spirit, let us first begin by whittling away what Jesus does not mean here.

First, despite how often this verse is used during funerals, Jesus is not promising comfort to all who mourn over the loss of a loved one, especially since many perish apart from Christ and severed from everlasting joy and hope.

Second, it is not what Watson calls a diabolical mourning. Such was Ammon’s wicked mourning after his sister, Tamar. Such also was Ahab’s sorrow at not possessing Naboth’s vineyard. Ammon’s lust was so great that it made him physically ill, and Ahab refused to eat. They were certainly in mourning after what they could not have, yet “this was a devilish mourning” (56)

Third, it is not being in a perpetual state of pessimism and sullenness. Duguid uses Puddleglum from The Silver Chair as a great example, and Lloyd-Jones calls it a false puritanism, which “gave the impression that to be religious was to be miserable” (54). Of course, that kind of graveness often over corrects into a kind of superficial, painted-on-smile, kind of Christianity that obviously does not fit with biblical Christianity either.

Instead, the biblical picture is to be, as Paul was, “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). And that must be the case, for in 1 Corinthians 12:26, we read: “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” Thus, because there will always be those in the church who are suffering and those who prospering, we will each be in a constant state of both.

Positively, it is helpful to think about what the Christian mourns over.

First, we ought to mourn over our own sin. Lloyd-Jones writes:

To ‘mourn’ is something that follows of necessity from being ‘poor in spirit’. It is quite inevitable. As I confront God and His holiness, and contemplate the life that I am meant to live, I see myself, my utter helplessness and hopelessness. I discover my quality of spirit and immediately that makes me mourn… A man who truly faces himself, and examines himself and his life, is a man who must of necessity mourn for his sins also, for the things he does. (58)

The problem, of course, is that we will go to virtually any length to not truly face ourselves. For all of our culture’s talk about accepting and affirming yourself, they cannot outrun their own consciences. Our society overdoses on entertainment and requires others to constantly affirm us because we are desperately trying to escape ourselves. Staring at a screen is much more pleasant than staring in the mirror, for we each have God’s law written in our hearts, exposing our sin, revealing our spiritual poverty.
But while the world attempts to silence their consciences, God’s people listen and mourn. They see their sin. In fact, through God’s law, we see our sin far more clearly than our conscience alone is able to reveal. Like a sharp two-edged sword, the Scriptures discern the thoughts and intensions of our heart. In their words, the great depths of our sin are exposed, and the insufficiency of our own righteousness is made clear. The proper response is to mourn.

But even here we find a correct and incorrect form of mourning. In 2 Corinthians 7:10, Paul writes: “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” Fittingly, we find a representative of each within the original twelve apostles. During the passion of our Lord, both Judas and Peter sinned against Him, Judas by betraying Him and Peter by renouncing Him three times. Both were great and grievous sins, and both mourned afterward. Matthew 26:75 says that Peter wept bitterly. Then later in 27:3, he reports of Judas that when he “saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.’” Yet Judas’ sorrow descended into despair, and he took his own life in hopeless desperation. Peter, however, experienced proper and bitter sorrow over his sin, which led him to ultimately find forgiveness in Christ. A despairing mourning like Judas has no hope of comfort, whereas the repentant mourning of Peter ultimately finds comfort in Christ.

And that is the story, in broad strokes, of how we each came to Christ. All believers first look to Christ in the midst of beholding their own sinful brokenness. After all, the gospel is the good news of salvation, and it can only be received once we acknowledge our need for salvation.

The Christian, however, does not simply mourn over sin when he first believes but continues to mourn over the sin that he still wars against. Indeed, grammatically, the verb is a present active participle, which means that we could translate the verse as: blessed are the mourning ones… It is a present and continuing action of mourning.

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