“Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.” In this verse, there are many layers of meaning -all of them true. Let’s look at the most obvious meaning first. Actually, before we look at what this verse means, let’s talk about what it doesn’t mean.
When Jesus says here, “Blessed are those who mourn,” He is not saying that Christians should be sad, miserable people. Blessed means joyful. We need to figure out in what sense are those who mourn, joyful.
Because this verse directly follows the idea of recognizing our spiritual poverty, it is a fair assumption that Jesus is telling us that we are blessed when our spiritual poverty leads to sorrow and mourning because then we will be comforted by God himself. When we are broken-hearted over our sin and we turn to Jesus for forgiveness, God’s promise is that our sins are not simply forgiven but eliminated. The guilt and the shame are gone. When we turn to Jesus with our sins, our sins are, in a sense, washed away by His blood. And I do not believe there is any greater joy in all of the human experience than the joy that floods the soul of a newly redeemed believer with the realization of forgiven-ness.
But this verse says a whole lot more than that. It’s about more than the joy that comes from being forgiven. It is about a principle by which we as followers of Jesus ought to live our lives.
Once again, this is one of those places where what I already know kicks in. There are a couple of words here that mean more in the original Greek language than they do in the English translation. These words have real significance for us as Believers. First, the word used here for comfort is directly linked, has a direct relationship to the word that Jesus used to describe the Holy Spirit when He called the Holy Spirit The Comforter. The implication is that as we mourn with a repentant spirit and are broken-hearted over our sinful condition, we open ourselves up to the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This is a comfort that cannot be duplicated by any human relationship. This is a comfort that comes as we are renewed and healed and transformed.
The other really important word here is the word used for mourn. In the Greek language, there were many possible words that could have been used to describe mourning. Each of these words has more or less the same meaning, but each word has its own shade of meaning. The word that Jesus used literally means, “an external expression of an internal reality.”
This particular word for mourn was most often used to express grief or mourning for the dead. In the Jewish culture, mourning the dead was a big thing. Grieving was, in fact, one of the very few acceptable times for people to give outward expression to internal pain. The grieving family would tear their clothes and cover themselves with dirt and ashes and weep and wail. This was an external expression of the hurt and pain that was going on inside.
So, what Jesus is literally saying is, "Blessed are those who quit pretending that everything is ok when it really isn't. Blessed are those who are willing and able to be honest about the spiritual and emotional pain they are feeling because as they get honest about their internal reality -as they get honest about what is really going on inside, the Holy Spirit will come and bring comfort and healing and transformation."
Our problem is that we are not very good at this. We are better at hiding our hurts and fears and doubts than we are at bringing them to light. We are too often concerned about what others will think if they find out what we are really struggling with. So, we bury our "stuff." We have come to believe that it is safer and better and more spiritual to hide our fears and doubts and hurts than it is to own them. But, by doing this we invariably end up leading lives that are focused on outward appearances rather than internal realities. If what matters most is how we look on the outside, we can never effectively deal with the garbage on the inside.
Jesus is giving us permission to let the garbage on the inside -the hurts, the doubts, the fears, the failures, to be exposed, to come to the light. Yes it is risky. No, it will not look pretty. However, as we give outward expression to our internal reality, the Holy Spirit will bring comfort, healing, transformation and joy.
We experienced this last night in one of our trainings where we talked about the gap between what comes across as victorious Christian living, and the reality that most of us are actually living. Giving permission to people to not only share the doubts, garbage, etc. that is in their lives, is extremely liberating and leads to the comfort, joy, and healing that you talk about in your last paragraph. Good post.
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