Blessed they that mourn, for *they* shall be comforted.
The second blessing in the Sermon on the Mount puts sorrow and happiness in one sentence. We do not usually put them together. Two questions follow. What sort of mourning did the Lord mean? And when does the comfort come?
A verdict that reverses ours
Everyone carries a private list of who counts as fortunate. One writer sets that list beside the Lord's and lets the clash stand.
Most people would say, "Blessed are the rich, who can surround themselves with every comfort. Blessed are the joyful, the high-spirited, the independent, who know nothing of hunger and thirst." But the Lord came from heaven. He knew the character that suited the kingdom of heaven. He says, "Blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst." That turns the judgment of everyone upside down. It contradicts the thought every human heart holds dear. Yet what a mercy it is for all of us that happiness does not depend on our circumstances, or on how much we own, but on the state of the mind — in one word, on character.
What the mourner grieves
One commentator rules out the obvious reading and names what is meant instead.
Do not read the mourning that comes next as grief over personal sin. It is grief over the results of sin, over the way things now are on the earth. That is how our Lord grieved and mourned.
That sorrow looks outward, at other people, which is what separates it from the blessing before it.
Being poor in spirit is a matter between the soul and God alone. A person could hold it perfectly with nobody at all to mourn over. But to be a "mourner" here means something else. It means being moved to the heart by the condition of those around us, above all their moral and spiritual condition.
The wrong kind of sorrow
Grief by itself is no credential. Tears can flow from a heart that has never been touched where it matters.
There is a mourning that is far from making one blessed. Many can weep over a dead child who cannot mourn over a crucified Saviour. Worldly sorrows hasten our funerals. Worldly grief produces death (2 Corinthians 7:10).
The Lord's own mourning
He did not describe a heart He lacked Himself. The blessing is a portrait of Him.
He was, while on earth, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He Himself took our infirmities and bore our diseases. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus and over Jerusalem. In that night of deepest gloom He offered up prayers and pleas, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death (Hebrews 5:7). He was the great mourner and He was comforted; heard because of His reverence, and raised from the dead.
One writer turns this into a question for us.
Do we not find ourselves in a scene where everything is opposed to God? Surely! Can we then love the Lord Jesus Christ, and pass through this scene, and not be mourners? Was not He a mourner when He passed through it?
Mourners who stand with the guilty, not above them
This sorrow can turn into criticism of others. Three men from the older Scriptures show the alternative.
Do we pass by without caring? Or do we set ourselves above such things and judge others in self-righteousness? … We find such mourning in the Old Testament. Nehemiah said to King Artaxerxes: "Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins?" Daniel and Ezra also mourned over the unfaithfulness of God's people. … They confessed their people's sin and included themselves in their guilt. They understood that they themselves were no better and that they were part of this people. That is why God owned them and answered them.
Comfort now, and comfort in full
The promise does not wait only for the future. One writer describes a grieving woman who met Jesus and found comfort on the spot.
She looked up into His face through her tears, and Jesus wept. Was she not at that moment most blessedly comforted? She had known that He loved her before, but she had never known that He loved her like that. His tears were more eloquent than words, and she found that His sympathy was greater than her sorrow.
One writer reads the promise forward, to a mourning still ahead for the Jewish people.
The believing part of the Jewish people will also go through deep mourning during the great tribulation. That comes just before Christ appears. … But the Lord Himself will comfort them too: "the LORD will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem" (Zechariah 1:17).
Summary
- Reversed — The world calls the rich and carefree blessed. Christ calls the mourners blessed, because blessing rests on character, not circumstances.
- Directed — This mourning is not grief over a death, and not just regret over personal sin. It is sorrow over what sin has done to everything around us.
- Tested — Weeping proves nothing on its own; many cry at a graveside who have never mourned over a crucified Saviour.
- Shared — Christ was the great mourner, and He was comforted. His followers mourn with Him. Like Nehemiah, Daniel and Ezra, they count themselves inside the guilt they grieve.
- Answered — Comfort comes now in His sympathy, and comes in full when He appears — nothing wept in His name is forgotten.