The Beatitudes: The Biblical Pattern of Christian Experience

Introduction

In our consideration of the first part of this Beatitude, our focus was upon the mourners in Zion, as Christ clearly identifies spiritual mourning to be the second mark of saving grace, the second distinctive characteristic of all the spiritual citizens of His kingdom. We pointed out that due to the sequential and cumulative order of the Beatitudes we must of necessity conclude that this mourning is closely related to the first Beatitude, which identifies citizens of God’s kingdom as sinners who have been made experientially acquainted with their spiritual poverty. Consequently, this spiritual poverty is the focus of this mourning.

This mourning refers not to mourning in a general sense of the word. Neither does it refer to mourning which is man’s emotional response to the many grievous experiences which he encounters in this vale of tears. Rather, this mourning is the sinner’s response to the painful and grievous realization that He is without God and thus without hope in the world. The mourning to which Christ refers is, therefore, the manifestation of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit — that wondrous work which, as the authors of the Canons of Dort state so profoundly, exceeds the creation of the universe in magnificence. It is at that stupendous moment that it pleases the Holy Spirit to make the elect sinner alive unto God again, and it is at that moment that He sheds the love of God abroad in such a heart. It is this latter reality which at once directs us to the secret motive why God’s children mourn. They mourn because they love God, even though in the beginning of their spiritual life they often cannot give expression as to what is transpiring in their soul. Yet the one thing they clearly perceive is an unex-plainable, heartfelt yearning of their soul after God.

It is this yearning after God which produces the realization that they are without Him, that they offend Him and grieve Him, that they have a heart which is so wretchedly inclined to violate His holy commandments; yes, it is this realization which brings forth such a heartfelt grief in their soul. It is this realization which causes them to weep with David, “My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease … Lord, all my desire is before Thee; and my groaning is not hid from Thee. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me” (Psalm 38:5–10). It is this painful realization of spiritual poverty which even caused God’s exercised child Paul to weep, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24).

Before we proceed, we must therefore emphasize again that God Himself is the focus of this mourning; and thus, due to his experiential understanding of the very nature of sin, the elect sinner primarily mourns over sin itself rather than its consequences. A clear understanding of the nature of this mourning is necessary in order to grasp what the essential nature of the comfort is which Christ promises to true mourners in Zion, and for which these mourners long.

Definition of Terms

As is true in our language, the verb here translated as “comfort” is the Greek verb from which the word “Comforter” is derived — a word which often is transliterated into English as “Parakleet.” This title is preeminently given to the Holy Spirit, to whom Christ repeatedly referred as the Comforter who would come as the gift of the Father (cf. John 14–16). This relationship between “comfort” and the “Comforter” at once directs us to the correct interpretation of Christ’s promise, “for they shall be comforted.” For when we view this text as we must view every text, namely, within the context of all of Scripture, and especially when we compare it with the numerous passages which explicitly identify the Holy Spirit as the Comforter of His people, then it becomes evident that the comfort which mourners in Zion shall experience is exclusively the result of the operation of the Holy Spirit in the heart of such sinners.

In other words, the very same Spirit who regenerates, who convicts of sin, and who causes spiritually bankrupt sinners to mourn over their poverty, is also the Spirit who comforts. The very same Spirit who wounds the soul also pours the balm of Gilead in those wounds. The very Spirit who empties the sinner and who will strip him of all his own righteousness also will fill the soul with precisely that comfort for which He has made room with masterful precision.

Experiential Perspectives

What then is that comfort with which the Spirit comforts mourners in Zion? Scripture teaches clearly that the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, is the great Executive of the Holy Trinity. It is the Spirit who accomplishes the Father’s eternal good pleasure — so richly revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Son of His good pleasure — in the hearts of sinners who have been loved by a triune God from the stillness of a never-begun eternity. As it is the Father’s good pleasure to restore fallen sinners into an intimate relationship with Himself, it is thus the Holy Spirit’s work as He executes that good pleasure, to restore the dreadful breach caused in Paradise between God and those elect sinners who have been eternally couched in His heart. This at once explains why He is pre-eminently called the Spirit of Christ, why it is His utmost desire to glorify Christ, why He delights to take out of Him and reveal it precisely to the mourners in Zion, and why He will not rest until He causes such mourners in Zion to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ with the arms of faith.

Why is Jesus Christ the pre-eminent focus of His saving work? Oh, it is because He is the Restorer of the breach; it is by Him who is mighty to save that Jehovah’s good pleasure can prosper! It is in Him that God and sinners can be reconciled. In Him God has found a way whereby the glorious promise and declaration of the covenant of grace can be an everlasting and precious reality for God’s children, namely, “And I will be their God, and they shall be My people!” How profoundly this statement expresses God’s eternal good pleasure towards His people! Is it any wonder that the Father has therefore given the Son of that good pleasure a Name above every other name, and that it thus pleases Him that in all things His Son Jesus Christ should have the pre-eminence? (Col. 1:18,19).

How evident it now becomes why it is the Holy Spirit’s sacred and singular objective to glorify this magnificent Savior in the hearts of the mourners of Zion! This is why He will not rest until, by virtue of His saving operation — also for these poor mourners in Zion — the Name of Jesus Christ shall become a Name above every other name. For this is the very method by which it pleases Him to comfort such mourners, a method so clearly outlined by Christ Himself in John 6:45, “Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto Me.” And thus the Holy Spirit, as the Father’s Instructor causes them to weep over the fact that they are without God and without hope in the world, causing them to cry out with David, “Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.” The objective of His divine instruction is to bring the mourners in Zion to the place where in deep soul’s mourning they will cry out of the depth of their lost condition, “Lord, is there yet a way whereby I may escape my well-deserved punishment and be restored into Thy favor?”

Oh, how the Spirit loves to hear that cry from such a wounded soul. It is for that moment that He has waited with holy anticipation. How He delights to respond to this cry by comforting such sinners with the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as God’s ordained way whereby the immeasurable gulf between God and their soulcan be bridged again, their sins can be forgiven, and they again may become the recipients of divine favor.

It is the Holy Spirifs work as He executes that good pleasure, to restore the dreadful breach caused in Paradise between God and those elect sinners who have been eternally couched in His heart.

How unspeakable and unforgettable, therefore, is that moment when the eyes of such a sinner may go open for Him who is the Chief among ten thousand, who is white and ruddy, and who is an altogether lovely and suitable Savior for altogether guilty and vile sinners! How unspeakable is the comfort which such sinners may experience when the Holy Spirit as divine Comforter soothes their wounded souls with the precious balm of Gilead, for it is the Person and work of Jesus Christ alone which can truly comfort the souls of all mourners in Zion. It is in Him alone that the God for whom they yearn can be their portion. In Him alone the barrier between God and their soul can be removed. In Him alone their guilt can be blotted out. In His blood alone they can be cleansed from all their sin. In Him alone they can lavish their soul at the fountain of God’s eternal and infinite love. This explains why an exercised child of God, deceased for many years, once said, “Christ fits my heart as precisely as a key fits a lock.”

Moreover, the experience of this comfort is not merely an experience of singular occurrence in the lives of God’s children. Rather, it is the lifelong experience of God’s children that this Spirit by renewal makes room for Christ, causes a hungering and thirsting for Christ, reveals Christ, gives faith to embrace Christ, and causes His people to find comfort for their souls in Christ. The original Greek text underscores this reality in a profound manner. As has been pointed out previously, Christ uses the present tense in all the Beatitudes, which in Greek is indicative of continual and/or repetitive action. The implication of this important grammatical perspective relative to this Beatitude is that spiritual mourning is a life-long and repetitive experience for God’s children, an experience they will never grow beyond as long as they belong to the church militant. However, it is noteworthy that the future tense used in the second half of this Beatitude, in the Greek, also is indicative of continual and repetitive action. Therefore, we may actually read this Beatitude as follows, “Blessed are they that continually and repetitively mourn, for they shall continually and repetitively be comforted.”

How clearly this confirms that the experience of God’s children is not a “half experience” which would consist of mourning only, but that this continual mourning by divine ordinance and divine necessity will always result in experiencing comfort in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit’s work can not miscarry. He does not do a half-work, but will always finish what He begins. He killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up; He maketh poor and He maketh rich; He bringeth low, and He lifteth up (1 Samuel 2:6,7). It is by this twofold method that it pleases the Holy Spirit to cause God’s children to grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. This explains why Christ states so emphatically that His mourners shall be comforted.

The use of the future tense here should not be construed to mean that such comfort is exclusively laid away for the future and thus will only be experienced in heaven. This evidently is contrary to Christ’s intent in this text as well as contrary to the experience of God’s children. It is true that the full extent of that comfort will not be experienced until God’s children are in heaven where they shall see Christ uninterruptedly as He is. Christ’s use of the future tense, however, primarily serves to underscore the absolute certainty of the experience of this comfort, even though reference to future fulfillment of this promise is certainly included in its meaning. The experience of heaven begins here as our Heidelberg Catechism so plainly teaches in Lord’s Day 22, where it is stated, “Since I now feel in my heart the beginning of eternal joy, after this life.” Every exercise of faith is a foretaste of heaven where the Lamb of God shall forever feed them and lead them to living fountains of water (Revelation 7:17).

Thus this Beatitude clearly confirms that the experience of God’s children is a lifelong preparation for heaven where their tears — which here they so often must shed as they mourn over sin — shall forever be wiped away, where that which eye has not seen and ear has not heard shall be an unending reality. When God’s children arrive in heaven they shall not do a strange work, for there they shall forever delight themselves in Him, who by the work of the Holy Spirit already has become so precious to them in this life, and whom they will there behold as the express image of His Father’s Person, as the brightness of His glory who shall forever illuminate heaven with the unfettered brightness of His glory. There the darkness and absence of comfort they so often must experience here due to unbelief and backsliding shall forever be replaced by the light of the knowledge of the glory of God which they shall be privileged to behold in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). There they shall forever continue the doxology which here they have begun to stammer each time it pleased the Spirit to comfort them with a new revelation and application of Christ and His unsearchable riches, namely, “Worthy is the Lamb!”

Therefore, how blessed are they that mourn, how blessed are they who join David in saying, “But I am poor and sorrowful: let Thy salvation (=Jesus Christ!), O God, set me up on high” (Psalm 69:29). In this Beatitude you have God’s own warranty that you shall be comforted! Here in principle, and once forever, you shall receive beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning. Then, with Paul and all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and who love His appearing, you shall receive a crown of righteousness. “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”

Bartel Elshout is presently on leave of absence as evangelist, and is translating W. Brakel’s The Christian’s Reasonable Service (Redelijke Godsdienst).

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