James Nisbet Commentary - Matthew 5:4 - 5:4

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James Nisbet Commentary - Matthew 5:4 - 5:4


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COMFORT FOR THE MOURNERS

‘Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.’

Mat_5:4

Not all sorrow wins this blessedness. There is a sorrow which is hard, which cherishes resentment against God, which broods over itself and resolves to be hopeless; such sorrow brings no comfort. The sorrow of which our Lord speaks is that which, though it is bitter and hard to bear, is yet as the sorrow of the child, it is still trustful, still holding out a hand for the touch of sympathy, still putting forth a plea for succour and help. It is not on the surface of happiness, but in the depths of sorrow that man’s spirit finds the Divine Rock on which the joy and strength and encouragement of life are to be found. Consider, then, three of the sorrows which Jesus Christ declares to be blessed because they shall find strength and encouragement.

I. The sorrow caused by death.—Death in one sense withdraws those whom we love, but in another sense it reveals them; it removes from them all that was imperfect, accidental, and un-unworthy; it clears from them all the misunderstandings of this perplexing scene; it shows them to us in their true and best essential self; what God was making of them here and is making of them more perfectly elsewhere.

II. The sorrow caused by the world’s pain.—Blessed, indeed, are they who know something of it. We are meant to go out into the world of human poverty and suffering, and to take some part of it into the hospitality of our own heart. In this sympathy we realise that our human race is not a mere collection of isolated atoms; it is united in one heart and life, in that deep, compassionate Heart of Humanity. In that sympathy which goes forth from human heart to human heart, we touch the Christ and, in Christ, God.

III. The sorrow caused by sin.—Blessed, surely, they who know something of it. Pitiable they who know nothing of it. We talk much about religion, but we are convicted of superficiality unless there is a real sense of sin amongst us. No man knows anything of God who does not feel that his sins are an affront and an insult to the Divine holiness and patience. So long as men are content to speak easily and glibly about the ‘evolution of humanity’ from imperfection to perfection, they can dispense with the sense of sin; they have no need of the Atonement in their theology. But once a man comes to know the deepest truth about himself and realises his deepest need, his cry will be, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’ Then the Atonement becomes not a theory which he can discuss, but a Divine fact on which, with the gratitude of his whole soul, he rests.

—
Bishop C. G. Lang.

Illustration

‘I remember once turning over the pages of a remarkable collection of autographs and quotations gathered from almost every person of eminence in Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth century—kings, statesmen, poets, artists, men of science. Suddenly I found on one page, over the signature, “C. H. Spurgeon,” these rude and simple lines:

E’er since by faith I saw the stream

Thy flowing wounds supply,

Redeeming love hath been my theme,

And shall be till I die.

From that book, full of the world’s wisdom, suddenly there rises strange and solitary the voice of a joy deeper and more eternal than the world can either give or understand. It is the voice of those who through sorrow for sin have come to their great encouragement.’