Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
This post was originally published at Hope Mommies.
The kind of pain we experience as grieving mothers has a way of making a desire for solid, biblical answers for the questions that arise in our hearts take on an urgency—what has God truly said in His Word about why this kind of pain exists in the world?
When this world feels devoid for the loss of our children, our attention can be well set upon knowing how to hope for another world. We need hope because all is not right, and we feel a need to believe that this is not it for us. The Christian hope, such a blessed hope, tells us that there is more—that there is more to know than what only experiences can tell us. And it comes through learning the Bible. And prerequisite to understanding what hope God gives is actually to observe, for example, what kind of mourning Jesus spoke of as recorded in the gospels.
There, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” (Matthew 5:4).
What kind of mourning did Jesus address here in the sermon on the mount with this primacy? Not all causes of mourning are the same. One might mourn for the good that has not been given to her by God, but has perhaps been given to another. It is self-defeating because our help is not found in longingly looking at the lives of others with hearts that will only be happy with what others possess; this is not a blessed kind of mourning. Another cause of mourning we know; it is for the loss of a person—for us, our babies; this is the earthly loss of a good gift (or gifts) we have been given by God. And we trust Jesus’ own tears to validate ours in this (John 11:33-35).
There is yet another kind of mourning in Scripture—spiritual mourning. This is to mourn over our sins. Because Jesus Christ is the One who redeems us from our sins, Biblical hope—first and foremost—is the hope of no longer being held by sin, by its presence, power, and punishment. This is the kind of mourning Jesus primarily spoke of in Matthew 5:4.¹ So it stands to follow that if we do not first understand sin, we cannot understand biblical hope.
The pieces of your heart have shattered—and perhaps you feel as though you hardly have one left. Perhaps also, you feel like the theology contained in your soul is more disheveled than ever—with many different assumptions about God and His character now surfacing. It is likely challenging, at the least, to sort through it all. That is why, today, I want to give you one bottom line. It is not all of the truth that you will need in your grief. But it is needed, and it is a brief theology of sin—and sin’s relationship to death and hope.
Spiritual death came in the garden of Eden when the decision was made to sin. The human race fell from the glory of the presence of God, and death was introduced.
Mankind is now still graciously given opportunity to know God and live in the glory of His presence one day—but a Savior has been needed because the first spiritual death precipitates a death of conscious eternity in the lake of fire, as Jesus and His word teaches (Matthew 25:46; 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9; Revelation 20:13-15). No mere human can avoid it of his or her own merit. We needed Someone to rescue us from our sin now, and from this future of punishment.
Maybe you have never mourned for your sins or seen your need for a Savior. Perhaps you have experienced this plunging grief, mourning the loss of your dear baby, and that made you interested in the things of God or a deeper level of theology for the first time, or the first time in a long time. And maybe that is when you found us at Hope Mommies. You, dear mom, need to know that the Bible tells us that true, biblical hope can only be known by those who have spiritually mourned (though this is perhaps the first time you have heard it called that). You also need to know that you can truly have hope. Our separation from God in present sin and future punishment is something that He has told us how to avoid.
The grief that we experience when a child goes ahead is a loud cry to us, impaling our hearts with the truth that something is not right—and at the root, what isn’t right in this world is sin, the original initiator of death.
Let me pause for a moment here; I understand it might be difficult to hear that statement because you might initially think I mean that I know a specific sin in your life led to the death of your child. After the experience of loss, the mind so deeply wants to have understanding about the cause of death that it filters what it hears through those terms—yet often times, this kind of understanding about the workings of this world is one that mere man cannot have (Job 38). But I am writing at this point about a theological understanding of sin—the bigger picture that applies to all of us.²
Death is not a part of God’s good plan for eternity, He mourns with us, and He is not glad we experience it; yet, what God said in the garden was true (Read Genesis 1-3). It is impossible for us to live, to be full, to be satisfied, to be whole, to be home, to have joy, to love, etc., without God. He knew it. It could be no other way for His creations; He is God and we are, rightly, His—and only right ourselves when we are living in obedience to Him according to who He is. There is no way for God to be glorified as He deserves in this world without Him being truly God to all of His people and creation.
In the garden, He gave us good commandments. He told us that we would assuredly not fare well without Him—that we would surely die, that because He is God it could be no other way. He told us that, as He is the only God, He merits our submission and obedience. Asserting oneself as “god” ultimately ends in impossibility because there is only One. But we thought we could have goodness and power on our own. While self-sustaining power and self-created goodness are only myth, they are influential myths—and Adam and Eve believed them.
And so many in our day believe them too; how prevalent is the thinking that we can each do our own “good” as we please, and pursue our own path to pleasure—a power-grab—and end up in heaven! But in reality, we are accountable to a holy God who knew there could be no good for created beings without their Creator—and who was righteous and holy such that to disregard Him in following our own path is considered sin that cannot stand before the God. So mankind died spiritually, and physical death was introduced into the human experience.
By God’s mercy, grace, and patience, we did not go to the lake of fire immediately. By His great mercy, He allowed us to live in a fallen—yet redeemable—world and have opportunity to turn from our sinful ways to a Redeemer. Sweet moms, I pray for the Holy Spirit’s help for us all to believe this truth—living on this fallen earth and still having an opportunity for repentance was very gracious of God. For, having opportunity to turn to God on this earth means this does not have to be our state, our experience, our “it” forever! There is an escape from this fallen place, and even more, from the lake of fire, which is far worse.
Now dear moms, let me tell you about the good news in which I believe, in which we all at Hope Mommies believe—this is what motivates us.
“Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you – unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, the He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” - 1 Corinthians 15:1-5
There is a Substitute for us, One who died for our sins! Dear moms, when you mourn because you see your sin for what it is, and turn from it to trust in Christ as your Savior and Master for forgiveness, trusting His life, death, and resurrection and appearances that tell us that He, the Substitute, is alive—you become dead to your sin and raised to life, back into good submission to Christ your Lord, and you gain eternal salvation, the promise of God’s future glorious presence, and a present hope in your grief.
Jesus’ words are the comfort for the spiritually mourning soul—for they are from Someone who has the complete authority to say to us—“your sins are forgiven!” (Matthew 9:2; Luke 7:48; Mark 2:5). That joy, life, peace, hope, righteousness and comfort can be yours in Christ, if it is not already! Believe in Him.
And all of this has graciously been given to us who believe!
In the end, no other “hope” will matter but this kind.  So, please do not let anyone tell you that you can have the hope of God if you have not first spiritually mourned before the blessed face of a dear Savior who loves you enough to sacrifice Himself to death for the punishment of your sins, replacing spiritual death with eternal life. Your hope, whether you are heavily grieving your recent loss or whether you are years down the road, is found through the resurrected Lord who enables His people to forsake sin and overcome death.
Once you have come to terms with these truths, you will be able to know and believe, even in your most cutting and overwhelming grief, tears, and pain, that you are truly blessed and comforted by God. For He has saved you from your worst future freely and completely through the good news of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins—of no merit or work of your own—granting you hope eternal, restoration to Him forever.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” (Matthew 5:4).
Better news the world has never known.
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¹Information about these three different kinds of mourning and this understanding of “blessed are those who mourn” may be found in Colin Smith’s sermon Matthew 5:4 here.
²Listen here to a teaching that Hope Mommies endorses on the eternal destination of babies (born and unborn) who die.
