Internal Adornment (Part 2)

Last Wednesday, we began a series on the Beatitudes. We learned in last’s week’s post, that internal righteousness is God’s primary concern for us (I Samuel 16:7; I Peter 3:3-4). There is internal clothing God wants us to wear. External righteousness is what we usually default to (Matthew 5:20), but God instructs us to a deeper reality.

Today, we consider what that 1^st piece of internal adornment should be: repentance. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

Some say there is a time for mourning, as Solomon wrote (Ecclesiastes 3:4), but that mourning should come to an end. Aren’t we supposed to forget our troubles and never face them?

What does it mean to mourn? The word simply means “to experience sadness because of a circumstance.” This word appears in a Greek tense that suggests this action is ongoing in the Christian life. In other words, mourning is a continual practice of the Christian. In Martin Luther’s 95 Thesis, which was a protest of the corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1500’s, he refers to the Christian life as a continuous act of contrition, and he is right. In other words, we don’t ever stop mourning, as we will see with the next question.

What should we mourn? Some suggest we mourn over the brokenness of this world, and there is certainly plenty to be broken about. But that doesn’t fit well in this context of the Sermon on the Mount that is clearly addressing the heart. Instead of being taught to mourn something outside of us, we are being called to mourn over something inside of us. The mourning Jesus is referring to is over our own sin. When you understand your true spiritual condition of spiritual destitution, you won’t and shouldn’t be happy about it. John Owen says, “I do not understand how a man can be a true believer unto whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow, and trouble.” Mourning over sin is not excusing your sin or “dressing it up” to make it look better.

Is there a wrong way to mourn? Yes, to mourn over our sin does not mean that we live in paralyzing, depressed, gloomy despair – like the donkey Eeyore from the Winnie the Pooh stories, for that undervalues and under-appreciates the work of Christ on the cross. Nor is mourning over sin living in self-pity, for that is a self-focused mindset.

What does mourning produce? II Corinthians 7:10, Paul says “godly grief” produces repentance. As J. Oswald Sanders reminds us, “It is not the sorrow itself that is a blessed thing, but rather the comfort which God ministers to the sorrowing. There can be no comfort where there is no grief.” (Spiritual Maturity, pg. 97) Godly sorrow leads to godly repentance, which is a change of thinking and change of the heart’s affection that changes our behavior. When someone repents over their sin, what do they discover? More heartache? No! They are, as Jesus says, “comforted.” This promised comfort comes not in the mourning over sin but in what mourning produces: forgiveness and repentance. We are comforted because true mourners are repenters, and repenters will find a forgiving Jesus Christ (Psalm 30:5; 32:1-2; Matthew 11:28-30).

How can I be more sensitive to my sin? Here are 3 suggestions:

1. First, mortify anything that hardens your heart. When your heart is hardened, mourning will be absent. As believers, we want soft, pliable hearts that are easily guided and re-directed toward the things of the Lord. So, if there are “heart-hardeners” in your life, kill them. Something that hardens your heart is something or someone that doesn’t work in compliance with helping set your eyes on eternity. Some common “heart hardeners” are showing outward acceptance of the sins you view on TV or movies, laughing at jokes about sin, singing lyrics of songs that aren’t pleasing to God. Refuse be amused or make light of the sins Jesus died for.

2. Second, remind yourself of the holiness of God. This is what Isaiah was confronted with in Isaiah 6. When the holiness of God became clear to him, he cursed himself and mourned over his sinful self in the presence of total and complete righteousness. Spend time in the Scripture looking at how God is holy. Read some good books on God’s attributes that set God apart from us (e.g., None Like Him by Jen Wilkin or Knowing God by J.I. Packer or Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock).

3. Third, understand your true condition without Christ. This is what we discovered in the last Beatitude. If you know who you are, you will know Who and what you need. Admit, like Peter, that you are a sinful man and not worthy of God’s grace (Luke 5:8).