How Can Jesus Possibly Say That Those Who Mourn Are Blessed?
Life is fragile and all too brief. According to the Psalmist, our lifetimes are a “mere breath.” We may perhaps live into our seventies or eighties “by reason of strength,” but our experience is generally full of “toil and trouble” (Ps. 39:5; Ps. 90:10). Sometimes life leaves you weeping in the dark. In such moments of misery, we cry out to a Father who cares about our pain, who invites us into his presence to express our concerns (Matt. 7:7–11; 1 Pet. 5:7).
The doctor said, “The child has severe hemophilia.” In the crib looking up at me with charming brown eyes lay a beautiful baby boy. A “severe” hemophiliac. My son. Emotions swirled. “Are you sure?” I asked, feeling helpless. “Yes,” he responded.
Much of life happens before you are ready. Our hearts race and our minds search for meaning, but some circumstances resist explanation. So it was for me on that day, surrounded by the beeping ambience of the neonatal unit. Powerless, I simply stood and watched.
However, despair is not the end of the story. It is simply the occasion when our spiritual senses are awakened to behold new, life-giving dimensions of God’s presence. In Jesus’s words, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”
The shocking, even scandalous, ring to this statement hits you in the face. Blessed? How can Jesus possibly say that those who mourn are blessed? In her book On Death and Dying, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Nowhere in her list are blessed and comfort. But perhaps they should be.
Life in the kingdom, after all, is not about striving for happiness or avoiding the ills of human existence that bring us face to face with mourning. It’s about receiving and finding, even amid the pain and suffering of life (Eph. 1:3; James 1:17). “Blessed” is therefore not an achievement, an attitude, or an emotion. It is the tangible gift of God’s loving embrace, an identity in Christ that experiences life as it ought to be—even when we mourn.
In the months leading up to Angela’s delivery, I was a seminarian teaching Matthew’s Gospel in Sunday school. My wife, great with child, sat in the front listening attentively. One morning, I introduced my students to a concept called the “upsilon vector.”
A Counterintutive Pattern
Upsilon is a Greek letter that looks like the English capital U (or like a Y when it’s capitalized). Its contours trace the trajectory of Jesus’s experience in terms of his descent into apparent defeat (suffering and dying on the cross) before ascending three days later in consummate victory (in the resurrection). It is the counterintuitive pattern of Christian life that my seminary professor, Royce Gruenler, outlined when he stated, “We can expect to follow the same path of defeat and death, victory and resurrection.”
We observe the upsilon’s ironic pattern in nature, from the changing of the seasons to the kernel of wheat that falls to the ground and dies before it produces fruit. It’s also found in the great stories of antiquity, as when Persephone must first descend into the underworld and marry Hades before spring can be reborn.
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Things for Christian Men to Think About
It is a great tribute to a man when his family knows him for his commitment to the Bible, to prayer, and to the local church. Gifts and vacations and inheritances are all well and good, but there is no better legacy you can leave to your children than being a man who truly loves the Lord and has lived for his glory. This legacy is inextricably bound to a long dedication to Scripture, to prayer, and to consistent commitment to the local church. Be known for these.
I have had a few opportunities in the past few weeks to interact with Christian men. Along the way I’ve jotted down a few thoughts that arose from those conversations. I thought I’d share them today.
Pause for a few moments to consider the fact that God is a Father and you are his child. Now think about how many times God has obviously chastised or disciplined you for your sin versus how many times he has extended mercy and grace and given you time to correct your sinful behavior. How often in life has God clearly afflicted you with some kind of negative consequence for your sin? How often have you been certain that he has providentially intervened with some kind of pain in order to change your bad behavior? My guess is your answer would be something like, “Not all that often, considering how sinful I am.” Having pondered that, contemplate the way you parent your children and whether you reflect a good measure of God’s patience and long-suffering. Is your fatherhood modeled on God’s?
The society around you wants you to believe that men cannot have friendships with other men that are significant and meaningful and emotionally intimate—but that do not involve sex or any desire for it. Society casts doubt on Jonathan and David and on Frodo and Sam and on everyone between, as if love between men cannot be utterly true and also utterly pure. Don’t buy the lie. Friendships with other men are precious and good and bring glory to God. You will be a better man for baring your heart before a friend and allowing him to really know you as you are. You will be a better husband and father and church member. So pursue friendships and relational intimacy with other men. You’ll be glad you did.
And on the topic of friendship, why not make it your goal in friendship to make your friends better? There are lots of relationships that can leave us the same or even make us worse. But the most precious relationships are the ones that make us better by providing an example of godliness, by speaking truth to us, and by challenging or even rebuking us when necessary. Be the kind of friend who is committed to leveling up your friends—and your wife and your children and the other people around you. You’ll probably find they do the same to you. And be aware that the way to do this is first and foremost for you to grow in godliness, because you cannot expect of them what you are not willing to do yourself. Make people around you better by being better yourself.
Much of the pain men bring upon themselves is a result of their sense of entitlement when it comes to sexual satisfaction. For that reason, one of the best and godliest things you can do is determine you will not experience illicit sexual pleasure as an expression of that sense of entitlement. In other words, you will not masturbate. If you make that commitment and work backward from there, you may just find that your desire to look at pornography is diminished. You may find you are more careful with what you watch on Netflix or what your eyes alight on when you are round and about. You might find you put better measures in place to guard what you see and experience. After all, why get all worked up when you have committed not to satisfy yourself?
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Providence and Contentment
Written by R.C. Sproul |
Friday, October 8, 2021
Paul was content because he knew his condition was ordained by his Creator. He understood that God brought both pleasure and pain into his life for a good purpose (Rom. 8:28). Paul knew that since the Lord wisely ordered his life, he could find strength in the Lord for any and all circumstances. Paul understood that he was fulfilling the purpose of God whether he was experiencing abundance or abasement. Submission to God’s sovereign rule over his life was the key to his contentment.Blaise Pascal, the famous French philosopher and mathematician, noted that human beings are creatures of profound paradox. We’re capable of both deep misery and tremendous grandeur, often at the same time. All we have to do is scan the headlines to see that this is the case. How often do celebrities who have done great good through philanthropy get caught up in scandals?
Human grandeur is found in part in our ability to contemplate ourselves, to reflect upon our origins, our destiny, and our place in the universe. Yet, such contemplation has a negative side, and that is its potential to bring us pain. We may find ourselves miserable when we think of a life that is better than that which we enjoy now and recognize that we are incapable of achieving it. Perhaps we think of a life free of illness and pain, yet we know that physical agony and death are certain. Rich and poor alike know that a life of greater wealth is possible but grow frustrated when that wealth is unobtainable. Sick or healthy, poor or rich, successful or unsuccessful—we are all capable of growing vexed when a better life remains outside of our grasp.
Scripture prescribes only one remedy to this frustration: contentment.
Biblical contentment is a spiritual virtue that we find modeled by the Apostle Paul. He states, for example, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” (Phil. 4:11). No matter the state of his health, wealth, or success, Paul found it possible to be content with his life.
In Paul’s era, two prominent schools of Greek philosophy agreed that our goal should be to find contentment, but they had very different ways of getting there. The first of these, Stoicism, said imperturbability was the way to contentment. Stoics believed that human beings had no real control over their external circumstances, which were subject to the whims of fate. The only place they could have any control was in their personal attitudes. We cannot control what happens to us, they said, but we can control how we feel about it.
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How to Love Our Friends in Truth— Even When It Stings
While friends do (and should) encourage and uplift us, they should also create edifying wounds. These wounds aren’t meant to break or destroy us but, through their pain, lead us to growth. Like a vinedresser cutting away the dead vines or the sculptor carving away imperfections, our friendships should sharpen us—but such sharpening isn’t always comfortable.
“I have good news and bad news. God has called us to move back home.”
Our friend’s words stunned me. He told us God was leading him and his family, whom we had grown to see as our own family, to move back to his hometown.
My emotions moved like the sea line. One hour I fought sadness, another I struggled with loneliness, another moment fear surged through me, and yet another anger boiled in me. Though I initially directed my feelings at my friends, I later saw they were truly directed at God.
Why did you give us these close friends? I cried out to him. Why did you bring us together in such deep friendships only to tear them away from us two years later?
In the wake of that announcement, I’m not sure I loved my friends as well as I would have said I did.
Love Grows with Knowledge and Discernment
On earth, we will never reach a point of loving one another perfectly (because we are each still in our sinful flesh), yet we can always be growing in our love for one another.
The Thessalonians modelled this. In his first letter to them, Paul exclaimed his gratitude for their labor of love (1 Thess. 1:2–3), and in his second letter he declared that their love had grown ever greater (2 Thess. 1:3). Could someone say the same of your love for others? Has your love grown ever greater?
Perhaps we must first consider: How does our love grow? It grows in knowledge and discernment, which can only be produced from Scripture. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, “And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God” (Phil. 1:9–11).
Our love should be based on knowledge—our knowledge of how we were first loved by the Savior (1 John 4:19). It’s according to this love by which God covered us that we love others—with grace, selflessness, and truth. We love one another with knowledge of the truth, always seeking to encourage them in further holiness.
Is your love founded in this kind of knowledge and discernment? What does it look like to live this way?
Allowing God to Lead Them
A week after my dear friend told me they were moving, God led me to a passage in Acts:While we were staying [in Caesarea] for many days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. And coming to us, he took Paul’s belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, ‘Thus says the Holy Spirit, “This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.” When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 21:9–14)
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