Comfort for the Mourning

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” – Matthew 5:4. But how? In this episode, Michael Horton, Bob Hiller, Walter Strickland, and Justin Holcomb take a look at Jesus pronouncement of “blessing” to those who mourn—how Christ’s kingdom uniquely, and utterly, transforms our grief. 

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ON THIS EPISODE:

• Michael Horton is White Horse Inn’s founder and co-host. In addition to serving as a J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, he is a minister in the United Reformed Churches. He is the author of more than 30 books.
• Justin Holcomb is a Senior Fellow with Sola Media’s Theo Global. He is also the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, where he has served as the canon for vocations since 2013. He teaches theology and apologetics at Reformed Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
• Bob Hiller is the Senior Pastor of Community Lutheran Church in Escondido, California. He is also the author of Finding Christ in the Straw.
• Walter Strickland is Assistant Professor of Systematic and Contextual Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has contributed to, edited, and authored multiple books in his areas of research interest, which include the African American theological tradition, education theory, and theology of work.

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RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• At God’s Mercy: Psalm 88 – Justin Holcomb

CHECK OUT THIS MONTH’S OFFERS:

• Praying with Jesus: Getting to the Heart of the Lord’s Prayer by Adriel Sanchez.
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TRANSCRIPT

Walter Strickland

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 are often quoted verses in scripture that highlight the highs and lows of life on this earth. Ecclesiastes 3:1-5 reminds us, 

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the sun:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;”

When I interpreted this passage in the past, I tended to minimize the first half of each couplet because it was more somber than the second, because my assumption was that the purpose of each couplet was to crescendo from the negative to the positive as quickly as possible. As time marched on, it became evident that I was blinded to the meaning of the passage. In fact, I had skipped past it, and even other verses that declared that it was better to be in the house of mourning than the house of feasting. My misreading of these passages disallowed me to understand the beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” My misreading came from the assumption that God’s purpose was to steer us clear of mourning and not to comfort us in it. Without knowing it, my interpretation was laced with prosperity undertones that is all too common in Western Christianity. 

My assumption was that God’s sole purpose was to take me from morning to dancing as fast as possible. But this beatitude informs us that God’s goal is not to get us through mourning quickly or to help us circumvent suffering and mourning altogether. Instead, in our mourning, we’ll be able to sense God’s comfort and presence in unique ways that we’d not be able to sense during a time of feasting and dancing. 

There’s a lot to discuss here, and I’m here with Michael Horton, Founder of Sola Media, author and J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, Justin Holcomb, Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida, author and professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Bob Hiller, senior pastor of Community Lutheran Church in Escondido and San Marcos and the Content Editor for Craft of Preaching at 1517.org, and I’m Walter Strickland, professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and elder at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn for They Will Be Comforted

And it’s our joy to explore this sobering, yet hopeful blessing together. Gentlemen, our assumptions about God and how he relates to our suffering, it obscures, at times, our understanding of scripture. So, in light of that, I think it’s good to explore some biblical texts that reference suffering with a particular eye towards how suffering is not sugar coated, and we’re not given an easy button to escape it, but we’re given the invitation to mourn. So, as you guys think about the scripture itself, which passages come to mind when we think about the idea of mourning or suffering?

Bob Hiller

Well, if we stick here with just the beatitude for a second. Dr. Jeff Gibbs, in his wonderful Matthew commentary, says that in the beatitudes, the first two beatitudes feed off of each other, the second two beatitudes feed off of each other. So they tie in together. So there’s this sense in which those who are poor in spirit are poor in spirit because they recognize their lack. They recognize their need, their sin, their inability, whatever it is. They’re lacking something. And this drives them to mourn. It drives them to a reality that things are not right. They’re weeping over their sin. They’re weeping over their lack. And so Jesus is saying here today, ‘you who are poor in spirit and mourning over what you are lacking will receive the kingdom of heaven and thus be comforted because of what I have to give to you.’ And that sort of idea, then, is replete throughout scripture, as you’re saying, Walter, this idea that the mourning you face now is a real mourning. It’s not fake, it’s temporary, but it’s very real, and it’s very hard to go through as you endure it. So you think of somebody like Job, or you think of everybody’s favorite Bible hero, Jeremiah. Jeremiah, who writes a book called Lamentations. Right? You have psalms that teach you how to pray to God in the midst of your sorrow and your suffering. The Bible gives voice to suffering. The Bible acknowledges suffering. The Bible also speaks hope into the midst of suffering. But it doesn’t dismiss it or pass it over at any point.

How the Psalms Teach Us to Mourn

Michael Horton

One of the things that strikes me is a lot of the praise choruses that many of us are familiar with, even when they take from the psalms, take the happy part of the psalm, the resolution. There are so many psalms that move from lament. And as you say, Walter, I love that, God doesn’t want us to move quickly to victory and triumph and everything’s okay. “Suck it up.” God doesn’t say that. Here’s Psalm 13. “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?” Our mourning is all the worse when it involves God.

Bob Hiller 

Yeah, that’s right.

Michael Horton

And a lot of times our mourning over our circumstances and life actually include God. Now we’re mad at him for our circumstances or not mad at him. It’s not appropriate to be mad at God. We should say that. It is not an appropriate response to be mad at God. But certainly we’re given permission in the psalms to pray disappointment with God. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord, my God.” That’s kind of pert. “Light up my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I’m shaken. But I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.” And then, of course, one that just is quite amazing is Psalm 88, I believe.

Justin Holcomb

Psalm 88. That one’s intense.

Michael Horton

It is intense. “O Lord, God of my salvation.” Okay, first of all, turning to God. You know when people say, “I’m really angry and I told God that I don’t understand what he’s doing,” and so forth, “I’m wondering if I really have faith.” I say, “what?” Your first thought was to turn to God?”

Bob Hiller

Yeah, right.

Walter Strickland 

Right.

Michael Horton

You are actually worshiping him. You are actually holding him up high because you’re actually angry or confused or frustrated with God because he’s sovereign and good. Those two things you actually believe.

Bob Hiller

Yeah, right.

Michael Horton

You’re trusting in him. “Oh Lord, God of my salvation.”

Walter Strickland

It’s so good.

Michael Horton

“I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before you incline your ear to my cry, for my soul is full of troubles and my life draws near to Sheol. I’m accounted among those who go down to the pit.” Feel like you’re going to hell, you know? “I’m a man who has no strength.” Isn’t this the beatitudes? Psalm 88:5-28,

“like one set loose among the dead,

  like the slain that lie in the grave,

like those whom you remember no more,

  for they are cut off from your hand.

You have put me in the depths of the pit,

  in the regions dark and deep.

Your wrath lies heavy upon me,

  and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah

You have caused my companions to shun me;

   you have made me a horror[b] to them.

I am shut in so that I cannot escape;

   my eye grows dim through sorrow.

Every day I call upon you, O Lord;

   I spread out my hands to you.

Do you work wonders for the dead?

   Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah

Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,

   or your faithfulness in Abaddon?

Are your wonders known in the darkness,

   or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

But I, O Lord, cry to you;

   in the morning my prayer comes before you.

O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?

   Why do you hide your face from me?

Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,

   I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.

Your wrath has swept over me;

   your dreadful assaults destroy me.

They surround me like a flood all day long;

   they close in on me together.

You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;

   my companions have become darkness.”

Justin Holcomb

We’re going to have a blog post on the show notes on this one on Psalm 88 just to explore it more further, because this is one of the only psalms that doesn’t actually turn around at the end. I think it’s the only one.

Bob Hiller

It’s Psalm 44, I believe, incidentally.

Justin Holcomb

I don’t know if it turns around or not, but Psalm 88 doesn’t. The glimmer of hope is the God of my salvation. That’s the glimmer of hope in all of it. It doesn’t usually turn around. What’s wonderful about this beatitude is “blessed are those who mourn” is actually an invitation, because if you don’t mourn, you’re going to do one of two things and maybe more. You’re going to deny your suffering and you’re going to minimize it. You’re going to theologically deny it, theologically, spiritually minimize it, because we think that suffering is annoying to God. We deserve it, you know, some type of karma-ish type of thing. God’s getting his pound of flesh. So there’s a way of thinking, “I am not supposed to bring this to God.” So if we don’t mourn in self-preservation, there’s a thing that happens in the body and in the mind when you suffer, where you kind of hold it at arm’s length, you kind of minimize. And there’s actually a good thing about minimizing for a season, because if you kind of allowed yourself to think, “oh,” all of the different dimensions of this suffering or trauma or abuse or whatever’s going on would overwhelm you. The way God made us was to be able to kind of let things through our gate of, you know, self-protection and then eventually feel it more, engage it more. But people can live an entire life like that. Last episode, you were talking about someone coming into your office saying, “I feel depressed, I feel anxious.” And that’s most people. Life is suffering because of sin, because of the sin we’ve done and the sin done against us and the effect of sin in the world with death. I mean, all of that, the appropriate response for everybody is to mourn.

Michael Horton 

Yeah, what a mess.

Justin Holcomb

And we feel like we’re not supposed to do that. We kind of theologically edit. We don’t need to deny our suffering. We don’t need to minimize the suffering. We have these little quips that we think are true, like, time heals all wounds. Like, if I can just suffer through this. No, it doesn’t.

Michael Horton

No, the resurrection heals.

Justin Holcomb

That’s important, because when people are in mourning, they think that they are unimportant to God, beyond hope, not worthy of God’s sympathy, and that they need to figure out how to cope with their pain and despair and guilt and shame. And in a Psalm 88 sense, they think they’re kind of left to themselves. And Jesus is saying, “no, you know, what you get is comfort,” the exact thing they need that nobody expects. I never think that. I feel like a nuisance. I feel like a nuisance with my wife and kids when I feel weak or let alone friends, let alone God.

Michael Horton 

I don’t want them to see me this way.

Justin Holcomb 

Yeah.

Michael Horton

And Jesus doesn’t mind them seeing him this way.

Bob Hiller

No.

Michael Horton 

And this is what’s really important for people who are suffering and singing these psalms. Guess what? Jesus sang them, too. God incarnate said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Here’s one from Psalm 44. My son and I are both going through some really tough difficulties. We go to church and everything’s fine. Then we sing Psalm 44. And the sermon was going to be on Psalm 44 as well, and right in the middle, by the time we got to, what, the 14th verse or whatever, we were both in tears and we couldn’t continue singing, and he had to go out and sit in the car for the rest of the service. He came back and he told the pastor, he says, “it’s exactly what I needed.” And the pastor told him, “absolutely, it was.” You know, sometimes it’s time just to sing. Come to grips with your emotion. Calvin said the reason that the psalms are God’s hymnal is because there’s a psalm for every emotion. And the problem is the singing in a lot of church contexts today has one kind of song. Happy.

It Is Not a Sin to Mourn

Bob Hiller

One of the praise songs that I unfortunately do know. The line is something like this. I’m trading my sorrows, I’m trading my shame. I’m trading it all for the joy of the Lord. And then the chorus is just like, yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, yes, yes, Lord. I get the idea there, like, “hey, we’re trying to recognize the joy we have in Christ, that Christ brings us out of darkness into his marvelous light. And these are wonderful things.” But if you’re somebody who is in the midst of suffering and shame and sorrow, that’s a cruel thing to sing. As if, like, it’s my fault that I have to suffer through this, and what’s wrong with me? As opposed to what the psalmist says is how long? Like, Psalm 44. “Are you sleeping? Wake up. Have you forgotten us? Like, where did you go? This is awful!”

Michael Horton 

Here’s what he says. When I sing some of these psalms of lament, I kind of pause and think, “can I say that?”

Bob Hiller 

Yeah.

Michael Horton

Can I sing that to God in church? 

“O God, we have heard with our ears,

    our fathers have told us,

what deeds you performed in their days,

    in the days of old:

2 you with your own hand drove out the nations,

    but them you planted;

you afflicted the peoples,

    but them you set free;

3 for not by their own sword did they win the land,

    nor did their own arm save them,

but your right hand and your arm,

    and the light of your face,

    for you delighted in them.

4 You are my King, O God;

    ordain salvation for Jacob!

5 Through you we push down our foes;

    through your name we tread down those who rise up against us.

6 For not in my bow do I trust,

    nor can my sword save me.

7 But you have saved us from our foes

    and have put to shame those who hate us.

8 In God we have boasted continually,

    and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah

9 But you have rejected us and disgraced us

    and have not gone out with our armies.

10 You have made us turn back from the foe,

    and those who hate us have gotten spoil.

11 You have made us like sheep for slaughter

    and have scattered us among the nations.

12 You have sold your people for a trifle,

    demanding no high price for them.

13 You have made us the taunt of our neighbors,

    the derision and scorn of those around us.

14 You have made us a byword among the nations,

    a laughingstock among the peoples.

15 All day long my disgrace is before me,

    and shame has covered my face

16 at the sound of the taunter and reviler,

    at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.

17 All this has come upon us,

    though we have not forgotten you,

    and we have not been false to your covenant.

18 Our heart has not turned back,

    nor have our steps departed from your way;

19 yet you have broken us in the place of jackals

    and covered us with the shadow of death.

20 If we had forgotten the name of our God

    or spread out our hands to a foreign god,

21 would not God discover this?

    For he knows the secrets of the heart.

22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;

    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?

    Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!

24 Why do you hide your face?

    Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?

25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust;

    our belly clings to the ground.

26 Rise up; come to our help!

    Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!

Justin Holcomb

There’s a phrase that many people have heard, “godly grief versus worldly sorrow.” The psalms are just packed with this kind of faithful grief. It’s not 150 psalms of joy. Lament, confusion, doubt, heartache, and they significantly outnumber the hymns of joy. That’s the thing about the psalms, the irony. Our natural impulse is to deny, minimize painful emotions, and the psalms expose them to us, to others, and to God. Going back to what Calvin said about the psalms, and then I just want to read a verse on godly grief. Calvin writes that, “the psalmist lay open their inmost thoughts and emotions, call, or rather draw each of us to the examination of himself in particular, in order that none of the many infirmities to which we are subjected and out of the many vices which we are bound may remain concealed.” The psalms are saying, “no, come, reveal them, unveil them. Like, let them hang out there.” And it reminds me of 2 Corinthians 7:10. “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”

How Can Those Who Mourn Be “Blessed”?

Walter Strickland 

Yeah, I think one of the lies that I believed, that I think is just alive in evangelicalism, is that we have to get to the other side of suffering in order to worship. We cannot worship while we’re in mourning. And the Lord, he meets us in that place because, as you’re saying, we want to get directly to the resolution of mourning and not discuss what we do in the midst of that. And I think that’s one of the lies that we have to expose. The Lord Jesus wants to meet you in that moment.

Justin Holcomb

I don’t want to hit it too quickly, but are you going to jump in on the morning? I mean, it’s in the affliction. This is 2 Corinthians 1. “Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction.” It’s in the affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. There’s more there. Christ and the sufferings. But it’s the comfort in the affliction.

Michael Horton

We’re going to miss a bunch of comfort if we skip over the affliction.

Justin Holcomb

Absolutely.

Walter Strickland 

I’m with you 100%. But then I would hear folks go to, like, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, and say, “for this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” That was just verse 17. But they would say that in order to say, “you know, this is light and momentary, just get on with it,” which is wrong.

Bob Hiller

That’s not the point of the verse. The point of the verse is.

Walter Strickland

That’s why I was saying it.

Bob Hiller

Oh, I know. I’m not correcting you. I’m angry at other people, okay?

Walter Strickland 

I just want to read that text.

Bob Hiller

The reason I’m reacting is Justin’s reading these verses. And you said people come back with, “yeah, but what about this?” Well, let me tell you about that. That verse is saying, in comparison from what Christ has in store for you, this horrifying cancer, this devastating, this relationship, this death, or this anxiety, this horror that you’re experiencing is light compared to the incredible amount of glory that awaits you in Christ Jesus. It’s not to say that what you’re facing is light or isn’t a big deal, but Christ sees it, and he’s gonna make it way better than you can possibly imagine. In fact, you who are mourning, you will be comforted. Paul is just echoing Jesus.

Walter Strickland 

That’s what I was gonna say, Bob, haha.

Michael Horton 

Took the words right out of your mouth.

Justin Holcomb

He took your punchline.

Bob Hiller 

I got all mad.

Walter Strickland

Well, this is the thing, though. I’m glad that your pastoral sort of impulses just jumped out of your chair, because there’s so many people who would misread that and misappropriate that passage and make the same mistake I did. When my daughter passed, I thought I needed to suffer in an exemplary way, which is not to mourn, but to mourn as if I have hope. So what we’re doing right now is that we’re trying to give people the permission to mourn as the beatitudes and as we’re saying, the rest of the witness of Scripture is allowing us for. But I’m trying to then, in light of that, demonstrate that there’s passages that people have, you know, thrown back at that understanding of what it means to be a Christian. But they’re reading them out of context. It’s in an unhealthy way. That’s why I’m kind of sort of painting this juxtaposition.

Michael Horton

Isn’t it important to have some wisdom about which of these verses we’re going to use and when? Even the same person can get, like four or five of the verses we’re talking about, but at different times in their situation, and then other people, it’s going to be something else. That’s, again, what so many of the psalms of lament exhibit. They exhibit to us, “look, the first part of this psalm is the last five years. The last part of the psalm is, I’m still not through it yet, but I’m looking up at God. I’m not looking up in optimism, kind of like Jiminy Cricket, “if you wish upon a star,” I’m looking up to my redeemer because he did all these things in the past. That’s exactly why. I don’t know why he’s not there for me right now, but I know he’ll be there for me in the end.

Bob Hiller

This is why, when I do a funeral sermon at my church, there’s two things I always want to say, because people always want to come to me and say, we don’t want to cry. We just want to have a joyful celebration. We want to remember the good and all this. So in almost every funeral sermon, I will say something to the effect of Ecclesiastes 3. There’s a time for mourning, and that’s today. This is exactly why we’re here. We’re to weep and mourn over the death of this person, just like Jesus did with Lazarus. And very often, Lazarus is the text I will be preaching on.

But like Jesus with Lazarus, we do not mourn today without hope, all right? Because this is a person for whom the Lord Jesus Christ has died. And so we then get to the resurrection and the hope that we have but mourning. And, Mike, you said it kind of passing earlier, but this is so crucial. Mourning is real. But the only answer to our mourning is the resurrection, which means we are waiting, and we will mourn while we wait. And the cry of the scriptures is, “How long, O Lord?” That’s what faithful mourning sounds like. It’s not woe is me, and it’s not. There is no hope left for us, but it’s rather turning to God.

And I think that’s the key to a lot of this stuff turning to God and saying, how long will you let this go on? Because you’ve promised to be good, and I don’t see the good. You’ve promised to raise the dead, and there’s a corpse in the casket. So, Lord, how long until this is finally made right?

Justin Holcomb

Waiting is one of the major themes throughout Scripture.

Bob Hiller

Right.

The Bible Does Not Minimize Our Suffering

Justin Holcomb

Waiting on the goodness to be delivered. There’s some now and more to come. There’s another verse that hits the waiting, but also similar to 2 Corinthians that I’ve heard numerous times. When people come in and say, “okay, suffering, there’s this passage,” and they kind of start theologically editing their emotions, they use Romans 8:18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” And that’s another one that people use and say, “I’m not supposed to bring this up, I’m not supposed to be comparing my suffering,” and I’m thinking, Paul’s writing to persecuted people. He’s not minimizing their suffering. He’s maximizing the glory. It’s not a matter of, “well, there’s your suffering. What are you doing comparing that to this glory?” It’s actually saying, “no, he’s actually using the power of their suffering.”

Walter Strickland

Exactly.

Justin Holcomb

And then maximizing what is to come in the glory of it, as opposed….

Bob Hiller

Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but isn’t it in Romans 8, I got to look real quick, but he quotes Psalm 44. “We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” So the 44th psalm, which is an agonizing psalm, and Paul is saying, ‘yeah, it is agonizing. Even the agony, there is not enough to separate you from the love of God that is yours. In Christ Jesus, we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered, but in Christ, we are more than conquerors.’

Bob Hiller

Which isn’t to say that you’re going to overcome this tomorrow if you truly have faith. It is to say that Christ will raise you up, having conquered the grave on your behalf, and you will join him in that resurrection. It’s a very different thing.

Walter Strickland 

I really like what you said, Justin. It doesn’t minimize the suffering. It maximizes the glory. So our lives then therefore become an illustration of just how wonderful and glorious God is. Because the person who’s waking up and they’re in a situation where there’s no end in sight. They’re just suffering day in and day out and being able to acknowledge how real that suffering is. But at the same time, saying, just as real as that suffering is, the glory is going to make it like this was light and momentary. I can’t even fathom. God give us the grace to hold on to that hope.

Justin Holcomb 

The thing that I think about that crushes you is not going to be worth comparing.

Walter Strickland 

Yeah. So you’re sitting there talking to somebody, and I’m just like, we believe that’s true.

Justin Holcomb

This is why eschatology matters. This is the now not-yet thing. This is the real implications of a now not-yet. Maybe some of the joy and hope breaks into right now, and that’s what happens. That’s part of the promise of how that works out. But it’s not completely unconnected from the reality of the suffering.

Bob Hiller

Think of David with his son dying, and he says, who knows? Maybe the Lord will have compassion and maybe he won’t. Not now, but he will ultimately. And finally, I will see him in heaven. 

God Reaches Out to the Mourning with Comfort

Michael Horton

One of the reasons why the mourners will be comforted is, again, you don’t get points for mourning, it’s that when you’re mourning, but you’re going to God with your anxiety, your trouble, your depression, your sorrow, your frustration, your confusion, you’re going to God with that darkness. You’re bringing it to him. You’re going to get answers. You’re going to get reoriented. It’s not just, “oh, you have permission to yell at God.” When you bring them to God, you may think that it’s not theologically appropriate for you to say this or do this or go there in your head, but actually, it’s when you do that, you find comfort in the gospel.

Justin Holcomb 

That’s the point, this isn’t just about the morning. It’s about the comfort. And the comfort comes from God’s disposition. It’s not just that you get to vent, but if we look at some passages, and we did a whole series called the comfortable words, and we can also link to that because we went through specific things from the personal work of Jesus Christ. But in the Old Testament, it starts out in Exodus. This is Exodus two and three. But Exodus 2:24 and 25. “And God heard their groans. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew.” So, God sees, hears, and knows the suffering of his people. “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry before their taskmaster. I know their sufferings.” And then God responds to that. It’s not just that he heard them, but that he is with them. The God in the Old Testament is with you and for you, that’s the key. You go through the psalms, the Lord is near the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. So we have all of these examples, and then you get to Jesus, and again, we can go back to the Old Testament. I’m not trying to just launch us right into the New Testament, but we’ve talked about it a few times. B. B. Warfield’s article, The Emotional Life of Our Lord, talking about God’s compassion. Point one, B. B. Warfield says, this is the Princeton theologian who everyone knows about inspiration and other systematic, theological, and biblical theology, and he says, ‘what do we learn about God by looking to Jesus and realizing that he reveals God’s disposition? We learn about his compassion.’ One of the major emotional things of Jesus is that he has compassion for his people.

Michael Horton

One of the reasons I don’t want to show what I’m going through is because people are going to judge me. I’m not sure I can trust them. I’m not sure that the response is going to be compassionate. I’m not sure that they’re going to understand really what I’m going through. And so I’m not going to open myself up to ridicule or to judgment. I’m not going to do it. Here’s the thing that you’re saying, Justin. Take them to Jesus because he is God’s compassion.

“God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son.” Go to him. Go to the one who cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” There’s nothing that you can’t take to him, no emotion you can’t take to him that he hasn’t already experienced himself.

Can God Suffer If He Is Impassible?

Justin Holcomb 

So here’s a question. So God responds with comfort. But is there an appropriate way to say that God grieves and suffers without violating impassibility? We don’t want to make it sound like God somehow is going, “oh, well…” So I’m thinking of Walter Brueggemann, who said, “The way of healing is not an easy one for Yahweh. Yahweh goes through loss, anguish, rage and humiliation. The healing costs the healer a great deal.” Is there a way, without violating the classic doctrine of God, to talk about God as sorrowful, and we are invited to participate in his sorrow, in grief? Is there a way to say that?

Michael Horton 

Well, here’s where I think the doctrine of analogy is so important. Yeah, sure. We sure better be able to say whatever the Bible says. If your theology is too pure to say what the Bible says, you may not have a pure theology. But realize that this is an analogy, that God doesn’t have parts or passions, that God is transcendent, immutable, full of joy, self-satisfied, and all of that, because that’s who he is. But while we might not be able to know how much his compassion or his sharing, the pain that his people are suffering, while we may not know, we’ll never know how that is similar to God’s response, the Bible not only gives us permission, the Bible requires us to affirm that something like it is what God expressed.

Justin Holcomb 

I’m glad you said so, because I said that in the book one time.

Walter Strickland 

So I find John 11, we talked about Mary, Martha, Lazarus, Jesus comes, he sees people mourning, and then he wept. Does his weeping mean that he’s no longer in control? No. Does his weeping mean that this is a surprise? No. I think what we see is him responding to the effect of sin in the world. And so with Jesus weeping, even though he knows he’s about to raise him from the dead, I think it’s an acknowledgement that this is not the way it’s supposed to be.

Michael Horton 

And it’s his friend.

Walter Strickland

Yeah. So to say, does that violate the laws of impassibility? I would say based upon that, no. In fact, I would say his ability to weep was predicated upon being emotionally healthy in the sense that he’s able to not minimize that brokenness, but he’s able to step into it because he’s able to feel what’s going on with somebody, the sisters of a man that he really appreciated and loved.

Bob Hiller

Yeah, Jesus is fully human, so he has fully human emotions. He’s not subject to his emotions, but he does have fully human emotions without sin. And when Jesus weeps, he shows us that it’s not a sin to weep. It’s not a sin to be sorrowful. It’s not a sin to say to Israel, “I have longed to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings, but you would not come to me,” and to be grieving over this. It is not a sin for Jesus to cry out on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And to weep and sweat drops of blood on his way to his dying for his people. But it is also because he is compassionate and merciful that he does suffer for his people, that he does die and rise for his people. He enters into our suffering and into our sorrows so that ultimately he will raise us up to free us from them.

Justin Holcomb

Many people think that grief is an unfaithful response because you’re doubting the goodness of God or doubting the power of God. And so a lot of people think, I need to get over the grief because it doesn’t look like faith, but when you have Jesus being the man of sorrow, the man of grief, man of many sorrows, etc. And so going back to the beatitude, “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”. How is this so? One, we’re saying you don’t have to minimize or deny your suffering. Two, God’s response is comfort. Three, with appropriate biblical qualifications, in Jesus, God is grieving and sorrowful. Join him.

He’s more sorrowful than you are. It is his world that’s been violated by sin. And so he has a stronger disposition toward the horror of what’s happening. You look at Jesus, when he saw someone possessed or controlled by a disease, he was angry. Some of the language wasn’t just sad, it was like, he’s furious. And so Jesus is angrier than you are. He’s more sorrowful than you are. Join him. Participate. He’s already grieving and sorrowful. You can join in. 

“But the eye of God was upon me and blessed me.”

Walter Strickland 

Yeah. And something you said, Mike, earlier was that when we lament, even lament out loud and we say things that are akin to what’s in the psalter, that are even, like, theologically unformed, they’re more informed by our state of emotion than good, solid doctrine, those who submit ourselves to the word of God will begin to recognize, “oh, that’s not accurate.” We can articulate these things that are so real in our hearts, but we have to conform ourselves to what’s actually real and what God says is real about us, about his world, about what he’s going to do about it.

Michael Horton 

So we edit the psalmist as we’re going along. “Yeah, but, yeah, he shouldn’t have said that.”

Walter Strickland

Exactly. We’re almost bashful to read what’s in the psalter at times. And so I’m grateful for those passages that give us the ability to do that. 

Hopefully today’s conversation was helpful to you. All of us are going to have a time when we mourn. I pray that this will give you license to be able to be in mourning and allow the Lord Jesus to meet you in that, knowing that he also is a man of sorrow. So don’t let your your mourning and suffering go to waste.

In your mourning, there is something that the Lord wants to give you: himself. Believers can sense the nearness of God in unique ways during troubling times. In an autobiographical account titled the life and Sufferings of Leonard Black, the author painstakingly detailed the inhumane treatment that he received as a slave. Yet in the section describing the scattering of his family to plantations around the region, he does not discount the hand of the Almighty and sovereign God as he was inspired by Habakkuk 3 to write this. He says, “as near as I can remember, my mother and sister were sold to New Orleans, leaving four brothers and myself behind. We were all placed out or sold to other plantations as property. At six years of age, I was placed with Mister Bradford, separated from my father and my mother,” and this is what he says, “but the eye of God was upon me and blessed me.

The eye of God is upon you, believer. Because of that, we can say with confidence, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.