“Let your steadfast love comfort me according to your promise to your servant.” Psalm 119:76
The Lord finishes his second beatitude. “Blessed are they that mourn
for they shall be comforted.” The Lord is discussing those who will enter the kingdom of God. He has stated they are those who are “poor in spirit”(humbled before God) and those who “mourn” (over sin and the separation it creates between them and God). The Lord states that those who mourn over their sin will be comforted. The word for comfort has several meanings. It can mean “to send for, summon, invite, or to beg or entreat, beg, or to encourage, console”. When we think of comfort we think of one who is hurting and who is helped by another who feels their pain who makes it better, even possibly making the pain go away.
To understand comfort we need to look at how it is used in scripture. We find that God is the one who comforts. Paul writes “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 is God who accepts a person into the kingdom and it is God who comforts us over the grief we have over sin. That comfort is tied directly to the character of God. He comforts us because it who He is. Again Paul states, “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love”. The Psalmist says the same thing. ” Let your steadfast love comfort me according to your promise.” (Psalm 119:76) Isaiah gives us a deeper insight. He states “You will say in that day: “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me”. (Isaiah 12:1) In others words God has every right to pour out His wrath on us for our sin but He turns away from His righteous indignation to comfort us because He loves us.
There is a great example of this in Luke 16 where the Lord tells the story of Lazarus and the rich man. The rich man dies and finds himself in eternal torment. The rich man neither was poor in spirit nor mourned over his sin. He cries out to Abraham to send Lazarus to him to give him a drop of water because of the torment he is in. (His pride is still there – he still wants Lazarus to serve him.) Abraham responds “remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented”. Note Abraham contrasts torment and comfort. The word comforted is the same word the Lord uses in Matthew 5:4.
The word is also the word from which we get paraclete – the name of the Holy Spirit who comes to live inside us at salvation. One of the things the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, does is provides us with hope. In God’s spiritual kingdom, on this earth now, the Holy Spirit guides and comforts us as He walks with us “through the valley of the shadow of death”. One day we will face physical death. Once we step beyond this life our eternal destiny is determined. As we face death we face either comfort or agony. Even as believers mourn over our sin and rebellion against God we know the God of all comfort who is filled with love for us will accept us into his presence, not because of what we have done, but because of His love. We are comforted that the eternal torment we deserve has been paid for by His Son. Comfort, when facing eternity, only comes through the assurance that our sins have been paid for by the Lord Jesus Christ.