Bible Studies in the Gospel of Matthew

Bible Studies in the Gospel of Matthew
VII

Matthew 5:4 does not explain in great detail what kind of sorrow is meant, which is often the case in the Scriptures. Spiritual things are interpreted with spiritual words, and it is up to each individual to understand the matter correctly. Then it will be as it is written in Proverbs 25:2: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”

On the other hand, in 2 Corinthians 7:10 we are more precisely informed as to what kind of sorrow makes a person blessed and which sorrow does not. The sorrow that is of the evil is the sorrow of the world, i.e., sorrowing over all kinds of things in this world, such as money, food, clothing, house, fields, meadows, a marriage partner, honor, pleasant surroundings, etc.

Mourning over the fact that you lack some of this and that you have so little of that, and sorrowing over the fact that you must have an adequate amount of it as long as you live results in death; in other words, it kills our spiritual life. It destroys our living hope, peace, and joy, strength and victory, brotherly love, and everything else that is good.

Godly sorrow, sorrowing because you have so little of God, so little strength, and so little of all kinds of virtues; that you do not serve and lay down your life sufficiently, do not endure sufficiently, are lacking in wisdom, do not tackle a matter correctly; that you so often (even though we are well-intentioned) still do it badly, etc.—even endlessly—produces repentance to salvation from everything that we mourn over to everything for which we sincerely yearn.

It is vital that we always sorrow for something better and something more. The Corinthians had become rich and satisfied, quite content with themselves. If we are to know our need, as James says, we must, as Paul says, pay careful attention to ourselves and to the doctrine. Then we will discover the discrepancies.