While in my 20s and attending Bible College, I read a book by Ravi Zacharias titled Deliver Us from Evil. In his book, Zacharias shared the story of Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. I have not read Oscar Wilde’s story nor have I seen its screen adaptation; however, Zacharias’ retelling of the story stayed with me since I read it over twenty years ago.
Wilde’s story is of a very handsome man whose face was more attractive and purer than any other. So much so that Basil Hallward, an artist, wanted to capture Dorian Gray’s image on canvas. Dorian agreed to have his likeness painted and when the painting was finally presented by the artist, Dorian became so enraptured by the beauty of his own image that he, in the words of Zacharias, “wistfully expressed the longing to draw license from such beauty and to live any way he pleased…”. Dorian’s wish was to live a life of “sensuality, indulgence, and even murder” that would only mar the painting of himself, leaving no evidence on his actual person of the wickedness he desired to pursue.
Dorian got his wish. He chased after the sins he desired knowing that only his painting would reveal the ugliness of his soul. Because he feared what his painting would say about the truth of his own soul, Dorian hid his portrait until Hallward discovered it. Upon seeing the marred image of Dorian, Hallward understood what it meant and was filled with grief. He confronted Dorian and begged him to turn from his sins and seek God’s forgiveness; he said to Dorian, “Does it not say somewhere, ‘Come now let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as white as wool’?” Instead of heeding the artist’s advice, Dorian grabbed a knife and killed the artist to silence the voice of reason. Zacharias concludes,
The story reaches an emotional climax when, no longer able to stand the indictment of the picture, Dorian reached for the knife once more to destroy the portrait and remove the only visible reminder of his wicked life. The moment he thrust the blade into the canvas the portrait returned to its pristine beauty, and Durian Gray himself lay stabbed to death on the floor. The ravages that had marred the picture now so disfigured his own countenance that he was unrecognizable to the servants who heard the scream of death and came rushing in to help.[1]
Ravi Zacharias then asks, “Can an individual or society live with complete disregard for a moral and spiritual center and not suffer from the wounds of wickedness? Can the soul of a people who have lived without restraint be left unravaged? Is there a point at which one must cry a halt to the passions and the whims of unbridled appetite and admit that enough is enough?”[2] Zacharias suggests in the introduction of his own book that the West suffers from the same disfigurement of its soul that Dorian suffered in his.
On May 19, 2020 Ravi Zacharias died of bone cancer only two months after the cancer was discovered. Within a year after his death, news broke that shocked the Christian world that Zacharias was responsible for the sexual exploitation of numerous women for his own gratification with the hope that no one would ever discover the ugliness of his own soul. Instead of heeding to the warning of Durian Gray’s character, Zacharias pursued a similar path while disguised in an attractive and notable spiritual veneer that impressed and fooled the evangelical world.
In the early 1900s, The London Times sent out an inquiry to famous authors with the question: “What’s wrong with the world today?” One of the respondents was the renown Christian English writer, philosopher, and literary and art critic, G.K. Chesterton. His answer was simple and restricted to only one sentence: “Dear Sir, the problem with the world is me.” The world bristles at an explanation for the world’s problems like the one Chesterton gave. Yet, it is the explanation the Bible gives as we read in holy Scripture: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it” (Jer. 17:9)? In it we also read of our species: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away” (Isaiah 64:6, NIV).
Our Hearts are the Problem
We have a problem and according to the Bible, we are the problem. The first three beatitudes in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount address our posture towards the problem of the human condition. Each of the Beatitudes are what must be the experience and attitude of a person if he/she is to ever discover and experience the pardon of sin. A pardon offered by a Holy God to the guilty just as John the Baptist celebrated when he saw Jesus: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)!
So now we examine the second Beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). This Beatitude sounds paradoxical. It sounds like: “Wealthy are the poor” or “Clean are the dirty.” As I showed you last week, the Greek word for “blessed” can mean happy; literally this beatitude can be translated: “Happy are those who mourn…”. However, as you may remember from last Sunday, Jesus is not speaking about our fickle emotions, but what comes when one experiences the approval of God. It is a joy and contentment a person experiences when he moves from the displeasure of a holy God over one’s sin to the approval of God. It is a joy that will only come after the poor in spirit discover and receive a righteousness available to all people through Jesus, the son of God.
Those who mourn are those who not only know that they are unrighteous, they feel they are unrighteous. Their mourning is a mourning over sin. It is a mourning over their own sin, a mourning over the sins among God’s people, a mourning over the sins that pervade a society that does not know Christ, and a mourning over the plight of a world that refuses God’s offer of pardon. Apart from a deep sorrow over the sins that grieve the heart of a holy God, there cannot be a genuine readiness to receive the forgiveness for the sins we have committed.
Those who mourn are those who grieve over the evilness of sin. They do not celebrate it. It is the kind of mourning the apostle Paul experienced over his own sin even after he became a Christian:
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:15–19)
Out of his grief, Paul cried out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He lamented over his sin even while confident that Jesus would eventually deliver him from the struggle to sin eventually, and even celebrated a few verses later: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Paul’s mourning over his sin is the type of mourning Jesus speaks of in his beatitudes. It is the kind of mourning that comes only after one has been confronted by the holiness of God. It is the kind of mourning the prophet Isaiah experienced after he was confronted by the holiness of God:
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! (Isaiah 6:1–5)
The mourning Jesus speaks of in his beatitudes is the kind Job experienced after he encountered a holy God through his intense suffering:
I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:2–6, ESV)
The mourning Jesus speaks of is a mourning the world does not know or understand.
Only God Can Overcome Our Heart Problem
The kind of mourning that God requires and approves of is the kind that flows out of a changed heart. Right now, there are hundreds of conversations taking place among our politicians regarding what can be done to affect the outside of a person in hopes to change the heart. One person said, “The world tries to change a man from the outside in, but Jesus changes a man from the inside out.”[3] In God’s economy, change must happen first inward before change can happen outward.
Now please do not misunderstand me, I do believe that we need just and good laws that serve to suppress evil. The Bible teaches us that God ordained and commissioned government to serve as his sword to judge bad behavior as the apostle Paul points out in the book of Romans: “For he [government] is the servant of God, and avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (13:4). However, no law or form of legislation has the power to change a person’s inward being. The reason for this is because all of us are born with a spiritual heart problem that God has promised only he can solve; here is what he promised to do from long ago: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26).
Regarding the rest of the world, the Bible explains why a world who does not know God looks for ways to change the outside with the hope of changing the heart. Here is what we read in 2 Corinthians, “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (4:4). This is why being religious for religion’s sake does not work and this is why laws can’t change people.
The world is oblivious to the real need people have, and their real need is to repent of their sins and to be reconciled to a holy God they were created to know and worship. Instead, people buy into the lie that this life of maybe 70 years or more is the time to live it up to the full without any regard to the reality that there is an eternity. An eternity which all people will experience in judgment or in the favor of God in his presence. They live this way thinking that just so long as they are nice to their neighbor, it does not matter what they think of God. To the person who lives as though this life is all that there is, Jesus said: “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep” (Luke 6:25).
However, to the one who mourns over their sin and the sins of the world that rob people of the joy they were created to experience before God, Jesus said: “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh” (Luke 6:21). If you are a Christian, you arrived at the cross of Jesus with empty hands and a heavy heart over your sin. What happened when you arrived at the foot of the cross with empty hands and a heavy heart? Here is what happened: “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Only those who grieve over their sin can become a citizen of God’s kingdom.
The Christian is Always Aware of His/Her Heart Problem
Since the death of my father due to a heart attack, I have had more doctors look at my heart than most. I discovered shortly after my father’s death that I am genetically predisposed to heart disease if I am not actively managing my health. One of the unrelated medical conditions I have that also serves to remind me of the potential of a bad heart are heart palpitations I suffer from due to stress and anxiety that can only be managed through regular diet and exercise. There have been certain seasons of stress that have caused my heart palpitations to become so severe, that I thought I was having a heart attack. My doctor diagnosed me with “benign heart palpitations.”
Listen, the posture of the Christian who arrived at the cross of Christ as one who was poor in spirit and one who mourned over his/her sin is not something that changes. The only thing that did change the day you received the forgiveness of your sins through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is your terminal spiritual state. You were once dead in your sins and now you are alive in Jesus Christ. According to the Bible, you are now a new creation: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). According to the Sermon on the Mount, you are always in a state of awareness of your sin that reminds you that your only righteousness that matters is Christ and the frustration over your propensity to sin only grows the longer you are a Christian. On this side of eternity, you will always live in the awareness of the toxicity of your propensity to sin as you fight against your base desires out of a desire to live in light of your new identity in Christ.
Jesus promises that you who mourn will one day be comforted, and on that day you will experience a laughter the world can never know. For the Christian, there is a shelf-life to the curse of sin, but our grief will one day turn to laughter when Jesus comes back to balance the scales of justice and makes all that is wrong with the world… right. When Jesus comes as the King of kings and Lord of lords, what is promised in Isaiah 51:11 will become our new reality: “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 51:11).
This is what I believe Jesus meant when he said: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” If you do not grieve over your sin and the propensity that you have to sin, you may not be a Christian. There are no Dorian Gray’s in God’s economy, and God does not accept duel citizenships in his Kingdom.
