The final aspect of God's comfort lies in the fact that one day Christ will remove sin and all of its effects from the believer forever. This will mean a deliverance even from sin's presence; and it will mean an end to pride, hate, suffering, sickness, and death. Now, we are aware of our sin. The smell of it is about us. But the day is coming when we shall be taken from this world to Christ's presence. In that day there will be no more sin to confess, for we shall be like him (1 John 3:2).
Moreover, because a mourning for sin lies at the heart of Christ's message, it is natural to expect this theme in the first of his great sermons. When Jesus entered the synagogue at Nazareth on the day that he began his formal ministry, he read from the scroll of Isaiah. He read: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19).
Christians should be concerned about social ills because of a heartfelt love of humanity and from an acute awareness of the horror and destructiveness of man's sin. I believe that this has often been true in past periods of Church history. Lord Shaftesbury was one of the great Christian social reformers, but there were others: Calvin, Oberlin, Wilberforce, Moorehouse. And it would be proper to include in this list most of the pioneers of the modern missionary movement—William Carey, Robert Moffat, David Livingstone, John Paton, and others—all of whom combined an evangelistic zeal with social action. Unfortunately, however, much of the force of their social concern has been lost to the believing church today.
Now, it is evident that in this, as in the other Beatitudes, Jesus is dealing with a spiritual principle, a spiritual mourning, and not merely with things as seen from a purely human standpoint.
In one of the great Old Testament psalms, after a passionate description of the disappointments and bitterness of this life, David cries out, "Oh, that I had wings 11ke a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest" (Psalm 55:6-8). In these words David voices a wish that is as ancient as fallen humanity, and which will endure as long as men live on this planet. It is a cry for freedom, for life on wings. And it is uttered by those who yearn for comfort in a life of bitterness, frustration, disappointment, and trials.
