The Lord takes figures here from everyday life. Poverty, mourning. It is a paradoxical statement, meaning, it does not make any sense from a human point of view.

Who are they? What kind of mourning is Jesus talking about exactly? We understand sorrow do we not?! We understand mourning even to the extent of having regret and remorse. This is nonsense to those the Lord has not touched. This is only a figure that points us to a SPIRITUAL mourning and sorrow and brings us to tears. A remorse for our sins! We again deal with the Kingdom of Heaven and the entrance and reality of the Kingdom. The best illustration of this is Christ Himself in Isaiah. He was a man of sorrows. Why was He smitten with grief and sorrow while on earth? It was nothing less than the redemption of His people with the cross. His whole life was in the shadow of it! He was perfect in every sense of the word, but humiliated and plunged by the Father into the world of sin and corruption! He had to see it in depth as you and I will never will! He knew sin for all that it was! When Lazarus died "He wept." He actually groaned within Himself (even while knowing He had the victory over sin and death.) He saw the ugliness of sin. It was a VERTICAL, not a horizontal weeping. Jesus told the family to "weep for yourselves." Romans 7 and 8 are set back to back for a reason. A grand theme of NO condemnation in Christ Jesus on the heels of chapter 7 that shows us the old man of the flesh and sin. That is why we sorry as we look at the world around about us with regards to our sin, the sin of others, and even the sin of the world around about us.

How do we know we are mourners that experience the blessedness Christ talks about? It is not just the mourning, but the mourning that is done with tears that fill our eyes and joy in our hearts! Sorrow without joy is a sorrow that is un-repented sorrow without Christ! That is why they cannot see blessedness. Spiritual sorrow is the result of spiritual POVERTY! We are sorrowful for our sin against God. Not the consequences, not just for getting caught. It has to do with the HEART that cries out to God for touching Him! I'm a sinner and am sorrowful! (just like Christ we are men and women who are sorrowful.) So we have spiritual and GENUINE sorrow? Do our sins bother us? Remorse and TRUE sorrow? (all spiritual virtues and qualities.) Do we think about our consequences of sin from the viewpoint of how they touch God!? His glory!? This does not mean we walk around with sadness and long faces either, BUT have a genuine sorrow and consciousness of sin with a striving to do better and better! To be sorrowful is to be comforted (one in the same essentially) because they are the work of God whereby the Spirit dwells within us so there is the true knowledge of sin.

Technically the Holy Spirit generates...justifies (points us to our sin,) glorifies (the cross of Calvary,) and sanctifies (Holy Spirit makes us sorrowful BUT also immediately comforts us!) The Holy Spirit witnesses to us that we are forgiven. That the grave has nothing to say and it only a portal now into glory! Where there is TRUE sorrow there is TRUE happiness with the blessing of forgiveness along with the comfort of Glory!