No one signs up for anything because they want to be persecuted. And yet, one of the first lessons Jesus teaches us in the Bible, is that we will be persecuted for righteousness’ sake. And not only that, but we will be blessed because we are persecuted in Jesus’ name. But that’s not the reason people give their hearts and lives to Jesus. Usually, they want something else: forgiveness of sin, relationship with God, to be saved from eternal suffering, to go to heaven. The list could go on and on. But people don’t tend to give a confession of faith because they know it’s a guarantee for oppression.

This verse is probably one of my top 5 favorite verses, and very often, it’s a prayer in my heart. Lord, help me to be pure in heart so that I might see you better. Many times, when we talk about purity and the Bible, we think sexual purity. Preserving our bodies from sexual sin and saving them for our spouse. But when we’re talking about purity here, we’re talking about moral purity rather than ceremonial or physical purity. Instead of an obedient or honorable heart, we’re more so talking about an undivided heart. A heart so focused and unadulterated that it clarifies our vision.

Imagine: You’re a little kid and you’re tossing a baseball in the house– something you’ve been told many times not to do. The more you toss the ball, the more you get lost in your make-believe game. Suddenly, you’re not in the living room anymore. In your mind, you’re under the lights of a stadium, pitching in the World Series. You wind up for the pitch at the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and everyone’s eyes are on you. You throw and– Crash.

If you follow Jesus, you’ve been there. There comes a moment in time where every believer gives their life to Christ. Not only asking for Him to forgive their sins, but also to be Lord over them. To some, those two things may seem interconnected, but sometimes they’re not. Some people casually approach Christ, asking to be found without sin and wanting to be saved, but that doesn’t mean they submit their lives and become meek before Him.

If you haven’t noticed by now, when Jesus teaches the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, He unveils them in such a way that they build upon one another. Blessed are the poor in spirit. That applies to any believer in God, where at the point of salvation, they realize they are so spiritually bankrupt that they could never save themselves. Thus, they are in need of Jesus to save them and pay that debt. Blessed are those who mourn. In other words, blessed are those who see their sin and realize how that sin has grieved God, and grieve over it themselves. They deeply understand just how badly their sin has separated them from the presence of God and find themselves in sorrow over how they’ve wronged God, and yet they find comfort from the Lord in that those sins are forgiven. And blessed are the meek?

Blessed are those who mourn… It might seem sort of contradictory. How can it be possible to mourn and yet be blessed? If we’re mourning, it would mean we lost something, right? And losing something or someone to the point of grief can’t be something Jesus wants for us, let alone something He blesses us with. Yes, when Jesus says blessed are those who mourn, He means real and harrowing heartache. The word He uses in the Greek is “pentheó” which means a deep, personal grief over a death or a hope that dies. It is a grief so severe that it takes possession of the person and cannot be hidden.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He gives a lesson on a mountainside. There is a great crowd of people around Him, and they are all attentive to what this Messiah has to say. For the Jews, they believed that Jesus was here to free them from Roman occupation and rule, restoring them to political power and peace, and reigning over them victoriously whilst pouring out spiritual and material blessings over His chosen people the Jews. But in Matthew 5, the beginning of what has more popularly become known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets a very different tone than what the Jewish people assumed of a Messiah for generations. Instead, Jesus lays out more of a foundation to discipleship; what daily life looks like for someone who belongs to the Kingdom of Heaven, and how His followers should ethically live.