Since a central part of our mission as Chris-followers is to forge Christ-like attitudes, we’ve been studying the first four beatitudes. Today, we come to Matt 5:6, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. This attitude, says Jesus, is the path to the satisfaction of our God-given human desires. So, let’s look at what’s required to exhibit this character quality.
The best summary of this heart attitude, that I have found comes from John MacArthur, who writes,
This beatitude speaks of strong desire, of driving pursuit, of a passionate force inside the soul. It has to do with ambition—ambition of the right sort—whose object is to honor, obey, and glorify God by partaking of his righteousness. This holy ambition is in great contrast to the common ambitions of men to gratify their own lusts, accomplish their own goals, and satisfy their own egos.
To see the greatness of this heart attitude, we must be clear to distinguish it from its imposters. This hunger and thirst for righteousness is not the legalism practiced by the Pharisees and most religions. It is NOT self-righteousness. It is not an attempt to earn the favor of God by keeping his outward rules. It is not the salvation by works that all other religions teach. Jesus said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness (Matt 23:23). Their external self-righteousness was not real righteousness at all.
Secondly, hungering and thirsting for righteousness is not moralism, the cousin of legalism. Moralism is practiced by those who trust Christ alone for salvation, but are insecure in their love relationship with God. Grace has not traveled from their heads to their hearts. They aren’t sure God will love them if they don’t behave. Instead of the freedom of basking in God’s unconditional love, moralism tries to control God’s behavior towards us by being good. A moralist knows he’s saved by grace but still feels enslaved and oppressed by the moral law. It is oppressive because he has to keep it for God to love him. However, as Steve Brown says, Only those who know God will love them even if they never get better, will ever get any better. When they understand God’s unconditional love, they will love the moral law. It is God’s path to life and to pleasing him!
Third, hungering and thirsting for righteousness is not a pre-conversion desire to be justified, i.e. declared righteous in God’s eyes. It is true that when God regenerates us, the desire to escape God’s condemnation is often part of the conversion process. But Jesus is not talking about conversion in this verse. He is not talking about the one-time action of God, the judge, in declaring us righteous, according to the law because Jesus’ righteousness is imputed to us. Rather, the grammatic construction indicates continuing, ongoing hungering and thirsting. The righteousness that Jesus refers to is an ongoing process—growing in conformity to the moral law, which we call sanctification. That is what the Greek word DIKAIOSENE means, i.e., conformity to the moral law of God.
When Jesus says we are to hunger and thirst for such righteousness, the power of that metaphor misses modern day believers, who know very little about being really hungry or really thirsty. But in Jesus’ day, a working man ate meat only once per week and many beggars would have to go two days before eating. Severe thirst was even more common in a world where there was no plumbing, a hot, scorching sun, and dust storms that could fill the throat and nostrils nearly to the point of suffocation. Jesus is saying, "My followers are those whose longing for righteousness is as strong as a starving beggar’s hunger for food, whose passion for righteousness is as intense as the thirst of a weary, parched-throated traveler."
As we consider our mission to hunger and thirst for righteousness, this mission is lived out in two arenas—our own personal righteousness and righteousness in the culture around us.
A. Personal Righteousness. This means bringing every part of our being—our thoughts, motives, attitudes, actions, speech—into conformity with God’s commands—his moral law. Remember, this hunger is generated by the Holy Spirit who indwells us, and it is always a response of wanting to please God who already loves us unconditionally—not an insecure attempt to get God to like us more. Authors’ Henry Cloud and John Townsend in their book, How People Grow observe, When we really understand that God isn’t mad at us anymore, we become free to concentrate on love and growth instead of trying to appease him.
The mark of one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness in his own life is loving the moral law of God. King David expresses such love in Psalm 119:
Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. (Psalm 119:97-104).
Again, it is important to say that seeking to conform every part of my life to what is right—to God’s moral law—is NOT legalism; it is the result of the Holy Spirit’s work inside us. Some Christians mistakenly think that Jesus teaches grace in the NT and the OT is about law. But listen to Jesus’ words about the moral law (stated by Jesus just nine verses after giving the 4th beatitude).
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus actually corrected the Pharisees’ superficial outward understanding of the moral law later in the Sermon on the Mount. The 6th commandment, said Jesus, prohibits not just murder, but wounding another through our anger or abusive words. Similarly, the seventh commandment prohibits not just adultery but lusting after a woman who is not your wife. Far from making the moral law of the OT obsolete, Jesus’ teaching in Matt 5-7 amplifies the moral teaching of the two tables of the decalogue (the Ten Commandments). Not only that, but his summary of the two tables of the law is even broader in its application. The first four commandments refer to our vertical relationship with God; the second six to our horizontal relationships with each other. When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment, he summarized these two tables, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. Christ-followers hunger to conform every part of their lives to moral rightness, summarized here by our Lord.
B. Righteousness in the Culture. This weekend we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King was not without his character flaws, but he is a fine example to us of hungering for rightness in our culture: From a jail in Birmingham, he took the time to answer those who said he should not protest for the wrong treatment of African Americans, but wait because things were going to get better. Here are some of his words:
I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy"….then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
This weekend also calls attention to the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade making abortion a legal right. There is no creature more helpless and needing protection than the unborn child in the womb. There is no injustice that is more severe than killing an unborn child. There is no human right that is more sacred than the right to life. We as Christ’s church cannot rest until the abortion industry and its supporters are stopped. Wherever Christ followers see injustice, bullying, abuse—wrong treatment of those made in God’s image, our heart hunger for rightness must drive us to fight against it.
This beatitude, though, goes beyond urging the hunger and thirst for rightness to prevail in our own hearts and throughout God’s world. It teaches a profound lesson about God’s design to satisfy the desires of the human heart: True lasting satisfaction of our human desires always lies in the path of righteousness. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness FOR THEY SHALL BE SATISFIED. It is those who pursue righteousness, who in the end discover their desires to be satisfied. Although sin corrupts our desires themselves, a big part of hungering for righteousness is resisting the wrong way to satisfy a natural human desire. Consider some examples:
1. The desire to be successful can lead us to cut ethical corners to get a job, make the sale, or achieve a good goal. I am an Eagle Scout, but my satisfaction for this achievement is marred by the fact that I falsified information to get one of my merit badges. Goals and objectives reached when there is dishonesty or cheating never ultimately satisfy.
2. The desire to be respected can lead us to subtly try to impress others, voice our opinions instead of listening to theirs, and criticize others (as if tearing them down elevates us). But Jesus said, whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave (Matt 25:27).
3. The desire to make someone who hurt you know how much it hurt can lead to an angry counter-attack, resentment, bitterness, or withholding of affection, instead of waiting for things to cool off and then courageously saying, “When you said _____ I felt ______. The right response to being hurt is spelled out by Paul, Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you and Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. (Eph 4:29-32).
4. The desire for sexual and romantic fulfillment is powerful. We will talk about how to cope, while single, with this desire in the next series of podcasts. God gives us such a strong sex drive because he wants us to often get sexually drunk with our wives (Prov 5:19). But in a fallen world that brings brokenness into married love-making and lot’s of opportunity to satisfy sexual craving with images instead of with a real woman—it is easy to sow seeds of corruption into our sexual desires. Real sexual satisfaction is always the fruit of pursuing sex, righteously, which means with our wives, alone.
5. The desire to save money can cause us to underpay one who works for us, be dishonest in order to qualify for a sale, or get into an event dishonestly by not paying the entrance fee. But Proverbs 10:2 is clear, Ill-gotten gains do not profit, But righteousness delivers from death.
6. The desire to enjoy good times with friends is something that apparently characterized Jesus. He, himself, said he came eating and drinking and was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. He turned the water into wine so the wedding feast of Cana could continue. Yet, righteous partying always stops short of drunkness or being controlled by alcohol. Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, said Paul.
7. The desire to be liked can cause us to always be nice to people, never challenging them with a truth they need to hear like their need for Christ, or some other truth. Jesus said, Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way. (Luke 6:26) and Proverbs 27:6 observes, Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.
Hungering and thirsting for the righteous way to fulfill our God-given desires is always the path to true, lasting, satisfaction.
For Further Thought:
1. Of the seven human desires mentioned, that we tend to try to satisfy the wrong way, which ones stood out to you?
2. What are one or two other natural desires that you are tempted to satisfy the wrong way?
3. You might want to google letter from Birmingham jail to read this full, very moving letter (just 10 minutes to read), and/or go to the National Right to Life website to check out the March for life, and other abortion statistics.
