Beatitudes, part 4: Blessed are those who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matthew 5:6, NIV)
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.
Some people ask to be saved, but then reserve certain parts of their life for themselves and act like they’re holding them under the table, unseen by God. God knows those aspects of their lives are there: career, secret sin, family, ambitions, interests, habits, hobbies, etc. But for some reason, we believe we can hold some things and maintain control over them. Last week, we talked about the importance of submitting our whole lives– everything that entails– to Christ. There are specific blessings God gives to those people who become meek and submit to God’s authority in totality.
And up until verse 6, the Beatitudes are very much centered on our walks where they emphasize on us: our sin, our need for a Savior, and our willingness to submit to a God that is higher than all things and give him full control. But now, the Beatitudes begin to turn outwards, towards God.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…
This is the moment where salvation is no longer enough. Suddenly, it is not our sole desire to just be saved and avoid spiritual death. At one point, it is God’s hope that we would want something more: relationship.
A hunger and a thirst for righteousness denotes a deep, natural, and intrinsic desire for the things of God– what pleases Him, what delights Him, His nature, and His character. When we fall in love, we do not fall just so we don’t end up alone. We fall because we have a passion for the one we love. We want to know them in their entirety, and until we do, there is a deeply magnetic draw in our hearts to be with them.
When I met Sam, I couldn’t get enough of spending time with him. We’d go to the park in the early evening and walk for hours. Before I knew it, it was the wee hours of the morning and we dreaded saying goodbye just because it was so sweet getting to know him in every way I could.
With Christ, it should be the same. At some point, we should desire more than just to be acquainted with our Savior; it should be a deep and almost addictive hunger to know Him and consume everything there is to know about Him. Of course, we may never be done knowing Him. Just when we think we’ve discovered it all, there is still another facet of His Lordship yet to see.
It is a natural thing to hunger and thirst. It’s a sign of a healthy body to have an appetite for food and drink. So if we apply that kind of thinking to what Jesus is saying here, we can deduce that it is a sign of spiritual health to hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Because realizing our poverty in spirit leads to mourning over it, which leads to us being comforted by God and us submitting our lives to Him. Once we encounter Him, we are enticed to continue pursuing Him. It is natural for us to get to a point where we experience Him in a way that calls us to follow Him more. Once we get a taste, we continue to hunger and thirst for more of Him, which begins our journey of transformation into becoming more like Christ.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2, ESV)
It was always God’s intention for faith that we would live in such a way that transformation is inevitable. When we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we are moving ever-further down the path to becoming more like Jesus and transforming our minds to be more holy.
God wants this from us. How do we know? Because it says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Not only are those who hunger and thirst blessed, they are blessed because that hunger and thirst will cause them to be filled. And yet, there is never a full satisfaction to being filled, because to be full– even to overflowing– means that our hunger and thirst will still continue to deepen for more.
Even if we are mature in our faith, we will never stop hungering and thirsting for more of Jesus. That hunger and thirst is the evidence that we are becoming more like Jesus and our spirits are healthy in their pursuit for relationship and intimacy with God. The more we become like Him, the more we are able to refine our hearts so they can be merciful, pure, peace-making, and persevering.
