Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.

Matthew 5:6 ESV

Martin Lloyd-Jones’ opening paragraph to his sermon on this Beatitude is worth citing here:

The Christian’s concern is to view life in this world in the light of the gospel; and, according to the gospel, the trouble with mankind is not any one particular manifestation of sin, but rather sin itself. If you are anxious about the state of the world and the threat of possible wars, then I assure that the most direct way of avoiding such calamities is to observe words such as these which we are now considering, ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness’ there would be no danger of war. Here is the only way to real peace. All other considerations eventually do not touch the problem, and all the denunciations that are so constantly made of various countries and peoples and persons will not have the slightest effect upon the international situation. Thus we often waste our time, and God’s time, in expressing our human thoughts and sentiments instead of considering His Word. If every human being knew what it was to ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness’, the problem would be solved. The greatest need in the world now is for a greater number of Christians, individual Christians. If all nations consisted of individual Christians there would be no need to fear atomic power or anything else. So the gospel, which seems to be so remote and indirect in its approach, is actually the most direct way of the Church today is the way in which so many are content with these vague, general, useless statements about war and peace instead of preaching the gospel in all its simplicity and purity. It is righteousness that exalts a nation, and the most important thing for all of us is to discover what righteousness means. (73)

THE SPIRITUAL APPETITE

As we have seen in our study of the Beatitudes, these short but potent statements are the characteristics of the blessed ones, of those who are truly and eternally happy. These are the qualities that mark a citizen of God’s kingdom, whom He looks upon with favor. So far, we have seen that they recognize their spiritual need, mourning over their sins, and carry that understanding of self into every interaction, whether before God or men. The Beatitude now before us reveals the greatest desire of the blessed ones.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

As with poverty and mourning, hunger and thirst do not typically get associated with happiness. Instead, hunger and thirst have long been two of humanities greatest enemies. In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches His people to pray for their daily bread for good reason. The great struggle for most of human history has long been to get enough food to eat. Indeed, as far as we know, we are the first era to have such a continuous abundance at our disposal.

The same is also true of water. Occasionally, I will, playfully but also seriously, give Tiff a glass of water by kneeling down and pronouncing that I offer a gift that most men throughout history could not offer their families: clean water.

But for most who listened to Jesus, hunger and thirst were undesired guests who were always looming around the corner. Indeed, so powerful was the fear of hunger that Juvenal stated that Romans had given away their liberty for just two things: bread and circuses.

Yet as uncomfortable and even painful as hunger and thirst are, they are also natural. Just like the sleep that our bodies require, God made us dependent upon food and drink for the purpose of keeping our dependency before us. Therefore, we do not need to force ourselves to feel hungry or thirsty; those desires come all on their own. Indeed, it is only the very sick and dead who feel no hunger or thirst at all. An appetite, therefore, is a sign of life and health.

But of course, Jesus is not speaking here of hungering for food and thirsting for drink but for righteousness. John Blanchard makes a wonderful but easily missed point:

The intensity of the words ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness’ comes across even more powerfully in the unusual grammatical construction of the phrase. Technically, the word ‘righteousness’ is in the accusative case, whereas genitive would normally be used after such words as ‘hunger’ and ‘thirst’. To put this in non-technical terms, if a person was longing for bread to eat, the literal translation of the Greek would be ‘he is hungry for of bread’, that is to say, for part of the loaf. In the same way, a person would be said to be ‘thirsty for water’, in other words, for some water… But in this Beatitude we have a different construction. Instead of ‘hunger and thirst for of righteousness’ (in other words, for a measure of righteousness) the literal translation is ‘for righteousness’, that is to say, not a portion of righteousness, or a limited experience of righteousness, but total righteousness, all the righteousness that it is possible to have. (140)

But what is righteousness?

Negatively, righteousness is often viewed as being synonymous with religious hypocrisy and as simple morality. Righteousness most simply means whatever is right. Both misunderstandings are understandable. Doing what is right seems to be same the thing as being righteous. And the charge of hypocrisy comes from the inevitable reality that being right implies that there is a wrong. Thus, the world tends to treat righteousness with scorn because the presence of what is right is an existential threat to what is wrong. Righteousness brings inherent confrontation against sin.

But righteousness goes beyond simply doing good things. For example, reading Bible is a very good thing to do. However, if a lifeguard continued to read his Bible while someone was drowning, that would be an unrighteous action. The good deed of reading the Bible is eclipsed for the moment by his duty to save the swimmer’s life.

For this reason, righteousness is at the intersection of goodness and wisdom, for living righteously requires having the wisdom to do the best good at the best time. Indeed, while goodness can be thought of in purely theoretical terms (though that would be a failed conception of goodness), righteousness is innately bound to conduct and actions. While the opposite of good is evil, the antonym of righteousness is iniquity, transgression, and sin. My point here is that good and evil are broader than righteousness and sin because the latter are tied specifically to works. We are judged to be righteous or sinful by our actions.

Most importantly, God alone is the Judge, for He is the definition of righteousness. Righteousness is an attribute of God’s very being. God does not meet the standards of righteousness; He is the standard of righteousness. Therefore, we cannot know true righteousness apart from knowing God. “For Christians,” writes Iain Duguid, “righteousness is not simply a matter of doing the right thing; it is a matter of doing the right thing as an act of worship to the Creator God who has revealed himself to us in the Bible.”

Furthermore, the word for righteousness (δικαιωσυνη) can also mean justice, which is fitting because the two concepts are innately bound together. Justice is righteousness enacted. Righteousness is the heart of justice, and justice is the arms and legs of righteousness. They are dependent upon one another, for justice sees that righteousness is justly rewarded and that inquiry is justly punished. This righteousness and judgment begins in Genesis 1:4, where God judges the light to be good, and continues in Scripture until all creatures are one day brought before judgment at the “great white throne” (Revelation 20:11-15).

Whenever we consider the great injustices within the world, we ought to rightly hunger and thirst for justice to be done. And we should read passages like Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 with great comfort:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

What wonderful news!

But is it?

After all, where does God’s justice stop? With traffickers? With murderers? How about with adulterers and thieves? What about blasphemers and idolaters?

Let us remind ourselves of Paul’s citation of Psalm 14: “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, no even one” (Romans 3:10-12). He then goes on to conclude that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). According to God’s righteous law, we have fallen short. Having sinned, we are each firmly unrighteous. We are sinners against the righteous God and merit His wrath as His just judgment.

Of course, the poor in spirit recognize that reality. They see their spiritual destitution. They see that in God’s justice He cannot simply overlook our sin but must punish each offense against His holy throne. He then mourns, not simply for the judgment that he justly deserves. He mourns for his own transgression against God. He mourns that by his sin the name of God is slandered rather than hallowed. He sees the vileness of his own sin.

And he desires righteousness. He wants to be righteous, again, not simply to avoid punishment, though that reason is certain valid. The blessed one hungers and thirsts for righteousness because God Himself is righteous and has made him to be righteous as well. He desires righteousness out of love and delight in God. We see this hunger and thirst within the Psalms:

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1-2)

How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart an d flesh sing of joy to the living God. (Psalm 84:1-2)

Can you imagine a world filled with such people? In James 4:1-3, we are told that quarrels happen because sinful desires:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

What would happen if people had a hunger and thirst for righteousness rather than for their own desires? The world would be a much different place.

Indeed, as Kent Hughes notes, “If you have no longing for righteousness, you had better initiate a careful analysis of your soul. Christ’s words are a gracious test, because each of us knows in his heart of hearts whether he really does long for righteous living” (44). Just as a lack of appetite often indicates physical distress, a lack of spiritual appetite points to sin-sick soul.

One way that we may gauge our spiritual appetite is through the means of grace, and we can focus particularly upon three: Scripture intake, prayer, and gathering together with the saints. The Christian life really can be simplified down to these three spiritual disciplines. By Scripture intake, we hear from God. By prayer, we speak to God. By communion with other believers, we participate in the body of Christ. Do you desire these things? Of course, there will be inevitable ebbs and flows of desire within this life, but if you have no longing for these things, your lack of spiritual appetite indicates a sin-sick soul.

These things also grow our spiritual appetite, but we can turn to fasting. Piper notes:

As an act of faith, Christian fasting is an expression of dissatisfied contentment in the all-sufficiency of Christ. It is an expression of secure and happy longing for the all-sufficiency of Christ. Christian fasting does not tremble in the hope of earning anything from Christ. It looks away from itself to the final payment of Calvary for every blessing it will ever receive. Christian fasting is not self-wrought discipline that tries to deserve more from God. It is a hunger for God awakened by the taste of God freely given in the gospel.

Indeed, fasting is one of the greatest means of fostering a thirst and fainting hunger for God. As we voluntarily forsake food for a set period of time, our bodies begin to cry out for sustenance; our stomachs beg for the food that our bodies need. In that moment, we pray for the LORD to create within us a spiritual hunger and thirst for Him. Just as our bodies need food, our entire being needs the LORD! In fact, we ought to remind ourselves that He is more necessary for us than food or drink or even the air we breathe. Therefore, pray verses like Deuteronomy 8:3, “And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”

SATISFIED

We come now to another one of the great paradoxes within the Beatitudes. Alongside the happiness of the poor, mourning, and hungry and thirsty, Jesus goes on to tell us that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be satisfied.

Again, there is great beauty in the grammar of this verse. Hunger and thirst are both present active participles, just like those who mourn, which means that we could also translate it literally as “the hungering ones and thirsting ones” or “the ones who are hungering and the ones who are thirsting.” The point is simply that this hunger and thirst are present and active desires on the part of those who are blessed.  We should feel that hunger and thirst for righteousness, and we ought to lean into that spiritual appetite, not against it.

The promise, however, is future passive. The text does not say, “for they will achieve satisfaction,” nor “for they will make themselves satisfied.” No, those who actively hunger and thirst for righteousness will receive satisfaction.

As for the word satisfied itself, the Greek word χορτασθησονται refers simply to being fed to the point of satisfaction or being full. Thus, the NIV is also entirely correct to make this translation: “for they shall be filled.” Since the word derives from the same root as grass (χορτος) in Greek, we would be correct to use Psalm 23 imagery here. Those how are hungry and thirsty for righteousness will be satisfied similar to how the shepherd satisfies the hunger and thirst of his sheep by leading them to green pastures and still waters.

Even still, A. W. Pink calls this “such a paradox that it is evident that no carnal mind ever invented it.” Indeed, Blanchard notes why:

This particular paradox can be expressed in a number of ways, none of which will make sense to unbelievers or to those who have no interest in making serious, godly progress, but all of which will resonate in the hearts of those who have. Hunger for righteousness demands to be satisfied, and satisfaction will increase the hunger. The more earnestly a Christian pursues holiness, the greater the progress he will make; and the greater progress he makes the greater the progress he will want to make. To change the analogy for the moment the Christian is rather like a high jumper who with every successful leap asks for the bar to be set even higher—then longs to clear it again. In a way beyond our understanding, but not beyond our experience, the spiritual hungering and thirsting of which Jesus speaks in this Beatitude increases in the very act of being satisfied. The more the Christian is filled, the more he hungers and thirsts. The normal Christian life is one in which believers, ‘beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory’ (2 Corinthians 3:18, NASB) and every stage of transformation brings with it an unsatisfied satisfaction, the longing to be more like Christ in word, thought and deed. (157-158)

That paradox, however, helps us to make sense of how exactly Christ satisfies us. Physically, hunger is satisfied with food, and thirst is satiated with drink. A spiritual hunger and thirst for righteousness can only be satisfied with righteousness. But since our greatest efforts to be righteous are like presenting filthy rags to Most High as an offering, we must look to the righteousness of another, a righteousness that is not actively attained but one that is passively received.

While our best efforts at righteousness are always polluted (typically by trying to make ourselves look good or feel good), Christ’s righteousness is what we might call “the real deal.” As Hebrews 4:15 tells us, Jesus is “one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Even upon the cross, He was tempted to divert from the Father’s will by the jeering crowd, who called out, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40)! Yet even in those excruciating final moments, our Lord remained obedient to the Father; He maintained His spotless righteousness.

And it is through His crucifixion that we are now declared righteous before the Father. Christ’s death was the perfect once-for-all sacrifice for our sins. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We might also call this the greatest of all transactions. Our sin was placed upon Christ, and Christ’s righteousness has been placed upon us. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). We have been ransomed and redeemed, rescued from the very fires of hell, and we are now justified before God through the imputed righteousness of Christ.

But if we have already been declared righteous in Christ, why is the promise of this verse in the future tense? As a Christian, your current righteousness is a legal declaration, not physical reality. If you are in Christ, you will stand before the Father on the day of judgment and be welcomed into eternal life only because of the righteousness of Christ that is placed upon you. And that is wonderful news because even as believers, we still continue to sin, which is all the more grievous since we now know the One Whom we sin against.

But one day, we shall be made fully righteous. Upon Christ’s return, the dead in Christ shall rise, and those who are alive in Christ shall be transformed. His coming will be both judgment and renewal. The former things will pass as He consumes the earth with fire and the heavens melt away as they burn. But He will then establish a new heaven and a new earth, and we will be given new, resurrected bodies to dwell forever with Him. Then our war against our sin will be finished for good. He will physically clothe us in His righteousness just as He has spiritually clothed us now.

I think Lewis was correct to say that all get what they want, but they do not always like it. Those who have no desire for righteousness here would have no love of righteousness there. Those who do not spend time with God now would find it torturous to spend an eternity with Him. Those who do not delight in the fellowship of the saints in this life would not enjoy life everlasting among the blessed. Yet those who do long for righteousness here will receive it fully there. Those whose highest joy is to be with God now will have endless delight in His presence.

Do you have such a desire? Do you long for God’s righteousness? Psalm 107:4-9 reads:

            Some wandered in desert wastes,
                        finding no way to a city to dwell in;
            hungry and thirsty,
                        their soul fainted within them.
            Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
                        and he delivered them from their distress.
            He led them by a straight way
                        till they reached a city to dwell in.
            Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love,
                        for his wondrous works to the children of man!
            For he satisfies the longing soul,
                        and the hungry soul he fills with good things.

As we come to our King’s Table, let this bread and cup be tangible pictures of our text. If you have never trusted in Christ, go now to Him in prayer, for He has already commanded that you come to Him to receive true food and true drink. If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, Christ summons us to be satisfied in Him, to take His righteousness upon us as though it were a breastplate over our heart. As we eat this bread and drink this cup, let taste and see the goodness of our God, a goodness that we receive in Christ with an insatiable fullness.