Chapter Five: Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
HUNGER AND THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
MATTHEW 5:6
In the first two Beatitudes Jesus uses the strongest words possible: The Greek word for poor refers to abject poverty; the word for mourn is what we do when a loved one dies.
Now we come to another set of strong words, hunger and thirst. Jesus did not say, “Blessed are those who are hungry and thirsty,” but rather “those who hunger and thirst.” Both words express an intense desire, similar to that shown in the following verses:
O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
PSALM 63:1
Call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding, . . .
and search for it as for hidden treasures.
PROVERBS 2:3-4
My soul yearns for you in the night;
my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.
For when your judgments are in the earth,
the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
ISAIAH 26:9
To hunger and thirst for righteousness, then, indicates a strong overwhelming desire for righteousness. This leads to the question, “What is righteousness?”
Righteousness denotes the state of being right. Biblically, it means perfect accord with God’s law in every way: thought, word, deed, and even motive. Paul expressed this absolute accord in Galatians 3:10:
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”
The word all that Paul uses means “without exception.” This is the kind of righteousness that we are to hunger and thirst after: to live in perfect accord with the law of God.
None of us can do this, so we may well ask, “Why hunger for something that is impossible to attain? Isn’t that an exercise in futility?” Paul plainly declares, “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10), and again, in Romans 3:20, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (The word justified here means “to be declared righteous.”) So again we ask the question, “Why hunger and thirst after that which is unattainable?”
The answer lies in the twofold meaning of righteousness in the Bible. First is a righteousness that God requires, that is, perfect obedience to His law. This is the implication of Galatians 3:10, which we have seen above. No one measures up to that law —that is, no one except the Lord Jesus Christ. His own self-assessment was, “I always do the things that are pleasing to [God]” (John 8:29).
The four major writers of the New Testament letters —Paul, Peter, John, and the writer of Hebrews —are unanimous in their assertion that Jesus was perfectly righteous: that is, perfectly obedient to the law of God (see 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15; 1 Peter 2:22; and 1 John 3:5). Keep in mind that these four writers were writing under the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit (see 2 Peter 1:21), so they were writing exactly what God wanted them to write. So this is God’s testimony about Jesus: He was totally without sin. Or to put it in the positive sense, He was totally righteous. For thirty-three years He lived out that which is impossible for us to attain, and what He did, He did as the divinely appointed representative of all who trust in Him for salvation. Therefore, because we are united to Christ we are considered by God to be as righteous as Christ Himself.
But what about our personal failure to live a perfectly righteous life? We have already seen that no one is righteous, so what happens to our sin, our failure to perfectly obey the law of God? Does our sin just vanish into thin air? Or does God sweep our sins under some cosmic rug?
The answer is no. God’s justice demands a just payment, and Jesus took care of that also through His death on the cross, where He bore the just and holy wrath of God that our sin deserves. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “[God] made him to be sin.” Then, as Peter wrote, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Perhaps the greatest statement on the truth of Jesus bearing our sins is Isaiah 53:5-6:
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned —every one —to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
Jesus perfectly satisfied the righteous requirements of God’s law, both in its precepts (what God requires of us) and in its penalty for our failure to perfectly obey. As is often said, “He lived a life we could not live, and died a death we deserved to die.” As a result, all who trust in Christ as Savior are justified —that is, counted and treated by God as perfectly righteous.
We might call this righteousness “positional righteousness.” That is, our position or standing before God is one of perfect righteousness, as righteous as Christ Himself. At the moment we trusted Christ as Savior, we were justified —declared by God to be righteous. You will never be more or less righteous before God any day of your life than you were the moment you trusted Christ as your Savior.
This raises another question: Why should I hunger and thirst for that which I already have? The answer is that the more we grow and mature in the Christian life, the more sensitive we become to the sin and failure we see in our lives. It is not that we necessarily sin more but rather that we become more aware of and mourn over the sin that is already there. As that happens, we hunger more and more after the righteousness we have only in Christ.
I mentioned in the previous chapter my ongoing challenge to give thanks in all circumstances. This really came to the fore a few weeks ago when I couldn’t get some information I needed from my computer. Somewhat frustrated, I turned to my cell phone to enter a new number, and for some reason the screen for doing that would not come up. Giving up, I decided to go water some newly planted plants, but I could not find the spray nozzle I had used only the day before. By this time I was thoroughly frustrated and grumpy, and in no mood to give thanks.
My attitude was sinful: We are to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, emphasis added). Paul uses an almost identical expression in 1 Thessalonians 4:3: “For this is the will of God . . . that you abstain from sexual immorality.” It is the will of God that I abstain from sexual immorality, and it is the will of God that I give thanks in all circumstances.
I knew my attitude that day was sinful, and that my only remedy was in the righteousness of Christ. So I went to God, confessed my sin, and by faith laid hold of the righteousness I have in Christ. I hungered and thirsted that day after Christ’s righteousness.
There is a legitimate sense in which we are to hunger and thirst for that perfect righteousness we already have in Christ. This should be a continual daily attitude of all growing Christians because we continue to sin every day. The gospel —the Good News of what God has done for us in Christ —is like the manna God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness. It had to be gathered daily and could not be stored up (Exodus 16:16-21). In a similar sense, we need to appropriate the Good News every day as we see ourselves continuing to sin every day.
The first line of that great old hymn “The Solid Rock” is, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” This should be true not only for our hope of eternal salvation but also for our hope for God’s favor and blessing on our lives today. It is in this sense that we should hunger and thirst for that which we already have in Christ.
There is a second righteousness that we should hunger and thirst for: the experiential righteousness we are to pursue every day. God has inextricably linked together the righteousness we have in Christ and the righteousness we should pursue. He does not give one without the other. Therefore, whoever hungers and thirsts after the righteousness we have in Christ will also hunger and thirst to be righteous in his or her daily experience.
Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that if anyone is in Christ (positionally righteous), he is a new creation. This new creation is biased toward pursuing experiential righteousness. This radical change in our hearts and minds is best described in Ezekiel 36:26-27:
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
In this Scripture God promises two things: to give us a new heart, and to put His Spirit within us —to give life to the new heart, enabling us to pursue righteousness in our daily lives.
Along with God’s promises, we have the clear teaching of Scripture that we are to pursue this righteousness. Consider the following passages, all having to do with our experiential righteousness:
So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.
2 TIMOTHY 2:22
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
1 PETER 2:24
By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
1 JOHN 3:10
We could add to this list Hebrews 12:14: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” The words holiness and righteousness are closely related and sometimes used interchangeably. So we are to pursue righteousness, we are to live to righteousness, we are to practice righteousness, and we are to strive for it.
It is clear from Scripture, then, that we are to pursue an experiential righteousness. But what will cause us to hunger and thirst for it? The answer is twofold.
First, as we have already observed, the new nature is inclined by the Holy Spirit to pursue righteousness. This may be only a small spark in a new believer, but as he or she grows spiritually, this hunger will increase.
The second motivation is gratitude for the righteousness we have in Christ. The more we pursue experiential righteousness, the more we see how far short we come in attaining it. This causes us to be more appreciative of the righteousness we have in Christ, thus producing the gratitude that motivates us to pursue experiential righteousness.
If God has commanded us to pursue experiential righteousness, and if we hunger and thirst to do so, what does day-to-day experiential righteousness look like? Basically, it is obedience to the moral commands of the Bible, as the Holy Spirit brings them to our attention. Obviously He does not bring them to our attention all at once. Like physical growth, spiritual growth is slow, incremental, and often hardly observable. In my own experience, it seems the Holy Spirit focuses on one or two areas of need at a time. Right now, as I have mentioned, His focus for me seems to be on more consistent giving of thanks in all circumstances, even the difficult ones.
“As the Holy Spirit brings them to our attention” implies regular exposure to the Bible through our reading or studying it, as well as hearing it taught by our pastors or other spiritual leaders. There will be no growth in experiential righteousness apart from a regular intake of the Word of God.
As we begin to look for practical expressions of righteousness, we may find it overwhelming. We think, How can I perfectly obey all of these commands? The venerable Heidelberg Catechism, similar in nature and doctrine to the better-known Westminster Catechisms, asks a similar question: “Can those who are converted to God keep these commandments perfectly?” (Question 114). The Catechism then gives the following answer:
No, but even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience; yet so, that with earnest purpose they begin to live not only according to some but to all the commandments of God.
Note that it says that “even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience.” But they are not satisfied with this small beginning. Rather, they hunger and thirst after the righteousness they know is unattainable.
On the wall of the auto shop where I take my car to be serviced is a large sign with these words, “Perfection is unattainable, but if we aim for it we will achieve excellence.” The principle expressed in that sign is a good one for us. The perfect righteousness that we pursue is unattainable in this life. But if we hunger and thirst for it and diligently pursue it, over time we will grow more and more into the person God wants us to be.
There is one other important truth that I stated in chapter 2 but that needs to be constantly repeated and believed. We are absolutely dependent on the Holy Spirit to work in us Himself and to enable us to work. We cannot make one inch of progress toward experiential righteousness without His divine enablement.
Our hunger and thirst for the righteousness we have in Christ and our hunger and thirst for experiential righteousness grow together. The realization of the righteousness we have in Christ motivates us to live up to that righteousness, which we are to pursue but will never completely attain. Our inability to attain true righteousness in our experience drives us back to the righteousness we have in Christ.
How do these two aspects of hunger and thirst after righteousness produce humility? Only those who are poor in spirit and who mourn over sin will hunger and thirst after the righteousness we have in Christ. And only those who are poor in spirit will recognize how far short they come in attaining experiential righteousness. The awareness of our absolute dependence on the righteousness of Christ and of our failure to attain more experiential righteousness will produce humility in us.
So we constantly go back to the character trait of the first Beatitude, “poverty in spirit.” This is where humility begins, and it is this honest self-evaluation that will produce both the humility of hunger and thirst after righteousness that we have in Christ, and also the experiential righteousness we are to pursue.