Men must struggle or they deteriorate.”
–Louis L’Amour (The Californios)
“But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.”
–Romans 8:10 (NIV)
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“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” –Matthew 5:6 (KJV)
Let me begin this with some background of the times in which it was written. William Barclay does an able job explaining the life of the period.
“The fact is that very few of us in modern conditions of life know what it is to be really hungry or really thirsty. In the ancient world it was very different. A working man’s wage was the equivalent of three pence a day, and, even making every allowance for the difference in the purchasing power of money, no man ever got fat on that wage. A working man in Palestine ate meat only once a week, and in Palestine the working man and the day labourer were never far from the border-line of real hunger and actual starvation.
It was still more so in the case of thirst. It was not possible for the vast majority of people to turn a tap and find the clear, cold water pouring into their house. A man might be on a journey, and in the midst of it the hot wind which brought the sand-storm might begin to blow. There was nothing for him to do but to wrap his head in his burnous and turn his back to the wind, and wait, while the swirling sand filled his nostrils and his throat until he was likely to suffocate, and until he was parched with an imperious thirst. In the conditions of modern western life there is no parallel at all to that.”
I am thirsty just from reading that. We may cry, “I’m thirsty,” but this beatitude is speaking of a deep thirst. Not for real water but having an appetite for God. There is an ongoing hunger for Him that is never fully satisfied. The term means to have a “vehemet desire” or a “vividely expressed desire.” Barclay refers to it as a “starving spirit.” How thirsty are you for “righteousness”?
There are actually three parts to righteousness. The first is legal. This is justification, a right relationship with God. This was taken care of at the cross, but now we move into this meaning of this verse. There is a moral righteousness which is an inner right-of-heart, mind, and motive. Do you long to do right in all your motives? Hmmm. Then there is also social righteousness, this is outside of the private and is expressed in the community. D.A. Carson says that the righteousness that Jesus is speaking of is “wholly to do God’s will from the heart.” Barclay says, “It is the hunger of the man who is starving for food, and the thirst of a man who will die unless he drinks.” That is the righteousness that we should and must have.
The question is: how intense is our desire for goodness, for righteousness? The great author, Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote that “There is the malady of not wanting.” Oh, we want all right. We want this and we want that. We want in our selfishness. But…what do we hunger after? We have a “jaded appetite.” We want the calories of dessert or pizza or something that will fill the craving of our taste buds. Friend that is not the same as spiritual hunger. “Spiritual hunger is the characteristic of all God’s people. Our supreme ambition is not material but spiritual.” (John Stott) We want just a taste of righteousness but then we look at the things out there and we have a different type of hunger. Listen, “Blessed is the man who hungers and thirsts for the goodness that is total.” (Barclay)
We do not seek legal righteousness, that was taken care of at the cross. To do this is crossing into legalism. Longing and thirsting after salvation when it is already taken care of is not true hunger. Our hunger should be after God’s righteous character. To be like Him. Oh, we can never reach that lofty goal. But the key is, as Barclay writes, “Not necessarily the man who achieves this goodness, but the man who longs for it with his whole heart.”