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Are the truths in the Beatitudes the rules on how you get into God’s Kingdom, or are they rules on how you live once you’re in the Kingdom? The answer is yes—both. To enter God’s Kingdom, you must hunger and thirst after righteousness. And once you’re in the kingdom, you’ll continue to do the same.
Jesus was telling his followers, “Blessed are those who are famished and desperate and ravenous for righteousness. Blessed are those who are consumed with a desire for righteousness. Blessed are those who crave righteousness.”
Righteousness in the Bible has at least three aspects:
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- Legal: Justification—a right relationship with God.
- Moral: An inner righteousness of heart, mind, and motive.
- Social: Christians are committed to hunger for righteousness in the whole human community as something pleasing to a righteous God.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “This Beatitude follows logically from the previous one. See, it is a statement to which all the others lead. It is the logical conclusion to which they come… I do not know of a better test that anyone can apply to himself or herself in this whole matter of the Christian profession, than a verse like this. If this verse is to you one of the most blessed statements of the whole of Scripture, you can be quite sure you’re a Christian. If it is not, you had better examine your foundations again.”
Scripture calls us to consider the Word of God as nourishment for our spirits in the same way that food is nourishment for our bodies. The Word of God does more than inform. It transforms. It renews the mind. It restores the soul. It energizes and motivates and corrects. Without a continual feeding on His Word, you will waste away.
Could it be that another way to fill our hunger and thirst for righteousness is to simply be obedient every moment to the Father’s will? This kind of obedience will require that we are always in step with the Spirit and alert to His whispers. Jesus is reproducing His obedience in us every second of every day.
Therefore, feasting on the Word and being obedient to the Father’s will are responses to our craving for righteousness. These things don’t make us righteous, but they do open the door so that the Righteous One has access to our hearts where He can do His work.
You may be saying, “Look, all I want, God, is Your righteousness. All I want is to be meek before You. All I want is to have Your kingdom on Your terms.” If so, His promise is that you shall inherit everything in the end. Everything!
What does it mean to hunger and thirst?
Christ’s words are powerful—particularly in His culture. The Greek words used in Scripture are:
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- Peinao: To be needy, to suffer deep hunger
- Dipsao: Genuine thirst
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Remember, this is not the requirement only of the one coming into the kingdom, but also the pattern of the one already in. R.C.H. Lenski, the great commentator said, “This hungering and this thirsting continues and, in fact, increases in the very act of being satisfied.”
Jesus said the people who think they’ve got it aren’t blessed; the people who know they haven’t got it, are. Just when you think you are righteous, you are the most desperate you have ever been. Someone has called it a “thirst no earthly stream can satisfy, a hunger that must feed on Christ or die.” It should be seen as divine discontent.
A kingdom person has a consuming ambition, not for power or pleasure, not for possessions or praise, but for righteousness.
Thirst now, and be filled.
Credits:
- John MacArthur’s The Beatitudes: The Only Way to Happiness (1980);
- Jennifer Kennedy Dean’s Set Apart: A 6-Week Study of the Beatitudes (2015); and
- John Stott’s The Beatitudes: Developing Spiritual Character (1998)