“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6)
Last time we looked at hunger and thirst as desires of the soul and how believers should seek the Lord with true desires in the soul. Christianity does not consist in being lukewarm with half-heartedness, but it must consist in love, joy, and fervent desire. God loves Himself with a perfect love and joy within the Trinity and if He lives in His people He will be working a love for Himself that is like the love He has for Himself. This week we want to look at the object of the hunger and thirst, which in our text is righteousness. When the text speaks of hungering and thirsting for righteousness, it is not necessarily clear what that means. Some believe that this is connected with being poor in spirit in such a way that it reflects the hunger of the soul for the righteousness that is found only in the imputed righteousness of Christ in justification. If that is true, then, the satisfaction is found in the moment of justification and this verse would no longer apply to believers. However, the context of the Sermon on the Mount does not give us that notion of righteousness.
In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount the concept of righteousness is thought of in terms of behavior and attitude. In the verses below you will see the uses of “righteousness” in the Sermon on the Mount. 5:10 – “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 5:20 – “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” 5:45 – “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” 6:1 – “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” 6:33 – “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
In 5:10 people are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It is true that Martin Luther and many others were persecuted for their teaching on the imputed righteousness of Christ. However, the concept of the imputed righteousness of Christ is not in the context. The context of the Sermon on the Mount appears to be a righteous life lived in the presence of God and others. It can also be stated of Luther that it was not so much his doctrine that got him into trouble, but the righteous way of living and preaching it in a way that made it clear.
In 5:20 we are taught that our righteousness must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees. Now surely, some might say, this shows that we must have the imputed righteousness of Christ. The Pharisees lived such strict lives and kept the law so strictly that we cannot surpass them. However, the context is vital to take note of again. What Jesus does immediately after this verse is go into a treatise on a select few of the commandments. He starts off with a “you have heard that it was said.” What they had been taught was that the commandment was kept by outward behavior with some external rules. Jesus then goes on in contrast with what had been taught and says, “but I say unto you.” He then expounds the true meaning of the Law. The clear teaching of this passage is that the righteousness that a person must have that surpasses the scribes and Pharisees is the inner righteousness which is the inner keeping of the Law. It is the heart that must pursue righteousness and find it according to this verse.
The word as used in 5:45 also refers to behavior as it speaks of God causing His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sending rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. The contrast is on those that behave wickedly and those that do righteous actions. The text does not say that God sends these things on both those that have Christ and those that do not, but on the evil or unrighteous and the good or the righteous. The contrast has to do with behavior. Theologically there is no question that the righteous have Christ and the unrighteous do not, but that does not negate the point Jesus is making in this text.
The point is beyond dispute in 6:1 where the acts of righteousness that He is speaking of He talks about in the context. The acts of righteousness were prayer, giving alms, and fasting (6:1-20). Here is also another case where the righteousness of the blessed surpasses and exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees. The Pharisees did all of those things outwardly, but also for their own honor. Whenever something is only done outwardly, the sinful self is the center of it all. However, Jesus taught that prayer and whatever else is done is to be done out of love for God and in a God-centered way. Instead of praying to receive honor for self, we are to pray that God’s name would be hallowed and that His kingdom would come. Instead of giving alms to honor self, do them in secret and for God. Instead of fasting to be noticed by men, hide your fasting and do it as directed toward God alone.
6:33 flows from 6:1-20 and is the righteousness that is to be sought is also in seeking the kingdom of God. This verse also helps us see the intensity of hungering and thirsting and what the focus of that should be. We are to hunger and thirst (seek) for His righteousness more than we are to desire and seek for food and clothing (6:24-34). No one can serve two masters (6:24) for one will be sought and the other hated. We cannot seek God for the purpose of obtaining clothes, food, and security for the future (worry about tomorrow). Rather, we are to seek His righteousness and kingdom first. God will take care of the other things. We can only seek God’s righteousness in accordance with how we seek the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the reign and rule of God in the human soul. So we can make another observation that seeking the righteousness of God corresponds to the reign and rule of God in the soul of man. The righteousness of God is that righteousness that God requires and yet it is what He works in His people as He sets up His kingdom in their souls. The inner reign of Christ is worked out in the human heart by His lordship and the work of the Holy Spirit in working His fruit in the hearts of His people.
We also see this concept of righteousness taught in Luke 1:6. Regarding the parents of John the Baptist, the text tells us that “They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord.” Righteousness is defined for us as walking blamelessly in the commandments and requirements of the Lord. While we must remember that this is still the Old Testament period in the sense that the Holy Spirit had not been poured out yet, this is not to assert in the slightest that salvation is by works or that a righteousness that saves can be obtained apart from Christ. This is not to assert that a person is ever justified in the sight of God apart from the imputed righteousness of Christ. No human being apart from Christ will ever be declared just by God apart from the imputed righteousness of Christ. However, we must let Scripture speak as it is the Word of God. If Scripture says that a person is blessed if he or she is hungering and thirsting after righteousness, then that is the way it is. It also does not mean that hungering and thirsting for righteousness is contradictory to God’s gift of grace in the form of the imputed righteousness of Christ. The two go together, though we will not address this at the moment.
What we must see, then, is that the first beatitude is not contradictory to this one (the fourth). The first one tells us that the blessed person is the one that is poor in spirit and has no righteousness or merit of his own. It also tells us that this person not only has no righteousness of his own, but that he has absolutely no way to obtain righteousness of his own. Poverty of this type is such that a person has nothing and no way to obtain it. But how is it, then, that a person is to hunger and thirst for righteousness and in that be declared blessed and find satisfaction? The explanation of that will have to wait until a later time, but we can rest in the imputed righteousness of Christ knowing that it is all that is needed to enter into the full presence of God in heaven. We must also stress that the righteousness we are to hunger and thirst for is not opposed in any way to the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It is grace and nothing but grace and all of that to the glory of His holy name.
We must stress over and over that no one hungers and thirsts for righteousness without and apart from the grace of God. It is grace that works in human beings and gives them that hungering and thirsting for the things of God. “8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:8-11). We can leave this issue for the moment noticing that Paul did not want or have a righteousness derived from the Law. He wanted that righteousness which came from God on the basis of faith. But that moved him with a desire to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings. All things were rubbish to him and he wanted to know Christ. So his righteousness was not from the Law but was all from Christ. However, he wanted to pursue knowing Christ while counting all other things as rubbish and dung. For Paul, being given salvation by grace through the free gift of righteousness was no hindrance to pursuing holiness and Christ. In fact, his pursuit now was greater than when he was a Pharisee. A hunger for righteousness in this way will always be far beyond the Pharisee and the legalist.
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