Are you Hungry?
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)
Beloved,
At the beginning of the beatitudes,
Jesus shows how he values one who mourns over their sin and recognizes their
poverty of spirit. He wants us to see our desperate need so that we would
hunger and thirst for righteousness. Jesus gives the picture of how we are to
pursue righteousness. We are to pursue righteousness as a starving man pursues
food. We are to pursue righteousness as a parched man runs after water. We all
have experienced hunger and thirst. And we all know what we are willing to do
to end our hunger and thirst. But are we even see our need for righteousness?
If we cannot see our need for righteousness, we will
never strive to attain it. And yet, God
does not only want us to see our need for righteousness, but he wants us to
pursue it through his Son. We need an “alien” righteousness that comes from
outside of us. Philippians 3:7-10,
But whatever gain I
had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as
loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his
sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order
that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my
own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the
righteousness from God that depends on faith.
We hunger and thirst for righteousness by hungering and thirsting to know
Jesus Christ.
If were starving, we would do
all that we could to find food. Beloved, we should recognize that we are
starving for righteousness and hunger to know Jesus Christ for, “those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”