“You’ve got to be hungry” is an exhortation often on the lips of coaches challenging their teams to give 100% effort in a contest. The “hunger” image is used in many different ways because it describes pressing human needs and desires.
Children are hungry for attention, love, cuddling, protection, food, and many other basic needs. Adults have the same needs, but they are often translated into a hunger for approval, power, possessions, pleasure, and more.
Whether someone is hungry for victory in a game, or for approval, power, possessions, or something else, our appetites largely determine our attitudes and actions in life.
The people who followed Jesus up the mountain to sit at His feet believed God’s rule was dawning in history. They heard John the Baptist and Jesus tell them they needed to think differently about life in order to participate in God’s kingdom. What better thing could they do than to learn what Jesus thought about the most important things in life?
Since what we hunger for is such a powerful motivating force, Jesus needed to impart the insights of His wisdom to His followers.
He said:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).
From the coach who exhorts their team to be hungry, to the tycoon who seemingly wants to consume the whole earth in search of power and possessions, the subject of righteousness seems to be lost.
It shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus goes straight to the heart of the matter regarding human desires. We may think we know what is most important in life, but Jesus actually knows the truth.
Saint Augustine recognized the need for righteousness after years of trying to satisfy his appetites with alcohol, partying, sex, and the pleasures of Rome. When Augustine finally became a follower of Jesus, he said, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”
What is righteousness, and why does it fill the restless heart? When Augustine quit running from God and began walking with Him, he discovered that righteousness means living in a right relationship with God.
The hole in the soul that possessions, pleasure, and power seek to fill can only be filled by God’s presence. Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection open the door to a right relationship with God (righteousness) and His active presence in a human life.
The Holy Spirit prepares our hearts for a deep friendship with God. He makes us hungry for what only that friendship can provide.
Paul digs deeply into how a hunger for righteousness is blessed:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us (Romans 5:1-5).
The same Greek word is translated as “righteous” or “justified.” When Augustine was not at peace with God, he needed to be justified, or made righteous. This came to him by God’s grace, but it had to be received through faith.
While the world insists on pleasure-seeking activities and happiness at any cost, people who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness are able to endure afflictions. They are blessed because the Holy Spirit pours God’s love into their hearts.
It is important to emphasize that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are distinct from the religious authorities of Jesus’s day.
Jesus made this clear later in His sermon:
“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
The scribes and Pharisees attempted to achieve the same level of righteous behavior as the priests who served in the temple. Their desire was laudable, but it fell short because it relied on outward behavior that failed to reach the inner person.
The kind of righteousness that Jesus calls blessed first transforms the inner self, which is then reflected in outward behavior. The love of God that is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit becomes evident in our attitudes and actions.
The Blessed Merciful
The people who walked up the mountain to learn the most important lessons in life discovered that God has a special blessing for those who show mercy to others:
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7).
Someone who is merciful is in a position of power to extend grace and kindness to another, less powerful person.
When our hunger and thirst for a right relationship with God is satisfied, and the Holy Spirit has poured God’s love into our hearts, we will naturally be merciful to others.
A good indicator of whether the Holy Spirit is active in our hearts is the measure of mercy we extend to other people.
One of my friends almost joined the KKK when he was young. He trained as a lawyer, but meeting Jesus changed his life. He became a preacher, and that is how we ended up in seminary together.
He asked for my help taking some of the teenagers he worked with to play basketball in an urban park. While I was away with them, he had the grade-school children make speeches. This was during the Black Power Movement, and their speeches reflected that.
After the evening ended, we enjoyed some ice cream. I asked him what his old friends in the Klan might have thought about him helping young Black kids give Black Power speeches. He smiled and said, “They probably would have liked to see me thrown into the Pearl River with a millstone tied to my back.”
My friend had once hated people of different races, but meeting Jesus changed that. The Holy Spirit filled his heart with God’s love, leading him to show mercy to everyone.
YouTube Discussion
Rudy Ross, Bruce Kirby, and I discussed this passage on YouTube today.
Real Voices 