BY THE REV. JOHN MACLEOD, M.A., ULLAPOOL.
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”—MATT. v. 6.
CHRIST is a king. He has a kingdom; He is not a king without a kingdom; nor is it a kingdom without a king. His kingdom has its own laws, and the subjects of this kingdom have a certain character. The character of His subjects the Lord brings before us in these verses. He tells us who are blessed; He tells us who are happy, and as His kingdom is not of this world, the class that by Him are called happy or blessed is not that class which this world would pronounce happy. There is an inward antagonism between the spirit of this world and the spirit that animates Christ’s true and loyal subjects. They partake of the spirit of their Lord and Master, and measure things by the gauge and standard of His Word. His Word reveals His mind, and they are of one mind with Him. The world has its own standard. It strives as far as in it lies to throw off the yoke of dependence upon God, and measuring things by its standard, it does not consider those blessed whom the Lord pronounces blessed, while it pronounces blessed those that He pronounces accursed.
As in these verses the Lord describes the character of those who are blessed who belong to His kingdom—in these chapters He announces the spiritual character of the laws of His kingdom. He tells us that it takes to do with the inward thoughts and hidden motions of the heart. He tells us that fruitbearing is a necessary result of being under the influence of His law, and that it is not sufficient for us to be mere hearers of His Word without being doers of it. His law is righteous and His subjects are righteous, and being righteous they love righteousness. This is one of their distinguishing features, and under this description He brings them before us in these words—“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
In considering these words, let us look at:—
I.—The character of those referred to.
II.—What is said about them.
III.—Why in particular this is said.
I. Those, about whom the Lord here speaks, are said to hunger and to thirst after righteousness. Now this at once tells us with regard to them that they are alive to righteousness and alive to God. Natural hunger and natural thirst are never present, where natural life is absent, and spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst are equally inseparable from and dependent on spiritual life. The dead never eat, and the dead never drink, but this is true equally
of the spiritually dead. Spiritual food they never eat, and spiritual food they never drink. Did they but hunger and thirst after righteousness, they should give infallible evidence of being alive to God? And equally so, those that are alive to God, invariably bear this character, and have this true of them each one, that they hunger and thirst after righteousness. The question, however, may be put, “Can hunger for righteousness be taken as an infallible sign of spiritual life as distinct from spiritual death?” And this calls us to consider for a moment or two what is life spiritual and what is death spiritual.
It is not true of all mankind that they hunger and thirst after righteousness. It is not one of their natural characteristics. By nature, man is dead in trespasses and in sins, is an alien from the life of God through ignorance and blindness of heart, walks after the course of this world, and does the will of the flesh and of the mind. By nature, he is in the flesh, and the mind of the flesh, which is enmity against God, rules within him. This mind is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be. And seeing this is its nature, it is impossible that it should submit to the demands of God’s unbendingly holy law. But the law presses its demands upon us. We are God’s creatures, formed by Himself, and formed for Himself. He claims that we should love Him, and He is all-worthy of the love that He claims. His claim is righteous, and His demand is righteous. He demands that we in all our thoughts, words, deeds, should conform to the standard of His spiritual law, and though we have broken it and cannot conform to it, yet instead of its demands being lowered they are rather increased. God is as worthy as He ever was of being loved, and so perfect obedience ceases not to be our duty towards Him. But He deserves also at our hands, that we should give satisfaction to the law that we have broken, that we should satisfy the justice we have offended. This is the law’s claim, and it is a righteous claim. It claims righteousness at our hands, and such righteousness as it deserves at the hands of sinners. The mind, which cannot be subject to the law of God, cannot submit to its claim of righteousness, and thus of man by nature, small and great, rich and poor, it is true that they are destitute of this hunger and thirst after righteousness about which our text speaks.
If all men by nature are destitute of the love and passion for righteousness, while there are those who do love righteousness, we may enquire, how does it come about that there are such. Now the Word of God testifies to us with regard to the first man Adam, and with regard to the second Adam too. It tells us who and what we are, and it tells us who and what Christ is. It tells us our ruin, our guilt, our condemnation, but it also tells us of the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world, of the Lord from heaven the Saviour. Through one came condemnation; through one too comes salvation. Through one came death; through the other comes life. By nature we are the children of the first man
and are in the flesh. Because of this we love not righteousness; we are dead in sins. But as the first Adam has his natural seed, the second Adam has His spiritual seed, and as we have borne the image of the earthy through natural generation, the church of God bears the image of the heavenly through spiritual regeneration.
Now the likeness of Christ is brought before us in such words as these (Psalm xlv. Heb. i.)—”Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.” He was made of a woman made under the law, and fulfilled as antitype the figures of the ceremonial law. As of old the tables with the ten commandments were in the ark of the testimony, so in Christ the Mediator’s heart was in the law of God. “That most holy law of thine I have within my heart,” was His prophetic language through the Psalmist, and what was true of Him as the second man, the Lord from heaven, is true of His spiritual progeny. For Christ the king of Israel has not given the promise without having power to make it good. “I will give you an heart of flesh.” As He has the power to make it good He has the will too, and time after time in each age and generation He calls from death to life, from darkness to light, and those whom He thus calls are born of the Word of God. They are born of the Spirit of God, and the new covenant is made with them in the circumcision of their heart, that causes them to love the Lord and to delight in Christ Jesus. The law of God is written on their heart in regeneration, and thus with a new heart and a renewed nature, they love the law of God after the inward man. Thus it comes about that these are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who have respect to the law of God. His likeness is, that he loved righteousness, and their spiritual resemblance to Him, whose they are and of whom they are, secures that they too love righteousness. They love it, because they have the law written on their heart, and loving it they hunger and thirst for it. Spiritual death and spiritual life are wide as the poles asunder. Spiritual death is hatred to God; spiritual life is the love of God. And all who love God submit to His law and its claims; so doing, they hunger and thirst for righteousness. Their hunger and thirst tell of their life to God, of their love of God, and correspond to the demands of His law as they are known to them.
Now, the law of God has a twofold claim. It may be viewed either as a covenant or as a rule of life. As a covenant of life and death it assigns death as the reward of unrighteousness, and gives life on the ground of righteousness. Its demand for a perfect righteousness was met by the work of Christ the surety and substitute, and all who love righteousness intelligently seek with Paul to be found in Him, not having their own righteousness but His. They love the righteousness of the law’s demands, and loving it they count all but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Him who is end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. But the law, viewed as a rule of life, still continues to claim personal loving obedience at the hands of those who have found
its claims as a covenant met in the surety righteousness of Immanuel. In that righteousness they have acceptance, have a title to eternal life made over to them, and have the privilege of the indwelling of God’s Spirit to sanctify them. Their own obedience never comes between them as sinners, and Christ as their Saviour. It is impossible either to increase or to lessen their righteousness in the robe of Christ’s obedience. But though new creatures, they have not ceased to be God’s creatures. Their new creation has not taken away God’s original title to their love and homage. It has rather added to His claims on them. They are more obliged now to Him than ever to live holily in this world. They are called to be holy, and the rule of their obedience is the law of God. They obey it now, not to win life, but to please God, and in pleasing Him, they have their own highest pleasure. They walk in new obedience as in the royal law of liberty. This is true freedom, that they should be animated by the principle of love to serve the Lord as their God.
Their spiritual life is not haphazard; its aspirations are not aimless; they are guided by the promptings of an enlightened understanding; and hunger and thirst after righteousness does not mean hunger and thirst after anything that may go under this name among men. The righteousness that is hungered for by the children of God is quite distinct from all merely worldly righteousness and civil obedience. Whatever is truly righteous they desire, but their standard is the law of God and its claims, alike as a covenant and as a rule of life. Righteousness, meeting these claims as a covenant, they find in Christ as the end of the law for righteousness, and inward righteousness they get by the indwelling of His Spirit. In His strength, and to His glory, they obey. They do His will, and their desire is to do it. They hunger and thirst after righteousness.
II. What is said about those that hunger and thirst after righteousness. Christ calls them happy or blessed, and so they are. Would you not yourself call them blessed? They are the friends of God and so love righteousness. They are not satisfied with what they have attained, but press forward. They are happy indeed, for they are partakers of the promised blessing of the Holy Spirit. By Him are they sealed unto the day of the redemption; and this sealing testifies to their being delivered from the curse. They could not be blessed indeed, as long as the curse held them in its grips. It has a desolating, wasting power over every one that lies under it, and because of this power, spiritual death reigns, where it reigns. Where spiritual death reigns, there are no living hungerings and thirstings after righteousness. Those who have such hungerings are not under the curse, the very fact of their so hungering testifies to the truth that they are freed from its power. There is no middle position, however, between the curse and the blessing, and in this sense it is true of one and all of those, that thus hunger and thirst, that they are blessed. Their
standing is in the righteousness of their surety, and they are blessed in Him. But wherever there is this standing of blessedness, there is also the imparted blessing. There is the sealing by the Holy Spirit. This is accompanied with all the blessings of redemption, and those who are in the enjoyment of these are blessed indeed. The hunger and thirst for righteousness testify to the Spirit’s sealing, and presence, and power, and in so doing testify to the blessedness of those who have them. For where there is one of the saving blessings of the covenant of redemption, there is the whole golden circle, and where this golden circle is, there is a crown of glory in time, that will but come to light in its proper beauty, when the sunlight of eternity shall welcome within the veil the redeemed of the Lord, now come to Zion, with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads. The crown is theirs already. It will then be seen without doubt to be theirs, and its beauty and glory will be made manifest. The beauty and the glory are theirs already, but while they are here they live as strangers and pilgrims, and the world knows them not. It knew Him not, and it knows them not.
Happy are they that have this hunger and this thirst. Hunger and thirst are proof of life, and usually of health too; but they are only relative blessings. The rich who have everything in abundance may lack hunger and thirst, and thus the choicest foods and drinks may be tasteless to them. Take away health and appetite, and food becomes a drug and an annoyance. We live here from to-day to to-morrow, from day to day. What we have to-day will not do to-morrow; what we had yesterday did for yesterday, but will not do for to-day. Our system needs to be upheld, and by hunger on the one side and food on the other, the wonderful providence of God secures that we are upheld. Hunger is the index of our need of sustenance. It gives us to know that we need food. Food we need; yet were there no such thing as hunger, we should not know our need of food. Hunger thus taken in connection with food is a merciful provision of our Creator for securing our maintenance in life and strength. But though a merciful provision, it may become a torture. Let hunger be with us, and nothing to satisfy it, then that which serves in conjunction with food, a good and merciful purpose, becomes a pain and a torment to us. Food without hunger is tasteless; hunger without food is pain. But take the two together, and like the two sides of an arch meeting in the keystone, they carry out the end of sustaining our being in this life. The rich man whose appetite is gone would say at once, “Blessed are they that hunger.” He has plenty to meet the demands of hunger, when it comes, but the poor man, who is destitute of his daily bread, would not understand the blessedness of hungering and thirsting. Tortured with pangs of hunger, and wanting the wherewithal to allay them, he would rather not hunger than be pained as he is, but give him what will meet his hunger, and then he will appreciate
the end that hunger serves in the economy of the human frame. So it is in connection with this hungering and thirsting. If it were possible that they could be in existence, and nothing provided to meet them, the very lack of supply would be torture. But there is no such thing as hungering and thirsting for righteousness without the provision of righteousness to meet them, for it is only as the reward of Immanuel’s toil in bringing in everlasting righteousness, that there are among the sons of men any who hunger and thirst for that righteousness that God’s law requires for its claims, and that God’s law demands at their hands. As this is so, there is no hunger and thirst for righteousness without provision made to meet them. And this leads us to consider
III. The special reason why those that thirst and hunger thus, are pronounced happy or blessed. This special reason is that they shall be satisfied. Were this not provided, there would be dissatisfaction, and where there is dissatisfaction there is unhappiness. But the Lord has never given being to such hunger and thirst in order to mock them. He has respect to the work of His hands. They are the result and outflow of what He has already provided. He has made the provision, not that it might not be partaken of, but that it might; and for this end He declares its fulness and freeness in the word of the truth of the gospel. “Yea come buy wine and milk, without money and without price.” There is a harmony in the works and ways of God. He works inwardly, and He works outwardly, and the task that His inward work gives fits in with the provision that He has prepared from without. There is the outward provision of righteousness in Christ. There is the inward working of hunger and thirst for righteousness; and this can be met only by what has been already provided in Christ. And there is, as a junction between the two, the word of the gospel, in which the Christ that is revealed, is offered; and on the ground of this offer, the faith of His people is able to lay hold of Him. Their hunger and thirsting after righteousness are thus met and satisfied in the exercise of faith, laying hold of a crucified Redeemer.
The words of our text, however, speak not only of a provision made, but of the certainty of its application. They shall be satisfied. Not only is there mention made of this certainty; there is also underlying it the provision that the gospel reveals to satisfy the cravings of a renewed heart. The figure used is hungering and thirsting; not hungering alone, and not thirsting alone, but hungering and thirsting both; and the provision that God has made corresponds to that too. “My flesh,” says Christ, “is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” He mentions His flesh and His blood. Not His humanity unbroken, but His flesh and blood apart from one another. When were they sundered? Surely when He poured His soul out to death. He bore the sins of many; He bore them in His own body on the tree; up to it and on it He bore them; and His bearing of them resulted in this,
that the sword of divine wrath against sin reached to the dividing asunder of body and spirit. The veil was rent from the top to the bottom. Soul and body parted company, and through the rent veil of His holy humanity, the Divine Saviour entered into the holiest, not without blood. Body and soul parted company, but the alliance between His body and soul, each with His glorious person, secured that, by parting company from one another, death was spoiled of its sting. He brought in everlasting righteousness, while neither soul nor body parted company with His person. The human soul that left His body when He gave up the ghost, was His soul; and the body that His soul left was His body; but body and soul were indeed parted, for He died indeed. Dying He brought in everlasting righteousness, met all the claims of the law of death and life for His people, and thus is the end of the law for righteousness. His blood sealed His work. His obedience included death, for it was obedience to a broken law. His life and His death alike feed His people. In Christ living for them and dying for them, they find the righteousness that satisfies their conscience. It claims that they should render to God’s law such righteousness as it demands. The law shows in the resurrection of Christ on behalf of those for whom He died, that it is quite satisfied with Him and His work, and what satisfies it satisfies them. Faith, appropriating this Christ, living and dying, and rising again as surety, substitute, head, and king, gives blessed satisfaction to the cravings of an enlightened conscience. It gives peace, and peace too on an immovable basis, for it is on no other basis than on that laid down when the Redeemer cried “it is finished.”
But is there nothing in the satisfaction promised, but what the believer attains to in the exercise of faith here below? Far from it. Fuller satisfaction than ever faith can give is involved in the promise here given. But, before we proceed to consider this further, we may briefly notice the satisfaction promised as embracing provision, not alone for meeting the covenant claims of the law of God, but the claims that that law has inalienably in all God’s reasonable creatures. Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are zealous for good works. Their desire is to bring forth the fruits of righteousness. This is their desire, and while they live on this earth, however much the testimony of a good conscience may be theirs, that in all godly sincerity they spend their days in their Master’s service, yet their eager, fervent desire to serve Him and to glorify Him more than keeps pace with any of their attainments in grace. They do not attain to what they would be, nor do they attain to what they should be, and this leaves with them a holy dissatisfaction with themselves—such a dissatisfaction as does not leave them in despair of ever attaining, but keeps them pressing forward. Cast down they are; not in despair. Such hope is theirs as mans them for continued endeavours and further efforts. Satisfaction is promised, however,
and it is no such imperfect thing as what they attain to in the testimony of a good conscience. For the dissatisfaction with themselves that follows them through this life ever keeps them from being satisfied with their faithfulness or their attainments, and if what a good conscience testifies to is not sufficient to satisfy them, they are shut up for satisfaction here only to hope and hope alone. Drawing the breath of hope through the tender mercies of their Lord, they have foretastes of satisfaction for their cravings after holiness. They cleanse themselves in purpose and design from all filthiness of flesh and spirit. They purify themselves, as He, in whom their hope is, is pure. But this satisfaction that they taste in hope, is but an anticipation of a fuller satisfaction that awaits them yet. The full satisfaction of the craving of their renewed nature is promised to them, and He, who has given them their cravings and has accompanied them with this promise, will see to it that the full satisfaction promised shall be made good to the heirs of the promise.
Hungering and thirsting after righteousness embrace desire for imputed and desire for imparted righteousness. The faith that unites the believer to Christ gives him a standing before God in his surety’s obedience, and perfect righteousness is his already. If faith were perfect, the enjoyment of a good conscience before God, on the ground of what Christ did, would be a source of unfailing satisfaction to believing sinners. But faith is imperfect. As God’s gift, and in its nature, it is perfect—coming down from the Father of light; but in its measure it is ever imperfect here. It has its ebbs and flows, and so the measure of satisfaction enjoyed here is fluctuating. The title to the enjoyment of a consciousness of acceptance is perfect, but the light in which it is beheld is variable, and the hand by which it is held is sometimes limp and numb; so that, however rich the consolations of Christ’s gospel are here, they give not the full satisfaction promised. They have no weakness, there is no shortcoming on their part, but the believer comes short. The clay vessel cannot hold the fulness of joy, and so the fulness of satisfaction has to be reserved for that life where there is no trace of imperfection, where sin is no more, and we know even as we are known.
The promise then here given points beyond the realm of time and sense. It partakes of the noble, spiritual nature of the divine affections, with which it is here indissolubly associated. There is a full satisfaction awaiting the children of God. They are His children, and He has richly provided for their needs. These needs He knows, and according to His perfect knowledge of their needs is the perfection of the satisfaction that He has provided for them. Here they see as in a glass darkly; there they shall see face to face. Here they see but in part, and know but in part; here they shall see and know fully. Their knowledge will know no lacking; their seeing shall no longer be dimmed. He has promised satisfaction, and He will give it too. When they awake
they shall be satisfied with His likeness. They shall be satisfied with Him, and with His glorious image restored to themselves through grace. And while satisfied with themselves in His likeness with a holy satisfaction, they shall likewise be fully satisfied with the ground on which their glory and their beauty rests. They forget not what they were, and what they deserved to be, but they remember this only to see in its light the wonder of the love of God in the Cross of Christ. The blood of the Cross will be the theme of their praise. The love of God in His grace reigns through righteousness with eternal life in Christ Jesus the Lord. His love has brought them where they now are, and they sound forth its praise. It has brought them through righteousness, and their whole nature approves of the righteousness; it has brought them to righteousness, and they praise Him for it. For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. Glory is His through the church; and glory is theirs in Him. For such is the blessed liberality of the love of God, that, when it is satisfied in their complete deliverance from sin, wrath, and death, they are completely satisfied too. It is glorified in them. They are glorified in it. When they are glorified, He is glorified who glorifies them, and thus what comes to them reverts to Him in ceaseless praise.
Happy indeed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Think you not that righteousness is as worthy of being loved, hungered, thirsted for by you, as by them. Rest in nothing less than this, “That I may be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness but . . . the righteousness which is of God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.”