THE Lord Jesus, at the beginning of His great Sermon on the Mount, takes occasion to delineate a number of the fundamental features of the true children of God. He does this in the form of Beatitudes, in which He pronounces “blessed” those who possess certain spiritual dispositions, such as poverty of spirit, meekness, and hunger and thirst after righteousness. The Beatitudes are therefore designed, in the first instance, to afford comfort to those who bear the marks of God’s children. Such are assured of present safety and future happiness. But the bestowal of comfort is not the only end these Beatitudes are designed to serve. Christ clearly intends to condemn the false standards of character and blessedness which ignorant religionists and the men of the world had set up in His time. The former class were self-sufficient and self-righteous, and did not value the genuine graces of the Spirit, while the latter considered the self-confident, the high-minded, the diligent seekers after worldly advancement as the only admirable and blessed persons. The Lord Jesus evidently shows that the Church and the world of His day had wandered far from all right conceptions of true and abiding blessedness. The same message is needed in the twentieth century of the Christian era. It is our present purpose to call attention briefly to the fourth of these Beatitudes—”Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.” We shall observe, first, the special description Christ here gives of the blessed, and secondly, the blessedness which He declares to be their portion.
I.—The special description here given of the persons truly blessed.
It is “they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.” The whole context goes to prove that Christ refers to such as are the children of God by regeneration—who have passed from a state of nature to a state of grace. They only are delivered from the curse, and are in possession of the blessing.
1. Observe, then, that the description intimates that God’s children “hunger and thirst” in a spiritual sense.
They “hunger and thirst” after Gospel blessings, one of which is righteousness. They possess desires after these precious benefits, of varying degrees of strength, described by the two words, “hunger and thirst.” Sometimes their desires amount to the moderate feeling of hunger; at other times they rise to the intense sensation of thirst.
In the light of some passages of Scripture, it may appear strange that the children of God should be said to “hunger and thirst” at all. For example, Christ says elsewhere, “I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John vi. 35). But it is to be observed that there are different kinds of “hunger and thirst” referred to in God’s Word. Some of these kinds pass away when the soul comes and eats, by faith, of Christ as the bread of everlasting life, but it is not so of the “hunger and thirst” spoken of in the Beatitude before us; this may be said only to begin then in its most vital form. Consider that the carnal hunger and thirst which reigns in every unrenewed heart is brought down by faith’s appropriation of Christ as the bread and water of life. The sinner never hungers or thirsts again after the vanities of a dying world with the same intensity of desire as he did in the days of his ignorance. The world could never afford any real satisfaction, but now he shall “never” be without bread or water to satisfy his deepest needs. Consider also that the “hunger and thirst” which first arises in the conscience by conviction of sin is removed for ever through a believing apprehension of Christ as the sinner’s Surety and Redeemer. The desires of the awakened conscience under first convictions are fully and for ever satisfied when the soul, by grace, embraces Christ in the Gospel. “He that cometh to me shall never hunger; he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” “He that cometh” shall never want the only perfect source of satisfaction to apply to and make use of. The kinds of “hunger and thirst,” therefore, that pass away at conversion proceed from sin and the conviction of sin, but the “hunger and thirst” that abides proceeds from divine life in the soul, and will remain with “the living in Jerusalem,” until it is swallowed up at last in the ocean of eternal blessedness.
Let us notice, then, in conclusion, on this point that God’s children “hunger and thirst” after gospel blessings in the sense that they desire the experimental enjoyment of them. For, although all these blessings are given them as to right and title at the moment they are united to Christ, yet they are not all realised in experience at that moment. In their richest and fullest extent, they shall not be realised until the children of God enter the eternal world. During their journey through the wilderness, the Spirit of God must give them daily communications out of the fulness that is in Christ, otherwise they shall be ready to perish, and for these communications they hunger and thirst. Such desires are signs of spiritual life and health, and they who possess them are not to be pitied but envied. Such desires are indications not of God’s displeasure but of His favour, and those who have spiritual understanding often mourn, not the strength, but the weakness, of their hunger and thirst after the blessings of the new covenant, though they may not get in conscious experience all that they desire without some period of delay. Still “He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness” (Psalms cvii. 9).
2. Let us, secondly, notice the special blessing for which God’s children are here said to hunger and thirst; “righteousness.”
God made man upright at the beginning, but when he became disobedient, he cast away his original righteousness, and became unholy and unjust. Thus it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Romans iii. 10, 12). When God, in the riches of His grace, made provision for the salvation of fallen men, He did so in a way of righteousness. He determined through Jesus Christ, to bestow upon them righteousness in all its aspects in a richer measure and on a firmer basis than that which was known in the first estate of innocence. Righteousness is therefore one of the outstanding blessings of the covenant of grace, which flows to sinners through the mediation of the Son of God and is held forth in the word of the truth of the Gospel.
(1) The true children hunger and thirst after imputed righteousness.
Clothed they are with the righteousness of Christ in the day of their vital union to Him, yet they are not always able to apprehend this righteousness as their own. Through the weakness of faith, and the darkness of unbelief, they cannot at all times lay hold in living experience of Christ as the Lord their righteousness, and thus they frequently long for the manifestation of Him as such by the power of the Spirit and Word to their souls. In this important sense, they “hunger and thirst after” imputed righteousness. Christ as their righteousness, satisfying all the claims of law and justice against them as guilty sinners, is a most precious part of the bread of heaven without which they cannot live, and by the enjoyment of which, they “shall never die.”
(2) They hunger and thirst after implanted righteousness.
This righteousness they undoubtedly possess already in regeneration. When the Lord, in a day of mercy, justifies, He also renews. When He imputes righteousness, He also implants righteousness. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, old things are become new” (2 Cor. v. 17). How then do the persons here spoken of hunger and thirst after the righteousness already implanted? They long after its growth. They desire intensely that the new nature, as a babe of grace, may grow in vigour and understanding in faith, hope, love and all Spirit-given graces. They cannot be satisfied until it reaches the stature of a perfect man in Christ (Ephes. iv. 13). Again, they desire the growth of implanted righteousness in a way of victory over “the old man who is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.” Oftentimes, in young converts, amid all the warmth and liveliness of their new graces, “the old man” is very strong, and so he must be daily mortified. Where the genuine life of godliness is, there is a “hunger and thirst,” after his overthrow and destruction, and after the growing prevalence and constant victory of the new man in the spiritual conflict. “Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter iii. 19).
(3) They hunger and thirst after active righteousness in its perfect accomplishment.
They desire to “do” as well as to love the will of God. “Blessed are they that do his commandments” (Rev. xxii. 14). They feel they come far short of the glory of God in their daily walk and conversation, and in the performance of the special work the Lord may have allotted them in His holy providence. If they do not always err in the outward form of that work, as conformed to the divine standard of obedience, they feel that they frequently err in the spirit in which it is done, and in the lack of that singleness of eye to God’s glory which would become them in everything to which they put their hands. They long for that blessed and glorious state that is yet in the future, when they shall serve the Lord without the least shortcoming in thought, word, or action. And even now their cry ascends, in the language of the Psalmist, “Order my steps in thy word, and let not any iniquity have dominion over me” (Ps. cxix. 132).
(4) Lastly, they “hunger and thirst after righteousness” in all its forms with a view to others as well as themselves.
Their desire is that multitudes of poor sinners would be called out of darkness into light, clothed with Christ’s righteousness, and adorned with the graces of His Spirit. They earnestly long to see righteousness prevailing in Church and State. Deeply grieved they are to observe unrighteousness in a thousand forms rearing its head in the land to-day. “The Man of Sin,” an enemy of all righteousness, is treated with an unholy charity, and the upholders of truth are looked upon with scorn and contempt. Well may the true children of God long and pray for that glorious time when righteousness in all departments of life shall overspread these kingdoms of ours and all the kingdoms of the earth.
II.—The blessedness of those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness.”
Here we must be very brief as our space is limited.
1. They are blessed in virtue of possessing this gracious disposition.
They bear the image of the Lord Jesus, their glorious Head and Exemplar. He loved righteousness and hated iniquity, in a perfect degree, and though he did not require righteousness for Himself, as He was “holy, harmless, undefiled,” he sought righteousness with a view to the glory of God and the highest good of men. He was not satisfied until He fulfilled all righteousness in the room and stead of the guilty, and thus glorified God upon the earth. And now at the right hand of the Father, He waits to “see of the travail of his soul” in the universal diffusion of righteousness throughout the world, when the whole earth shall be filled with His glory (Ps. lxxii.), and in the complete and final fulfilment of God’s gracious redemptive purposes in regard to His elect, when His people shall be all righteous, and shall inherit Immanuel’s land for ever.
2. They are blessed in virtue of the promise of being abundantly satisfied: “they shall be filled.”
The Lord promises to fill those to the full who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
No such promise have the people of the world who hunger and thirst after temporal good and sinful pleasure. They shall never be “filled.” No; though they should obtain the whole material universe as their possession with all the pleasure it is capable of giving, such would not be sufficient to fill their souls or give them genuine and abiding satisfaction. No person or thing can fill the soul but God Himself and the provision He has made according to the new covenant. The natural man is a poor unsatisfied, unfilled being at best, “empty, void, and waste.”
Those, who “seek after righteousness,” have a promise of complete and abundant satisfaction. In relation to their personal interests, they obtain an earnest of it in this present life. They are “filled,” when they are enabled to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as their Redeemer, Saviour and Husband, in the arms of faith and love. They are “filled” when they possess the assurance, by grace, of their eternal happiness in Christ. They are “filled” when the love of God like a mighty river flows into their souls, and they are set down, by faith, in the heavenly places. They are also “filled” when they hear of Christ in His cause obtaining victories over “the prince of darkness,” and plucking sinners as brands out of the fire. But their complete and boundless filling is reserved for the inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. In this present world, they experience ebbs and flows in their comfort and satisfaction—sometimes they are brought very low, and find themselves exceedingly poor and destitute—but such changes shall not be in eternity. They shall be holy as God is holy—perfectly righteous in character as well as state. The Psalmist anticipated, by faith, under the Spirit’s illumination, the abundant satisfaction which is in store for all the ransomed of the Lord: “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness” (Psalm xvii. 15).
“WHETHER God comes to His children with a rod or a crown, if He comes Himself with it, it is well.”—Rutherford.