Introduction

One of the great themes in Jesus’ sermon on the mount is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is mentioned on numerous occasions and is the great overarching theme of chapters 5 through 7 of the gospel according to Matthew. Within that broader theme there are also several mentions of righteousness. When Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, he came preaching righteousness.

There is a real and essential relationship between righteousness and the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven, which is God’s gracious rule over his elect people in Jesus Christ, is established upon the foundation of righteousness. There is no kingdom of God apart from righteousness. And there is no place in the kingdom for the people of God except they also possess righteousness themselves. That is what stands behind Jesus’ insistence later in the chapter: “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20).

The Pharisees had a form of righteousness in their outward adherence to the law of Moses. It was a righteousness that they achieved by themselves on the basis of their works. However, understand that Jesus does not commend the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. On the contrary, Jesus makes entrance into the kingdom absolutely and utterly impossible through the works of the law. You can imagine the people in the crowd asking, “How then can any man enter into the kingdom?” In verse 20 Jesus introduces an entirely different righteousness, which cannot be earned or merited but which is received entirely by grace.

Again, I say that righteousness is of crucial significance in Jesus’ sermon on the mount. Therefore, in the first section of the beatitudes, we are faced with the fourth beatitude, in which Jesus declares the blessedness of those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Having been placed in the middle of the beatitudes, the fourth beatitude stands at the very heart of the experience of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. The citizens of the kingdom hunger and thirst after righteousness. They alone are blessed.

The Object of Such Hungering and Thirsting

In Matthew 5:6 Jesus proclaims the blessedness of the man and woman who hunger and thirst after righteousness. The text speaks of righteousness. Righteousness is the object of the hungering and thirsting of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. In order to rightly understand what it means to hunger and thirst after righteousness, we must understand what the text means by righteousness.

Whereas we often make distinctions when we speak of righteousness, Jesus does not make any such distinctions. Therefore, the righteousness of the text must be considered in the broadest possible sense. There is no righteousness that is not rooted in God himself. God is righteousness in himself. In that sense righteousness is that perfection in God according to which God, in all his thinking and willing and in all the works of his hands, is in perfect harmony with his own divine will and being. God himself is righteous and is the sole criterion of righteousness.

In that connection righteousness for man means that man is perfectly in harmony with the being of God and in every point is agreeable to the will of God. Most basically, righteousness for man means that a man is right with God. Righteousness for man is not even first that he obeys God’s law. The law reveals God as a righteous God. The law testifies concerning who man ought to be as he stands before God. For a man to be righteous means that he loves the Lord his God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength. That is what it means for a man to be righteous.

Furthermore, the righteousness of which the text speaks concerns how God views a person. Righteousness is not judged first by what men can see or what men declare to be true of a person. Rather, righteousness concerns what God says about a person, that he is in a right standing with God.

In the text righteousness is something to be desired and therefore is something that does not belong to man by nature. That is the reality of man by nature as he is fallen in Adam. In Adam man is not right with God. However, it was not always this way. In the beginning man possessed a righteousness. The righteousness of man in the beginning consisted in his being created in the image and likeness of God in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. It was a righteousness according to which man agreed perfectly with the will of God and existed in perfect harmony with God. Adam perfectly loved the Lord his God. Man had fellowship with the living God and walked with God in the light. And yet, that righteousness is not the righteousness of which the text speaks. The righteousness that belonged to Adam was a created righteousness, innate in Adam as a real, righteous man; and that righteousness could also be lost. Indeed, it was lost. The righteousness that belonged to Adam in the beginning was entirely lost when Adam sinned. In Adam all mankind was plunged into unrighteousness and dreadful guilt.

Rather, the righteousness of the text is a heavenly righteousness. It is an eternal righteousness that can never be lost. It can never be taken away. That righteousness is an unassailable righteousness. It is a righteousness that must be bestowed upon a person. The righteousness of the text stands outside of man by nature. Man by nature has no claim to that righteousness. It is an alien righteousness. Therefore, it is a righteousness that is utterly foreign to man by nature.

The righteousness of the text is the righteousness of God. It is God’s righteousness. It is the righteousness that God himself worked out in Jesus Christ. It is that righteousness that is the gift of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, so much so that man has absolutely nothing to do with that righteousness. The righteousness of which the text speaks is the righteousness that God conceived of in his eternal counsel, so that righteousness was ever before God as eternally perfect in Jesus Christ from before the foundation of the world, apart from any consideration of man. That righteousness was realized in Christ, as was evident from the cross, wherein Christ was made sin for his people in order that they might be made the righteousness of God in him. That righteousness is the righteousness that is bestowed graciously as a free gift upon the elect sinner through faith in Jesus Christ. It is that righteousness whereby the elect sinner is translated from a state of condemnation before God into a state of justification, whereby God declares the elect sinner to be in perfect harmony with the will of God, and upon the basis of which the sinner is made worthy of everlasting life. That is righteousness.

The Hungry and the Thirsty

To that righteousness Jesus refers when he declares the blessedness of those who hunger and thirst after it. Blessed hungry. Blessed thirsty. How utterly strange Jesus must have seemed to those listening! Who would want anything to do with the sort of kingdom about which Jesus was preaching? And yet, in this fourth beatitude, Jesus gives what is most essential to the citizen of the kingdom of heaven: righteousness. Apart from righteousness, none shall enter the kingdom of heaven. Apart from righteousness, life in the kingdom is absolutely inconceivable. Apart from righteousness, all men perish.

That righteousness is necessary is evident from the language that Jesus uses of hungering and thirsting. Just as physical meat and drink are the means or instruments whereby man’s natural life is sustained, righteousness is the instrument whereby man’s spiritual life is sustained, with which the spirit of a man is fed and nourished, and apart from which a man perishes everlastingly.

To understand the significance of Jesus’ language, it would be of some benefit to us to understand what exactly the text means by those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. The word “hunger” in the original Greek means to crave ardently or to seek with an eager desire. Standing behind the word “hunger” is the idea of intense poverty. The one who hungers is starving. The hungry person in the text is like a poor and beggarly person, utterly lacking even the most basic necessity of earthly bread. And when Jesus mentions those who thirst, he does not introduce an altogether different concept, but he develops the idea of poverty even further. Standing behind the word “thirst” is the idea of painful, even severe, deprivation.

Therefore, when taken as a whole, the idea of the passage is that of an ardent, intense desire after and seeking for that of which the soul is utterly impoverished and apart from which the soul perishes everlastingly. The citizens of the kingdom of heaven hunger and thirst after righteousness. That righteousness is the object of all their longings, of all their desires. Their hearts yearn, yea, even pant, after that righteousness. Thoughts of that righteousness constantly present themselves before the citizens’ minds.

The citizens of the kingdom hunger and thirst after righteousness from the position of those who are deeply impressed by the reality of their utter lack of any righteousness. This ought not to be surprising, for the same ones who hunger and thirst after righteousness are also poor in spirit. The poor in spirit are those who have an acute awareness of their own miserable condition before God by nature. They confess before God the enormity of their debts, which they owe to God on account of their sin in Adam and their own actual transgressions. Before God they see themselves as nothing and as having nothing to commend themselves unto God. While all men have this debt with God, not all men perceive the reality of this debt. And so it is with man’s need of righteousness.

While all men possess such a dire need of righteousness, not all men perceive or acknowledge that need. Man gives evidence to that. Man gives evidence to that especially when man considers himself to be something and goes about to establish his own righteousness. Unbelief in man always refuses to acknowledge that man is unrighteous, and therefore man also refuses to acknowledge his need of righteousness. From the beginning man has denied his great need of righteousness. From wicked Cain, who slew his brother Abel because he saw that Abel’s works were righteous and that his were wicked, man has always denied his need of righteousness. Man must always contribute something.

The very same unbelief can reveal itself in the church too. Unbelief in the church manifests itself particularly in any doctrine of works-righteousness. Unbelief in the church reveals itself in any doctrine that teaches that man’s act of faith, act of repentance, or obedience to the law of God is the whole or part of his righteousness before God. Unbelief comes in the form of those who teach that besides the perfect obedience and atoning death of Christ, whereby he merited perfect righteousness for his elect, there is that which man must do to be saved. Christ is no longer the whole of your righteousness before God. You must still do something. All forms of works-righteousness are anathema to the citizens of the kingdom who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for the citizens of the kingdom are also meek. The meek consider Jehovah. They do not consider themselves as anything. The meek consider Jehovah, and they wait patiently upon him. Their rest is in Jehovah, so that whereas they have no goodness, no holiness, no righteousness in themselves, Jehovah God is their goodness, their holiness, and their righteousness.

Only the citizens of the kingdom truly hunger and thirst after righteousness. That is because the citizens of the kingdom have faith. Faith alone hungers and thirsts after righteousness. That is simply what faith does. Faith does not go about to establish its own righteousness. Neither is faith itself righteousness. Rather, faith ardently longs for and seeks after that righteousness which God worked out in Jesus Christ. Faith endures the loss of all things for righteousness’ sake. That one will not endure loss is a sign that he or she is not a citizen of the kingdom of heaven and does not hunger and thirst after righteousness. When people easily leave the church where the truth is preached because they hate the antithesis, or they hate some other doctrine of the Christian faith, it is simply the evidence that they are not the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. For it is a light thing for them to leave the kingdom of heaven as that kingdom has its visible manifestation in the world in the local, instituted church. It is a light thing to be outside the kingdom of God and Christ. However, faith will endure the loss of father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters for the sake of that righteousness. Faith seeks first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt. 6:33), for faith acknowledges that apart from that righteousness there is only cursing and everlasting destruction in hell. Such is the ardent desire of the hungry and thirsty that they must have righteousness.

The Explanation for Their Hungering and Thirsting

Imagine hearing Jesus’ words. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst? Who in all the world would ever willingly choose to hunger and thirst after righteousness? Man by nature does not hunger and thirst after righteousness. Man by nature will sooner go to hell than to acknowledge his need for righteousness. If man were faced with a hypothetical situation in which man could either perish everlastingly in hell or acknowledge his own unrighteousness, man would choose to perish. And the citizens of the kingdom possess that very same flesh by nature. That is why God must work in us this hungering and thirsting. And that is also why what we do can never be a condition upon which the blessing of God depends. All things in the kingdom, including the lives of its citizens, are of God, through God, and to God.

The hungering and thirsting of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven are rooted in God’s eternal counsel. There in the eternal counsel of God, God decreed that Jesus Christ should be the head of his kingdom and appointed to Christ the citizens of that kingdom whom God loved from before the foundation of the world. The hungry and thirsty were eternally before the mind of God. God’s counsel is not a mere blueprint. But the counsel of God is the living reality of all things, and all things in time and history are manifestations and the unfolding of that eternal counsel. Such is the effect of the counsel of God that the citizens’ hungering and thirsting are themselves blessings, which never did nor ever will depend upon anything in themselves.

For a man or woman to hunger and thirst after righteousness is a gift of grace from the king of the kingdom. God by his gracious rule enters the heart of the elect sinner by his word and Spirit and translates the sinner from out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. God lays hold of the sinner’s heart, breaking down all the sinner’s pride and works-righteousness; and God works faith in the sinner’s heart, so that the sinner ardently desires and longs for that righteousness of God which is in Jesus Christ.

The work of God whereby he causes his people to hunger and thirst after righteousness is a continual operation of the Spirit of God in their hearts. This must be the case because if left to themselves the people of God would desire everything else other than righteousness, for that new heart in which God works faith is surrounded on every side by the ruts of the old man of sin, who only ever desires unrighteousness and all that is displeasing to God. For this end, that the citizens of the kingdom should hunger and thirst after righteousness, God has ordained means. God works by his Spirit chiefly in the preaching of the gospel, and also through the use of the sacraments as visible signs and seals of that gospel, to increase and strengthen the faith of his elect, so that they more and more come to condemn themselves and their own unrighteousness and seek after that righteousness which is revealed in the gospel (Rom. 1:17).

The Blessedness of the Hungry and the Thirsty

Jesus declares the blessedness of those who do hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed from eternity. Blessed in Jesus Christ. Blessed unto the glory and honor of the name of God. To be blessed of God means the supreme happiness of man. In the first instance, it is a blessing that the citizens of the kingdom even hunger and thirst at all. Such a wonderful gift of grace it is to hunger and thirst after righteousness. Outside of that ardent desire for, that eager seeking after, that desperate longing for righteousness, all the pursuits of this life are vain and empty. What a miserable waste of life it is to be so consumed with the things of this world, which can never satisfy, and all the while to be blind to one’s greatest need, which is righteousness.

However, our Lord Jesus goes even further. Jesus declares the blessedness of those who hunger and thirst after righteousness: “for they shall be filled,” that is, filled with that same righteousness. And we may not misunderstand Jesus’ words here. It has been the labor of this series on the beatitudes to not understand them as so many do today, who make the blessing of God into some future reality that has yet to be known or experienced by the people of God. All too often that way of arguing lends itself to conditional theology. People do that all the time by making the reality of the blessing of God something that is realized and experienced in time in the way of man’s doing something. Some are even so bold as to speak of “a sequence of time and experience” in which God works with his people, so that there is a sort of mutual interdependence upon one another in time. They interpret the whole of sacred scripture from that lens, which is the lens of man’s experience, and thereby arrive at their theology. However, we may not interpret scripture in that way. Neither may we interpret the fourth beatitude in that way.

Rather, when Jesus says that those who hunger and thirst shall be filled, he is first establishing the absolute certainty of their being filled. There is a real relationship between hungering and thirsting after righteousness and being filled. That is significant. It is so significant that the only one who is filled is the one who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. However, that relationship is not a conditional relationship, so that in the way of hungering and thirsting, only then can a man or woman be filled. Such is the blessedness of the ones who hunger and thirst after righteousness that as certainly as they hunger and thirst after righteousness and feel that earnest desire within themselves, they are also filled, finding true satisfaction and all their needs supplied in that righteousness.

How is it that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are filled? The answer goes a long way in explaining the blessedness of those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. The hungry and the thirsty are satisfied through faith. Faith, which is our union with Jesus Christ, so that we receive all the benefits of Christ, including the righteousness that he merited all his life long and especially upon the tree of the cross when he bore all our sins and the wrath due unto us for them. Faith, which is the mouth of the soul. Faith, which is the instrument of our justification. The hungry and the thirsty shall be filled; that is, they shall receive that righteousness utterly passively. Faith, which hungers and thirsts after righteousness, receives from the very hand of God that righteousness that God himself worked out in Jesus Christ apart from any of man’s works.

Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are filled with that righteousness by faith alone. How utterly peculiar is that hungering and thirsting! The natural man who hungers and thirsts after earthly bread and water does not always have the assurance that he shall be filled. It is possible that a man should hunger and thirst after physical meat and drink and perish, not having his needs met. However, it is utterly impossible that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall not be filled. The same faith whereby that righteousness is received from the hand of God is itself an assured confidence of that blessed reality.

There is no room for uncertainty in the text. They shall be filled. They are filled now, so that by faith, in their own consciences and experiences, they hear the blessed verdict of God, “You are righteous. I find no fault in you. All your sins are freely forgiven for the sake of Jesus Christ.” The citizens of the kingdom hear that verdict from week to week in the preaching of the gospel, whereby God comes in judgment unto all who hear, either for salvation or damnation. In the preaching of the gospel and in the sacraments, which testify concerning that gospel, God comes and fills the hungry and thirsty by faith, imputing unto them the righteousness of Jesus Christ. God blesses the hungry and thirsty daily with his grace, so that their lives in this world are a continual hungering and thirsting and being filled. God never leaves them without righteousness, for apart from that righteousness, they would have no life in them and would certainly perish.

And the citizens of the kingdom can never lose that righteousness. They not only are certainly filled now, but they also shall be filled unto everlasting life. That is the promise of the text to those who hunger and thirst now. “Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled” (Luke 6:21). The citizens of the kingdom look with earnest expectations toward the kingdom that is to come in the new heavens and earth, wherein righteousness and peace shall dwell and the tabernacle of God shall be with men. Then the citizens of the kingdom shall have to strive no more with the weaknesses and infirmities of their flesh. Then shall they live in the perfect enjoyment of the righteousness that is theirs in Jesus Christ, world without end.