By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
We’re just in the beginning of our study of the Sermon On the Mount and today we’re looking at Matt 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Hunger we understand. And it’s not just about our stomachs (unless you’re a teenager). Hunger is the drive for something that we truly want or maybe even need. We can hunger for truth, for power, for justice, for money.
All kinds of things we want bad enough to truly hunger for them. Thirst is about the same. We know that we can live for days and days without food but we can’t go more than a few days without something to drink.
There’s a greater urgency when we look at it like that. We have a thirst for success, recognition, knowledge, meaning.
But what is “righteousness”? It’s one of those “Chrisian-ese” words, one of those “theological “ words. Today’s pastors are often trained not to use big words like that. “How can you relate to the guy on the street when you use technical terms like “Righteousness”?”
While there is some validity in that, forgive me if I choose to just teach you what it means if you don’t already know. That way, we can talk about it without using synonyms.
Theologically, righteousness is the God-given quality imputed to man upon believing in Christ that allows man to be in a right relationship with God. That simply means that we cannot be righteous on our own.
We need to be given it by God, and it comes when we accept Christ as our savior. Righteousness is to be in good standing or “rightly” related to God.
Our sin keeps us from being right with God, but Christ’s death and resurrection made it possible to remove all our sin and opened the means for God to declare or give or impute his righteousness to us. It’s his gift. We can’t earn it. That’s called “Positional” Righteousness.
Now, that said, that’s actually not the kind of righteousness this verse is talking about. We don’t need to hunger and thirst for something we already have.
Here we are talking about being rightly related to the world and people. God assigned Adam and Eve the role of subduing the earth. That doesn’t mean conquering it but being rightly related to it as the overseer or steward.
We have a responsibility to make sure the earth is cared for and not wasted or abused. Caring for the resources on our planet and beyond is part of our charge. We need to be aware of what is being done to sustain the earth.
Things like knowing that recycling is almost a myth. Less than 4% of the products that can be recycled are actually recycled. Knowing that the freshwater on earth is limited and that allowing certain agricultural practices and mega-farming practices to pollute it is wrong.
Just like we finally realized that air pollution is real and must be dealt with, we need to look at the other things that man does that destroy our earth and atmosphere and find better ways to do it.
Ways that help to reclaim our resources. We need to be in the right standing with the world we live in, and that need must drive us to be involved. We also need to be in the right standing with other people.
We need to hunger and thirst for justice and peace whether that be in Ukraine, Gaza, Kosovo, Sudan, Ethiopia or in Bryan Ohio or between Democrats and Republicans or better equality between the “haves” and “have-nots’, between the blacks and whites, etc..
If truth be told, we lack the right standing with many of our neighbors and fellow church goers. Maybe we aren’t positioned to do more than pray for the bigger conflicts, but we are positioned to be passionate that we are righteous with our neighbors and family.
Are you alienated from a family member? Do you truly hunger and thirst to restore that relationship? Do you act on that hunger? Have you reached out? Maybe apologize? Maybe set your pride aside and tried to be understanding of them regardless of how bull-headed that they seem?
What about that co-worker who just hates you for no good reason (that you can admit to)? There’s a third hunger that we need and that is a hunger and thirst for morality.
Morality means living life by God’s standards. We need to be passionate about representing Him well with those who know us. Am I driven to be a moral light in the spiritual darkness of my world?
Will I make the correct moral choice when I have the chance to lie or cheat? Will I guard my speech and thoughts so that I take every thought captive to the cause of Christ?
How driven am I to honestly represent God on earth? David declared it well in Ps 63:1 “You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” Is that the cry of your heart? Is that righteousness what you truly hunger and thirst for?
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.