The Beatitude Life: 4, Hungering and Thirsting for Righteousness

To explain this beatitude, I will again use some excerpts from an E-sword commentary, the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, EBC:

…for “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him,” and which His ambassador wrapped up in that great word “Blessed,” the key-note of the Gospel of the Kingdom…For observe wherein our new King finds the universal weal. We cannot follow the beatitudes one by one; but glancing over them we see, running through them all, this great truth-that blessedness is essentially spiritual, that it depends not so much on a man’s condition as on his character, not so much on what he has as on what he is.

It is not a Royal Academy of the spiritually noble and great. Its line seems rather to stretch down to the lowest, for who else are the poor in spirit? And the mourners and the meek are no elect classes of nature’s nobility. On the other hand, however, it runs up to heights even quite out of sight of the easy-going virtue of the day; for those who belong to this kingdom are men full of eager aspirations, bent on heart purity, given to efforts for the good of others, ready even to suffer the loss of all things for truth and righteousness’ sake…The foundations of common morality are of course assumed, as is made specially evident in the next division of the great discourse; but it would have been quite misleading had the Herald of heaven’s kingdom said “Blessed are the honest.” or “Blessed is the man who tells no lies.” The common virtues are quite indispensable; but there must be something beyond these-first a sense of need of something far higher and better, then a hungering and thirsting after it, and as a necessary consequence some attainment of it, in order to citizenship in the kingdom of heaven and enjoyment of its blessedness.

And following are a couple of lines plucked from Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible:    …as the body depends for its nourishment, health, and strength upon the earth, so does the soul upon heaven. Heavenly things cannot support the body; they are not suited to its nature: earthly things cannot support the soul, for the same reason… Now, as God never inspires a prayer but with a design to answer it, he who hungers and thirsts after the full salvation of God, may depend on being speedily and effectually blessed or satisfied, well-fed, as the word χορτασθησονται implies.

I really don’t have to add much to the above; however, I want to remind the reader that if you know poverty of spirit and mourning for your sin those will compel you towards submission and hungering for righteousness.

The major point to be grasped by my posts on the beatitude life thus far is that none of this is possible unless you are real with God about your sinfulness (and with other people as needed). That opens the door to the rest. Denial of sin in any of its forms (see hindrances in post 2b), is like putting a lock on the narrow gate and way of blessedness.

If you are a born-again Christian, then may God move you to cry out for such blessings like the writer of Proverbs 2:1-5; or the psalmist of 119:29 that cried for God to enable him to quit lying to himself. These are the types of things we are told to pray for in the Bible.