Matt 5:1–12 — The Dynamics of Kingdom Righteousness: Beatitude 4

The Beatitudes as Blessings in Christ

We come now to the fourth Beatitude: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6).

Before considering it, we should recall that the Beatitudes are not conditional statements. At first glance, we might read “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” as though meekness were a condition we must fulfill to obtain the inheritance. Yet that reading overlooks the opening word: “Blessed.” Jesus is making a promise and pronouncing a blessing. The Beatitudes describe the blessings we have in Christ.

He is speaking to his disciples, those who have heard his call to follow him. In Matthew 4, he proclaimed, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” and invited the disciples to follow him. They responded and entered his kingdom of grace, salvation, and forgiveness. His healings were signs of the forgiving grace that the kingdom brings.

Jesus therefore addresses people who already belong to his kingdom. In effect, he tells them: You have been brought out of darkness into light and transferred into my kingdom of grace and salvation. Although you experience poverty of spirit, mourning, and meekness in this present life, you are blessed. You will inherit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to you.

These statements of fact also have implications for how disciples should live. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” identifies what is true of Christ’s people, but it also directs us toward our calling. We are to be peacemakers, encouraged by the knowledge that we are God’s children.

Jesus develops that theme later in Matthew 5 when he tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, so that we may be sons of our Father in heaven. Our Father shows kindness even to the evil, giving them the benefits of his common grace. We should resemble him by loving our enemies and making peace.

The Beatitudes, then, do speak to our conduct. Yet their primary purpose is to pronounce blessings that describe what it means to be a Christian. Every Christian is poor in spirit, meek, and hungry for righteousness. If you have no hunger and thirst for righteousness, you are not a Christian in the first place. Jesus is not telling us to acquire these qualities as a way of earning his blessing.

With that in mind, let us consider the identity, the hope, and the blessedness of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

The Identity of the Hungry

Who are these hungry and thirsty people? To answer that question, we must first understand what Jesus means by “righteousness.”

The Righteousness of the Kingdom

Righteousness is a central theme of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:20 states it clearly: unless the disciples’ righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, they will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is describing the righteousness to which he calls his disciples.

The Old Testament sometimes uses “righteousness” or “justice” in the sense of vindication. In the Psalms, for example, the wicked persecute the godly, who cry out for God to intervene. Psalm 103:6 says, “The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.” God takes up his people’s cause, vindicating them by judging their persecutors.

We might therefore interpret the fourth Beatitude as a blessing upon those who long for justice for the oppressed. That is a possible reading, but I do not think it best fits this context. This Beatitude does not describe a controversy between the wicked and the godly in which God is being asked to intervene.

The other uses of righteousness in the Sermon on the Mount concern ethical righteousness: being obedient to God, keeping his commandments, and living in a way that pleases him. I therefore understand this hunger and thirst as a desire for ethical righteousness—the righteousness of the kingdom that Christ calls his disciples to pursue.

Spiritual Hunger and Thirst

The language of hunger and thirst also has a rich biblical background. We find it especially in the Psalms and Isaiah, and again in Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1.

Having received the announcement that she would bear the Messiah, Mary praises God: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.” She goes on to describe how God brings down the mighty from their thrones and exalts those of humble estate. “He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Luke 1:53).

Mary draws on Old Testament language to describe God’s people as those who know their need. They are hungry and thirsty, unlike the self-sufficient person who thinks that wealth has removed every cause for concern.

This helps explain why Jesus says that it is difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom. Wealth does not in itself disqualify someone from heaven. Yet it often encourages pride and self-sufficiency, making it harder to recognize spiritual need. The Spirit can certainly bring a wealthy person to that recognition, but material comfort can obscure it.

Mary speaks of spiritual hunger and riches as she celebrates what God is doing through Christ’s incarnation. God has shown mercy to her, a poor and seemingly unimportant young woman, and has chosen to bring his great salvation through her.

The Psalms express the same longing through thirst. Psalm 42:2 says, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” Psalm 63:1 likewise declares, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

This biblical background, together with the context in Matthew, points to a spiritual hunger and thirst for the righteousness of the kingdom.

Knowing Our Lack and Desiring to Be Like Christ

Such hunger begins with recognizing that we lack righteousness. This is fundamental to life in the kingdom. When we considered Jesus’ call in Matthew 4:17 to repent, we saw that the first part of repentance is conviction of sin. We acknowledge our sin and allow its reality to convict us and expose our need.

Spiritual hunger moves from knowing our lack to desiring righteousness. We do not desire it as grounds for boasting, as the scribes and Pharisees did. Their pursuit rested on human traditions and outward conformity to commandments, giving them something to display before others. The hunger Jesus describes is a humble, sincere desire for the righteousness of his kingdom.

It is a desire to be like Christ. He perfectly embodies everything he teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. To hunger for this righteousness is to long for his character to take shape in us.

Desiring God Himself

There is another dimension to this hunger. In Matthew 6, Jesus places righteousness in an explicitly God-centered context. He tells his disciples not to be anxious over their food and clothing. The Gentiles seek after these earthly necessities, but his disciples are to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:33).

Christ is the perfect embodiment of righteousness, and we desire to resemble him. Yet ultimately this hunger is a desire for God himself. Jesus continually speaks of the kingdom as belonging to God, coming from God, and serving God’s glory. God’s holiness, righteousness, kingship, and perfect justice stand at its center.

Jesus preaches the gospel of the kingdom, a message of grace and salvation that brings us into this kingdom and reorients our lives toward God’s glory.

Herman Ridderbos’s book The Coming of the Kingdom has helped me understand Jesus’ teaching. The parables and the Sermon on the Mount contain difficult passages, but Ridderbos brings their central concern with God’s kingdom into focus. He writes:

The coming of the kingdom is first of all the display of the divine glory, the reassertion and maintenance of God’s rights on earth. (pp. 20–21)

When we considered Matthew 4, I emphasized that the kingdom is a kingdom of salvation and grace. That remains essential. Matthew calls Jesus’ preaching “the gospel of the kingdom,” and his miracles, especially his healings, are outward signs of its inward grace.

Consider the paralyzed man. Jesus first tells him that his sins are forgiven. The religious leaders object because only God can forgive sins. Jesus then asks which is easier: to declare his sins forgiven or to command him to rise and walk. The healing demonstrates his authority to forgive. It is a sign of salvation, atonement, and grace.

Jesus is preaching the gospel before his death and resurrection. We must not set that truth aside for a moment. Yet alongside it we must recognize the emphasis Ridderbos identifies: the kingdom displays divine glory and establishes God’s rights on earth. It is the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven.

As God’s incarnate Son and the mediator who reveals the Father, Jesus brings salvation, forgiveness, and healing in order to reconcile us to God. His grace reorients our thinking so that God himself—his glory, holiness, and righteousness—stands at the center.

Seen in that light, hungering and thirsting for righteousness is ultimately hungering and thirsting for God. It is the longing of the psalmist whose soul pants for the living God and desires to appear before him.

Repentance toward God

The hungry are those who recognize their lack of righteousness and come to Christ to have their need met. Through him, their lives are redirected toward God’s greatness, glory, holiness, and justice. They are repentant people, convicted of sin and turning to God.

Acts 20 gives us a helpful summary of this response. Speaking to the elders of Ephesus, Paul anticipates imprisonment in Jerusalem and tells them that they will not see him again. He recalls teaching publicly and from house to house, withholding nothing profitable, and “testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21).

The apostles preached Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. The response they called for was repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice particularly that phrase “repentance toward God.”

We often think of repentance chiefly as acknowledging, confessing, and turning from sin. Those are indispensable. Yet Paul’s phrase captures its positive direction. Repentance is more than sorrow over how far we fall short. It turns the whole soul toward God.

We can reduce repentance to an absorption with our own guilt, continually lamenting that we are sinners. Grief over sin is necessary, but it is not the whole of repentance. Repentance reorients us toward God himself, awakening a longing for him and his glory. We remain aware of our guilt and failure, yet God becomes our focus.

The longing of the repentant heart is that our lives should conform to God’s greatness, his kingdom, his glory, and his honor. We hunger for that righteousness because we desire him. Ultimately, this is a longing for heaven itself.

The Hope of the Hungry

Jesus promises that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness “shall be satisfied.” This language, too, comes from the Old Testament.

God’s Promise to Satisfy His People

Psalm 17:15 says, “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” I understand that awakening as pointing toward the resurrection: at the last day, the psalmist will be satisfied with God’s likeness.

Psalm 107:9 declares, “He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.”

Isaiah 65:13 places this promise in a context looking ahead to the new heavens and new earth. God contrasts the destiny of his servants with that of the wicked:

Behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, but you shall be put to shame.

Jeremiah 31, in the setting of the promised new covenant, likewise says, “I will feast the soul of the priests with abundance, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, declares the LORD” (v. 14).

When will this promised satisfaction come?

Righteousness Already Given in Christ

In one sense, we already receive satisfaction because Jesus has fulfilled all righteousness. At his baptism, John initially objected to baptizing him. Jesus answered that it was fitting for them to fulfill all righteousness (Matt. 3:15).

In his incarnation, Christ was born under the law and perfectly obeyed it. He brought in the everlasting righteousness foretold in Daniel 9. We already possess that righteousness, credited to our account, and our sins have been washed away by his blood.

Yet the complete satisfaction of our hunger belongs to the age to come. Only then will we be made perfectly holy and the deepest longing of our souls be fully answered.

The Full Enjoyment of God

The Westminster Shorter Catechism expresses this hope beautifully in question 38: “What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?” Its answer says:

At the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity.

That final phrase deserves our attention: “made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity.” It recalls the catechism’s opening question, which identifies our chief end as glorifying God and enjoying him forever. At the resurrection, that purpose will be fully realized.

We have Christ’s righteousness and the forgiveness of our sins now. We also have the Holy Spirit as the down payment of our inheritance. Yet our enjoyment of God remains incomplete. The movement of our souls toward him in repentance has not reached its final goal.

We still live in this present age, in fallen and mortal bodies, amid sin, suffering, struggle, and difficulty. Our lives include sleep, work, and other necessities; we cannot devote every moment to the direct worship of God. We do not yet enjoy him with the fullness and perfection for which we long.

But we will. We will be made perfectly blessed in the full enjoyment of God for all eternity. Our hunger will be satisfied.

The Holy Spirit gives us a foretaste of that future now. As the down payment, he guarantees the full inheritance still to come. The beginning we already possess assures us that God will bring his work to completion.

Because we know that we will be satisfied, we receive a measure of that satisfaction already. We do not yet have perfect enjoyment, but our certainty gives us strength, courage, and comfort to live confidently in the Christian life.

This is the hope of the hungry: the full enjoyment of God forever.

The Blessedness of the Hungry

Hunger does not ordinarily sound like a blessing. Yet Jesus declares the hungry blessed because they will be satisfied.

We can paraphrase his words this way: Being a Christian means being dissatisfied with yourself, continually repenting and hungering for righteousness and for God himself. Those who believe that they already possess righteousness may despise you for this. Yet count it all joy, for your spiritual hunger will not remain unsatisfied. When you awake in his likeness, you will be filled.

The Hungry and the Self-Satisfied

Ironically, those who think themselves righteous, who believe that they have arrived and need nothing, are the ones who will not be satisfied. They do not possess the blessing Jesus describes.

Those who recognize their lack of righteousness, hunger for God, and humbly desire to become more like Christ are the blessed ones. They will be satisfied. Even now, while they hunger, the Spirit gives them a foretaste of the satisfaction to come.

Luke’s parallel makes this contrast explicit. Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied” (Luke 6:21). He also pronounces the corresponding woe: “Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry” (Luke 6:25).

This recalls Isaiah 65:13: God’s servants will eat while the wicked remain hungry. Jesus draws on that same reversal. Those who appear full now will discover their emptiness; those who know their need will be filled.

Righteousness as the Spirit’s Gift

Even in this life, we taste something of that satisfaction as Christ works righteousness in us by his Spirit. It is incomplete, but it is real.

This righteousness is not an achievement of the flesh. It is a gift of God’s kingdom. Jesus has fulfilled all righteousness, and as the fulfiller of the law he also gives us his Spirit. He baptizes us with the Spirit, and his righteousness overflows into our lives like a cup spilling over.

I am not speaking only of imputed righteousness, though that is certainly ours. The Spirit also brings about an actual change within us. The first evidence of that spiritual life is that we long for righteousness. It is not that we have kept every commandment and can congratulate ourselves on our progress. Rather, we know our lack and desire to resemble Christ more fully.

This righteousness does not arise from the determination simply to strain harder at obedience. That was the method of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus calls for a righteousness that exceeds theirs, a higher righteousness produced by the Spirit within us.

As we receive the gift of the kingdom, we receive Christ’s life. His life overflows into ours, making us more like him, enabling us to bear good fruit and display the kingdom’s reality. This happens because the kingdom has come in his person and work as a kingdom of grace and salvation.

The paralyzed man did not earn his healing through anything he had done or through any righteousness of his own. He received it as a gift. In the same way, the gospel of the kingdom comes to us with grace, life, and salvation. Through it, we enjoy the blessing of hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

Longing for Holiness Transforms Us Now

Our longing for complete sanctification will be satisfied in the age to come. We look forward to the day when sinful desires are removed and we are perfectly blessed in the full enjoyment of God.

How can such a longing fail to affect the way we live now? If your deepest desire is to be with Christ forever, free from sin and enjoying God perfectly, that desire must shape your present life.

Our obedience remains imperfect. As the Heidelberg Catechism says, even the holiest have “only a small beginning” of this obedience (Q. 114). Yet that beginning is real. We are being increasingly transformed into Christ’s image.

The blessedness of this work lies in its certain completion. We will finally attain the full enjoyment of God and the perfection for which we hunger in the age to come.