Hungering and Thirsting for Righteousness

“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6)

In November 1944, during World War II, thirty-six conscientious objectors participated in what would later be known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. For six months, scientists subjected these participants to semistarvation. The men lost more than a quarter of their body weight. They suffered physical effects, including extreme tiredness, protruding ribs, and sunken faces. They experienced mental and emotional effects, such as irritability and loss of motivation.¹

The purpose of the experiment was to study the effects of starvation and to determine the best method of rehabilitation for people severely deprived of food. Knowledge gained from the study was used to help those who had suffered during the war. The complete results of the experiment filled a 1385-page, 2-volume publication.

The participants said that during the experiment they became obsessed with eating. Greater than the physical discomfort was the mental torment of constantly thinking about food. Their starving bodies locked their attention on one need—food.

Jesus used hunger as a metaphor to describe the focused attention a person should have on another kind of need—a spiritual need. Jesus said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.” To hunger and thirst for something means to have an urgent desire for it. Louis Berkhof said, “When men really hunger and thirst spiritually, they feel that something is wanting, are conscious of the indispensable character of that which is lacking, and endeavor to obtain it.”²

What does it mean to hunger after righteousness? Righteousness, as used by Jesus in the Gospels, refers to living a life that is in right relationship with God. Living in right relationship with God means having actual, personal righteousness, not just imputed righteousness. To hunger for that kind of righteousness means to pursue freedom from sin. It means to cultivate a life of purity. It means to become imitators of Christ.

Even more, to hunger and thirst after righteousness means to desire a relationship with God Himself. Those seeking God desire to know His Son, Jesus Christ. They seek Christ in His Word. They seek Him in prayer. They seek Him in fellowship with His people. Their hunger for God makes Him the focused priority in their lives. They hunger and thirst for God because He alone can satisfy the soul.

1. Spiritual Hunger and Thirst

God designed our bodies to experience the sense of hunger or thirst when they become depleted in energy, nutrients, or water. Hunger and thirst serve an essential purpose. They remind us to stop what we are doing and take in the nourishment that is essential to life. Whenever the need for food or water goes unmet for a long time, the desire for those things reaches the level of anguish. This anguish is like an alarm system, alerting us to our need. Without food and water, we will eventually die.

What is true of our earthly bodies is also true of our spiritual lives. Adam Clarke wrote, “As the body depends for its nourishment, health, and strength upon the earth, so does the soul upon heaven.”³ Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness recognize that Heaven holds out to us that which can satisfy the longing of our souls.

a. Spiritual hunger causes us to see our need for God.

In the parable Jesus told in Luke 15:11-32, the Prodigal Son ignored his spiritual needs while he indulged in the world. Eventually, his money was gone, and a famine struck, leaving him destitute. The rumblings in his belly awoke in him the realization of his spiritual needs. He began to hunger for righteousness.

The Prodigal Son illustrates the first four beatitudes.

• The Prodigal Son was poor in spirit. He humbly admitted, “[I] am no more worthy to be called thy son” (verse 19).

• He mourned for his sin. He confessed, “I have sinned” (verse 18).

• He became meek. He submitted to his father’s instruction. He no longer insisted that his father do for him what he wanted (verse 12 – “give me”), but humbly asked his father to do with him whatever his father willed (verse 19 – “make me as one of thy hired servants”).

• He hungered for a right relationship with his father (verse 18 – “I will arise and go to my father”).

Sinners who turn from their sin and seek God are like the Prodigal Son. They realize they are destitute apart from God, and the things of the world do not satisfy their souls. A spiritual hunger motivates them to arise and go to Christ. There they find that which satisfies.

Hungering and thirsting for righteousness is not just for prodigal sons. It is a defining characteristic of true disciples. All Christians should long for a closer relationship with Christ (Philippians 3:13-15).

Hungering and thirsting for God implies a degree of intensity. Those who are physically hungry and thirsty are eager for food and drink. The parched throat of the thirsty man and the hunger pangs of the starving man drive them to seek relief. Just so, those seeking God recognize that nothing else will meet the needs of their souls; indeed, all else has failed to meet those needs. And now, unless God Himself meets those needs, the soul will shrivel and die. Psalm 42:1-2 describes this type of intense longing for God: “As the hart [deer] panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”

b. Ignoring hunger leads to starvation.

If there is no food, eventually there will be no life. The ancient man was keenly aware of this. People relied on their crops to feed themselves. If drought, flood, insects, or war destroyed their crops, they went hungry. The historical books of the Bible record at least ten famines, and many more famines have gone unrecorded. Millions of people have died because of famine and starvation.

The vivid descriptions of starvation in the Bible reveal the writers’ acquaintance with it. The phrase “cleanness of teeth” described those who have nothing to eat (Amos 4:6). Jeremiah lamented, “Their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick. They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger: for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field” (Lamentations 4:8-9).

Spiritual starvation is also a sad reality. How many people are starving spiritually? Why are they starving? Some are ignoring the pangs of hunger in their souls. Their souls are malnourished and emaciated, not because there is no food, but because they do not eat.

Has anyone ever died because he kept forgetting to eat? Yet many Christians are starving spiritually because they are not eating, when all the while the food is in front of them! Their Bibles remain unopened. Church goes unattended. Prayer is forgotten. Fellowship with God’s people is neglected. They suffer from spiritual “cleanness of teeth.”

c. Hunger motivates us to work.

Hunger is a marvelous motivator. It creates a drive within us to make sure that we will not find ourselves hungry with nothing to eat. Hunger has spurred many men to find a job and work hard to keep it. Hunger has robbed the world of much laziness.

When Jesus pronounces the hungry blessed, He is saying that those who are motivated by spiritual hunger to get out of their easy chair and seek God will find refreshment and satisfaction that many others are missing. They will find refreshment for their weary souls, satisfaction to fill their empty hearts, and joy to lift up their downcast spirits.

Spiritual food is obtained by labor just like physical food is obtained by toil. Even in our age of processed food, food isn’t free. Just ask the farmer or the cook! Likewise, satisfying a hunger for God and His righteousness requires effort. The Lord says, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). Jesus promises, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Luke 11:9). Those are action words.

It takes discipline to set aside time to feed our souls. It may mean getting out of bed earlier (so we have time to read the Bible), going to sleep sooner (so we can get up on time), turning off the radio (so we can meditate on God’s Word), and learning how to study (so we can rightly interpret the Bible).

2. Spiritual Junk Food

What hinders our hunger and thirst for God? Sin does. Bitterness, lust, and evil speaking will ruin our appetite for God. Sin in our hearts is like poison. It makes us spiritually sick and will eventually destroy us. One sin that is poisoning many souls today is pornography (Matthew 5:28). Smartphones have made this vice universally available, streamed into any secret corner without anyone knowing—except God. This poison will ruin our appetite for God.

If sin is like poison, then many other seemingly good things are like junk food. Just like snacking on junk food can spoil our appetite for a nutritious meal, so time consumed with social media, sports, and long hours at work can dull our appetite for God.

The expository preacher D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “I suggest that if we are truly hungering and thirsting after righteousness we shall not only avoid things that we know to be bad and harmful, we shall even avoid things that tend to dull or take the edge off our spiritual appetites. There are so many things like that, things that are quite harmless in themselves and which are perfectly legitimate. Yet if you find that you are spending much of your time with them, and that you desire the things of God less, you must avoid them.”⁴

a. Too full

If we snack all day on chocolate bars and potato chips, we will have little appetite for fruits and vegetables. A person may have a full stomach and yet suffer from malnutrition because of an improper diet. Just so, Christians may fill their hearts and minds with “junk food” and, as a result, have no room for the “meat and potatoes” of God’s Word. Our lives may be so full of other pursuits that we have no room left to hunger after righteousness.

Jesus warned, “Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger” (Luke 6:25). Those who are full of the things of this earth and have no room for the righteousness of God will someday find that they have neither the good things of earth nor the good things of Heaven.

The people of Israel tried to satisfy their spiritual needs with idolatry. In Jeremiah 2:13, the Lord compared Himself to a fountain of living water, and idols to a broken cistern. He said, “My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”

A fountain of living waters is a spring out of which flows fresh, clear, bubbling water. It was the purest and most refreshing water available. In contrast, idols were like cisterns. Cisterns were underground reservoirs cut into the rock. Rainwater filled the cisterns during the rainy season, supplying people with water during the dry season. In the summer months, the water in the cistern became stagnant and scummy. It was grossly inferior to a fountain of living water.

The idols Israel worshiped were not only like cisterns, they were broken cisterns. The cisterns had cracks in the walls, allowing the water to leak out. The result was that partway through the dry season, the cistern went dry. There was no more water to quench their thirst. This analogy of a broken cistern illustrates Jesus’ woe to those who are full now. Are you quenching your thirst with things other than God? Eventually, you will find your cistern has gone dry.

We may not worship idols, but Jesus warned of being choked “with cares and riches and pleasures of this life” (Luke 8:14). When we are too full with these things, we have no room for Christ. When cares and riches and pleasures are no more, what then will you have?

b. Too busy

Sometimes we may be too busy to hunger after Christ. Martha was too busy. She had too much to do and no time to sit at the Master’s feet and hear His word like her sister did. Finally, Martha took time out of her busy schedule to talk to Jesus. She said, “Lord, make my lazy sister come help me!” (author’s paraphrase). Jesus replied, “Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42). Martha wanted to satisfy the hunger of her guests. She had not noticed that what they were hungering after was not in her kitchen.

If we don’t have time for God, we are busier than God ever intended us to be. Saying that we have no time for God is another way of saying that God is not all that important to us. There will be times in our lives when time alone with God is scarce. Motherhood especially can be straining when little ones constantly demand our care. But if we are truly thirsting, we will find time, even if it is only a few minutes.

One lesson we learn from Martha is that even good things, such as Christian ministry, can distract us from that which is even more important. Often, important things go undone simply because we haven’t scheduled time for them. That is why it is best to set aside a specific time each day to spend with God in His Word, seeking “instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

Few people are malnourished because they are too busy to eat. Yet many Christians are spiritually underfed because they think themselves too busy to seek God.

c. Too boring

Perhaps you say, “Pursuing holiness is boring. Many other things are more exciting.” You may be right. But I do not wish to measure the Christian life by the standard of excitement. I prefer to measure it by the standard of satisfaction. Excitement is like a firecracker: it makes a bang and a flash, and then it is gone. Satisfaction is something that abides even after the bang and the flash are gone. It abides even if there is no bang or flash. Satisfaction in Christ abides forever.

People can spend hours watching movies, reading novels, perusing magazines, keeping up with their favorite sports teams, or chasing a little white ball around the golf course. But never a minute have they for God. According to statistics, Americans, on average, spend more than four hours a day on their smartphones. The beeps and the messages popping up keep us going back to the screen. Faintly in the background, we have a gnawing spiritual hunger. If we put our phones down long enough, we may notice it. It is a hunger that won’t be satisfied by excitement, but only by Christ.

d. Too difficult

Some may say that hungering and thirsting after righteousness doesn’t work because following Christ is too difficult. Jesus said it wouldn’t be easy. The teachings of Christ are a high standard. An apostle who knew something about hard times once reminded a young preacher that the Christian life is like a war (it takes everything we’ve got), a race (it’s grueling), and farming (think of hard labor). Paul encouraged Timothy to “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1-6). God will help us.

Hebrews 5:11-14 speaks to some believers who had stopped growing. There was much that they should have already learned about Christ, but they had grown “dull of hearing.” That is, they did not exert the effort needed to understand what they were hearing. They were content to drink milk like infants rather than chew meat like adults. These believers had stopped pursuing righteousness.

Hungering for righteousness is a lifelong character trait of the disciple. We need to keep on learning to know Christ and overcoming sin. The Christian life is like climbing to the peak of a mountain. Along the trail are many little plateaus, and clustered on those plateaus are Christians who have stopped climbing. They are content with immature righteousness and with their sins that yet remain. Brother, sister, keep climbing!

3. Spiritual Satisfaction

Jesus promised that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled. That is, they will eat and be satisfied.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life . . . This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die” (John 6:48-50). He also said, “Whosoever drinketh of this [earthly] water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13-14).

The things of earth do not satisfy soul-hunger. Isaiah made that clear when he said, “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not?” (Isaiah 55:2). But there is something, actually Someone, who satisfies. You can find satisfaction by surrendering your will to Christ, by believing that He died and rose from the dead, and by living for His kingdom.

Jesus is calling us to hunger and thirst for righteousness – to hunger for a life lived in right relationship with Him. He wants us desire Him the same way that a starving man craves food.

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