“BLESSED are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.” This is the fourth Beatitude and it follows naturally and necessarily from an experience of the first three. Indeed it is true to say that if the first three beatitude have been and are being experienced, then the result is that a person will hunger and thirst after righteousness. It is also true to say that if a person has not known what it is to experience being poor in spirit, mourning over sin, and meekness, then it hardly likely they will hunger and thirst after righteousness. It is only in the experience of the first three Beatitudes that a person begins to understand what true righteousness is and that they have a total lack of it.

It needs to be emphasised here that although these beatitudes express truth which can be understood by the mind and has to be understood by the mind, they are essentially a matter of experience. Unless God, through the Holy Spirit, works in our minds first, and then in our hearts, these things expressed in the Beatitudes will have no real meaning to the soul.

The first three Beatitudes have taught us and continue to teach us, that in ourselves there dwells no good thing. We see not just that we have committed sins, but that we have a sinful heart and disposition. Further we see that we are an offence to God and his just anger is directed towards us while we remain in this condition. We further will have appreciated how hateful our sin and sinful disposition is to God, and this has led us to see how horrid sin is, and be disgusted with the sinfulness within us. We will have come to realise also our lost and desperate condition in our sins, that we are dead towards God, and destined for hell and everlasting damnation. All this, which is perhaps not expressed in such codified way, will create in us a hunger and thirst after righteousness. We will realise that it is righteousness that we need if we are to be accepted by God, and reconciled to him, and we hunger after it because without it we feel and know we are lost. Further we shall begin to appreciate that in ourselves we have no means of obtaining righteousness or becoming righteous so that we are acceptable before God. We will hunger for righteousness because we are unable to see that we can do anything about the sins we have committed or that we are able to be sinless in the future.

We will realise that the righteousness that we need is the righteousness of God - that is the fact that the righteousness which alone is acceptable to God is a righteousness that is equivalent to his holy character both negatively and positively. We realise that it is not sufficient to have committed no sins, we must also express positively the love and holiness which is in God. Knowing we have no means of being righteous in this way before God, in our desperation we will be hungering and thirsting to have this righteousness in some other way, even though we do not know how this can possibly be. When a soul receives this righteousness, this hunger and thirst does not cease. It is still there because in this life we shall never be free from sin and our flesh will always be corrupt, and so we shall always be living with this hunger and thirst.

God looks into our soul. When we hunger and thirst he sees this deep desire, and it will be a deep desire if it is a true hunger. In fact God will see it because by his Spirit he has work this painful work in our soul, and so the promise that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be fulfilled.

What is this filling, and how is it bestowed? The righteousness that is bestowed is the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. He came into this world at the express will of God the Father. For this mission he took our nature upon him and became a man truly. He came to represent us and stand in our place. He came to be the second Adam to the fight and to the rescue. Our first parent Adam plunged us into this state of sin by his choice to be obedient to Satan. Christ came to free us from this dominion, and he did it by take our place before God. He lived a holy life for us, and then he took responsibility for our sins and suffered the just punishment of God for them by giving his life unto death on the cross and suffering the hell we deserve. By this great and victorious work, Jesus worked everlasting righteousness as our substitute and representative, as the second Adam. When we hunger and thirst after righteousness, God bestows this righteousness that Christ has won upon us. Christ’s righteousness is put to our account before God, and by this means God considers we have fulfilled all his righteousness, and we are accepted into his love and fellowship again.

This gift of righteousness is the filling spoken of in this Beatitude. It is bestowed as a gift. It covers all our sins. We are washed clean in the eyes of God, and before his law there is not accusation against us.

But this filling goes further. The gift of faith in Jesus which bestows upon us this gift of imputed righteousness, also joins us to Christ. We become one with Christ. We therefore died with him on the cross, and the old sinful self we were died then for ever. We were also joined with Christ in his resurrection, and were raised with Christ to new life. We were born again. We became a new creation. A new self now fills our being, though in this life it is expressed through this still sinful flesh. In this new self we are filled with righteousness. Paul speaks of this new creation in Ephesians 4 as being created to be like God in righteousness and true holiness. Let us notice exactly what the Apostle is telling us. Our new self risen with Christ is like God in character. We are holy with no taint of sin or corruption, and so God by his Spirit dwells within us. We are indeed filled with righteousness.

This does not mean in this life we have ceased to sin, and this is because in this life this new person we are, still resides in this sinful flesh which is part of this earthly body. As Paul says in Romans 7 when we sin it is not us that sins in our new creation, but sin that dwells in us, that is our sinful flesh still resident in this earthly body. In our new self we are holy, and because of this, sin can’t dominate us, and Satan has no more dominion over us, and our life is hid with Christ in God. We possess eternal life and are heirs of heaven, and heaven is our home.