“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” – Jesus (Matthew 5:6, ESV).
What is righteousness, why would we want it, and how do we get it?
What Righteous Is
In the Bible, “righteousness” simply means “doing what is right” (as God defines “right”).
In fact, the Greek word in Matthew 5:6, δικαιοσύνη, is sometimes just translated “right.”
For example, in Acts 10:35, when Peter is talking about Gentiles coming to faith, Peter says he now understands that God welcomes anyone who “fears him and does what is right.” That phrase “does what is right” is literally “does righteousness.” Righteousness is doing what is right.
Or, consider what Paul says in Ephesians five. In Ephesians five, Paul says, “[8]…Walk as children of light [9] (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), [10] and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8-9). To walk as a child of God is to do what is right and pleasing to the Lord, and yes, you guessed it, the word “right” is the same word in Matthew 5:6, “righteousness.” Righteousness is doing what is right.
One more example. In Book of Revelation, the angel tells John, “Let…the righteous still do right” (Revelation 22:11). And there again the verse literally reads, “Let the righteous do righteousness.” Righteousness is doing what is right, and a righteous person is someone who does or has done what is right. That’s righteousness in a nutshell.
Now, from there, as many commentators note (Stott; cf. Carson, Llyod-Jones), righteousness in the Bible is talked about in three different ways: Righteousness as Right Living, Righteousness as Right World, and Righteousness as Right standing before God. Consider each…
Right living. This is righteousness as me, personally, doing what is right in my life. Some of the scripture examples above get at this idea. So longing for this type of righteousness is me saying I want to be righteous in the sense that I want to actually be better and do good in my life. I want to be a husband that never spews a harsh word to my wife. I want to be an understanding father who never sets his children’s teeth on edge. I want to be free from the passions and lusts of my flesh. That’s one dimension of righteousness.
Right world. This is righteousness with a social dimension. This is righteousness as the right thing being done in all the world. So this is like what Jesus says in Matthew 6:33, where he says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” So here, seeking righteousness is tied to this larger mission of seeing God’s kingdom come on the whole earth. Longing for this dimension of righteousness is us saying we want righteousness in the sense that we want the world set right. We want the sick made well. We want the poor fed. We want the orphan and widow and immigrant cared for. We want no partiality. We want the world set right. That is also righteousness.
Right standing before God. This question of right standing with God is the major question of the Book of Romans. If being righteous means doing and having done what is right and if we must be righteous to have fellowship with God, how can we ever be considered truly, completely righteous before God? That’s a problem. It’s a problem because no matter how many right things we do, we still have a long and growing list of wrong things we’ve done or still do. So this kind of longing for righteousness is me saying, “I want God to look at me and say, ‘Well done good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.’”
With this definition and these different dimensions, I think you can start to see why you might long for righteousness. Why you should hunger and thirst for righteousness…
Why We Want Righteousness
Righteousness represents every true and highest good we could desire.
We long for personal righteousness because we know the dreadful state of being stuck in sin. We have deep regrets and shame. And we don’t want to go back. We have seen what our sin does to us. And we’ve seen what it does to the people we love. We have hurt people. We have brought tears and pain to people we care about, and we don’t want to do that again. We have been weighed down by guilt and burdened in shame, and we do not want to go there again. We long for righteousness, to be the kind of person who does was is right and good and pleasing. We long for an us, for a me, that does right. “Wrong” is painful; we want what is right. We want personal righteousness.
We long for righteousness in the world because we long for a world made right. We want children and grandchildren restored to their parents. We want husbands and wives to stay together. We want cancer to be eradicated. We want suffering to stop. We want tears wiped away. We want wars to cease. We want murders to stop. We want fairness and justice. We want peace and safety. We want guns melted into garden spades. We long for a world made right. We want righteousness in the world.
And we long for righteousness before God because we want a right relationship with our Maker. We’re not sure how, but we really wish we could stand before the Lord as someone who has mattered, as someone who has done well and done good. Deep down, I think most everyone, Christian or otherwise, if laboring so hard for this, for someone to say they are good enough. We long for a sense of right standing before the one Authority whose opinion is everything. We want righteousness before God.
Righteousness may sound like a very churchy word, but it is actually the very thing you should want. You may not have even realized it, but this is the very thing you’ve longed for. For you to be right, to do right, for the world to be right… that’s everything!
What does a broken vending machine say? “Out of order.” What we want is a world that is back in order, a world made right. That’s righteousness, a world, a life, a soul, in order, made right.
How We Get Righteousness
In what way will our hungering and thirsting for righteousness be satisfied? In every way. How? Through Jesus.
Right standing. Our need for righteousness before God, our need for right standing before God, will be fully fulfilled apart from our own good works and through Jesus substitutionary death, which is great news because if right standing before the Lord depended on our own works of righteousness we’d be in big trouble. Paul explains in Romans that we can now be declared righteous before God because of Christ’s death in our place. And all who entrust themselves to Jesus receive this salvation. Romans 4:5 says, “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness…” So, Christ is our voluntary scapegoat, who takes away our sins. When we look to him to do this (which is what faith in him is), he does it. So, by claiming Christ for yourself, your longing for personal rightness before God can be fully and completely filled, right now, even today.
Right living. When Jesus defeats sin and satan and death, one of the prizes we receive in our cleansing and freedom is the Holy Spirit (see Romans 6:22; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2). In 2 Corinthians 5:5, Paul says we have been given the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our salvation. When you are saved, you receive God’s Spirit. And His Spirit works in you to change you from the inside out. Paul says in Ephesians 2:22, “In him [Jesus] you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” You are being made into a holy, righteous place by the Spirit. So, how does right living relate to being filled the Spirit? The Holy Spirit is empowering you and teaching you how to be righteous. It may be slow going, but you will, little by little, grow to be increasingly free from sin and increasingly motivated and energized towards right acts like love and patience and kindness and generosity and forgiveness. That longing to live rightly, to be free of sin and its harms, is increasingly fulfilled by the Holy Spirit which Christ has given.
Right world. What of our broken world and our longing to see it all set right? Jesus has defeated all the enemies of this place: sin, satan, and death. Now, when we say defeated, we mean each has received its mortal blow. In their death throes, they still can render us some harm now, but their demise is certain. And that means the Kingdom of God is winning! It is advancing. And indeed, with joy and now certainty, we look forward to the day when everything will be made right. We are certain because Jesus rose from the grave, meaning satan didn’t have the last word, meaning sin had been forgiven, and meaning that no disease or death could not be overcome. So we look at the resurrected Jesus and know for certain that our desire for a right world will be satisfied. In Acts 3:21, Peter says that God will restore all things. And we get a glimpse of that in the vision of Revelation where we see a world where all things are made new (Revelation 21:5).
Seek Righteousness
So we should actively hunger and thirst for righteousness. We should desire it and pray for it and strive for it and try to walk by the Spirit every day so as to grow in righteousness. But the ultimate fulfilling of this desire comes to us by the hand of our Savior, Jesus. Our way to righteousness will not arrive through our own personal improvement plans. No self help book or protocol or rule or philosophy can get us over the line. We need God to do something. We need a radical renovation of our heart. We need God to get a hold of us. The change we need is so radical that Jesus calls it rebirth. We need to be reborn by the Spirit of God. We must start here, looking to the Lord. He is our hope for the righteousness we want. And we should want it.
Blessed will we be if we hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Christ for we shall be filled!
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