Righteousness

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Have you ever fasted?  Have you ever wondered where your next meal would come from?  Have you ever felt like you needed a drink of water or you would surely die?

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines “righteousness as: 1: acting in accord with divine or moral law : free from guilt or sin; 2a : morally right or justifiable, a righteous decision; or 2b : arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality, righteous indignation.”  Strong’s Bible Dictionary says it means “correct, righteous, innocent, just, justice, right”.  Time and again, when there are multiple definitions for a strange word, all of them are informative.  

First and foremost, we should hunger and thirst to be free from guilt or sin, to act in accordance with God’s Laws as though we would die if we were not able to do it.  Paradoxically, I would suggest that, having admitted our sinfulness, mourned for our sin and asked the Holy Spirit to come live in our hearts, our very lives do NOT depend on our every action.  We cannot earn our forgiveness. We are saved by His Grace alone, through faith, that none should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). However, our every action should shine forth with the light of God’s love, with our gratitude for his sacrifice on the cross.  Jesus comes back to this notion in Matthew 7 when he commands us “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”  

I also like the notion of standing up for the poor and those who cannot stand up for themselves, to seek justice as though our very lives depended on it.  However, we must guard against coming across as “holier than thou”.  “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye (Matt 7:3)?” 

CS Lewis put it so well: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

If we stand up on behalf of the oppressed, it can lead to oppressing the oppressor.  That is where the next verse comes in.