Sunday, February 06, 2011

Matthew 5:6 - Do you Hunger For God's Righteousness?

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."
(Matthew 5:6 ESV)

Do we feel despair or satisfaction regarding our spiritual condition? We can say one or the other and be wrong. If we say we aren't satisfied, it can be because we want God to solve all of our problems because we don't like the situation we are in. Much of the world today looks for God to save them from their situation or some kind of oppression. The problem is that Jesus did not come to save us from that. There is always going to be a situation we aren't going to be happy with.

Jesus came to save us from our sins. The question is not whether we are satisfied with our spiritual condition in relation to the place God has put us or with the amount of spiritual knowledge that we have. This verse refers to our desire to be conformed to God in the aspect of his justice. We are to hunger to be just as straight and free from corruption as God is. We are to hunger for the same mercy, love and hatred for our own sin as God has. Do you have this?

If we say that we are satisfied with our spiritual condition, we need to go back to week 3 and study Luke 18:9-14 again because we haven't learned the principle of the righteousness of God. We have not learned that repentance is a gift of God only to those who realize their own injustice and depravity who cry out to God for mercy. In fact, if we are hungering for something, we do not possess any of it and need it for survival. That is why desiring to be as just and straight as God, is compared to having a hunger. It should be as necessary to us as food. If we haven't eaten for a week then we will be very hungry.

This is how we should progressively be. We at the beginning hunger for God's righteousness and think that we are doing well. But after years of living the Christian life we should many times more hambriente for it that at the beginning. If we think that we have lived the Christian life so long that we are almost at the point of having God's justice then we show how far we actually are from it. If we aren't hungering for God's justice we must think we have much of our own so why should we need God's?

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