He Satisfies Our Hunger with Holiness

When I was growing up, my family shared our daily evening meal at 5:30pm. The aroma of supper began to waft through the house half an hour before. When we heard the call “Supper’s ready! Come to the table!” the promptness of our response usually depended on the level of our interest in what we had smelled for the previous thirty minutes.

As our family assembled around the table and began to fill our plates, there was a clear nonnegotiable: We had to eat our vegetables. So, under silent (sometimes vocal) protest, I would grudgingly receive the minimum portion of cauliflower, broccoli, or brussels sprouts. I ate them because I had to. But the rest of my mom’s meals made my heart leap: homemade macaroni and cheese, ham, gourmet potatoes, meat loaf, sweet pickles, homemade apple sauce, strawberry jam. I’d eat until I was stuffed.

Matthew 5:6, the fourth of Jesus’s famous beatitudes, rings the dinner bell. It’s Jesus’s invitation to an eternal feast. It’s a beatitude of desire: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Jesus’s words are not mainly about what we think, believe, or do, but about what we want — what we crave.

And he says to us, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

Jesus Probes Our Desires

Jesus applies the language of physical appetite to righteousness. In context, righteousness refers to personal holiness, to concrete attitudes and acts of obedience to God’s will (Matthew 3:15; 5:10, 20), such as pursuing humility and patience and kindness, avoiding greed and envy and hatred, obeying parents, loving enemies, practicing generosity — and much, much more.

And here’s the crucial insight: Jesus isn’t addressing those who merely know or do righteousness; he’s addressing those who desire it. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Every other use of “hunger” and “thirst” in Matthew’s Gospel refers to a desire for literal food or drink. Jesus’s words are part of a rich biblical tradition. According to Psalm 19:9–10, “the rules of the Lord are . . . sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.” King David said of God’s presence, “My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food” (Psalm 63:5). Psalm 42:1–2 says, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” Sweet honey. Marbled steak. Cold water.

Jesus knows that we are not mere thinking or doing beings. Our hearts are central (Proverbs 4:23), and they don’t just know or choose — they feel and desire. Four hundred years ago, Henry Scougal observed that “the worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love” (The Life of God in the Soul of Man, 71). That’s why this beatitude of desire probes so deeply. What do we want? What makes us truly happy? Does personal holiness thrill us, or is it the green leafy vegetable of the Christian life? Do we obey God because we must, or do we crave obedience like I desired my mom’s cooking? Our answers teach us much about ourselves.

Jesus Embodies Godly Desires

There’s good news for us in Matthew 5:6. Not only does Jesus speak this beatitude; he also embodies and exemplifies it. Not only does he probe our desires, exposing their weaknesses and misplacements; he also shows us a better way. Jesus hungered and thirsted for righteousness — every day, on our behalf. God’s word was his food, sustenance, and life (Matthew 4:4). So was personal obedience to that word. He said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). Righteous deeds energized and satisfied him, like eating a delicious meal. Jesus showed that to be truly, flourishingly human is not merely to obey God but to want to obey him, not merely to know facts about God but to delight in what we know.

Many Christians recognize the crucial importance of heart affections for God and his ways. They perceive the inadequacy of their own desires and long to long for Christ. It’s why Robert Robinson, author of the hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” craved not just a mind that knows grace and a mouth that speaks grace but a heart that sings it: “Tune my heart to sing thy grace.” If the streams of God’s mercy “call for songs of loudest praise,” our problem isn’t just that we don’t know enough but that our hearts don’t sing what we know. We love other things too much and God too little. Ours is a dysfunction of desire.

We require divine heart-level intervention. We need God’s goodness to bind our wandering hearts to him, to seal our hearts for heaven. “Come Thou Fount” is a song for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And it’s also for those who hunger and thirst to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Jesus Promises to Satisfy Our Desires

There’s yet more good news for us in this beatitude: Jesus assures his hearers that there’s a God-appointed feast for a God-given hunger. Those who crave holiness “will be satisfied.” Elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, the word for “satisfied” refers to abundant provision for hungry people (Matthew 14:20; 15:37). When Jesus fed the multitudes, they ate until they were stuffed, full to the gills, replete, “satisfied.”

Jesus promises that if we long to do the will of God, if we crave personal holiness, we will be satisfied one day. The verb’s passive voice is important: “will be satisfied.” It’s a divine passive, indicating that God himself will do it. In the new creation, he will glorify us (Romans 8:30). We won’t sin, nor will we want to. We’ll delight fully and forever in stewarding the earth under his sovereign rule. That’s the consummation for which Robert Robinson longed.

Oh, that day when, freed from sinning,
I shall see thy lovely face.
Full arrayed in blood-washed linen,
How I’ll sing thy sovereign grace.

Hear the hunger in “Oh” and see the satisfaction in “freed from sinning.” God will make it so on that future day. We will see his lovely face.

Responding to Jesus

Let’s take Jesus at his word, believing what he says in Matthew 5:6. Let’s praise him for being the perfect God-man, for not just knowing and doing righteousness but craving it. Let’s confess to God that, unlike Jesus, we often desire other things more than him and the righteousness to which he calls us. Let’s ask God to increase our hunger and thirst to obey him.

With the psalmist, let’s pray, “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain” (Psalm 119:36). Let’s place ourselves around spiritually hungry people and in places where our own appetite for God will be sharpened. In particular, let’s participate regularly in the gathered worship of God’s people, which creates habits that incline us toward God and obedience to him, making us hungry for more. Let’s crave a craving for holiness. God himself delights to grant delight. The satisfaction of such an appetite is satisfying to him.