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Christianity Today, September, 2007 |

Reflections

Blessed Are Those Who Hunger

Quotations to stir heart and mind.

Compiled by Richard A. Kauffman | posted 9/10/2007 08:59AM

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BLESSED are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Matthew 5:6

IF THIS VERSE is to you one of the most blessed statements of the whole of Scripture, you can be quite certain you are a Christian; if it is not, then you had better examine the foundations again.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

IT IS THE DESIRE for God which is the most fundamental appetite of all, and it is an appetite we can never eliminate. We may seek to disown it, but it will not go away. If we deny that it is there, we shall in fact only divert it to some other object or range of objects. And that will mean that we invest some creature or creatures with the full burden of our need for God, a burden which no creature can carry.
Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes

THIS BEATITUDE prompts a look at our heart's desire. What hungers and desires operate within us? Which of them commands our utmost loyalty?
John W. Miller, The Christian Way

IT IS NOT the one who has attained righteousness but the one who hungers for it whom the Beatitudes assert God blesses.
Bonnie B. Thurston, Religious Vows, the Sermon on the Mount, and Christian Living

THUS, because it is commonly thought that the rich are made wealthy through their own greed, Jesus says in effect: "No, it is just the opposite. For it is righteousness that produces true wealth. Thus, so long as you act righteously, you do not fear poverty or tremble at hunger. Rather, those who extort are those who lose all, while one who is in love with righteousness possesses all other goods in safety."
Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew

BIBLICAL is more than a private and personal affair; it includes social righteousness as well. …

Thus Christians are committed to hunger for righteousness in the whole human community as something pleasing to a righteous God.
John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount

THE HUNGER for righteousness is the one appetite that Christ blesses—not to covet possessions or achievement or recognition, but to live, through every action and perception, the kingdom of God.
Jim Forest, The Ladder of the Beatitudes

ONE MIGHT EAT and eat of the superficial, cotton-candy righteousness vended by the professional religious hucksters and never have his hunger assuaged. Or he might drink and drink of their holy water and never have his thirst quenched. But the kingdom righteousness is meat indeed and drink indeed—rich, nourishing, satisfying.
Clarence Jordan, Sermon on the Mount

Related Elsewhere:

Recent Reflections columns on the beatitudes include Blessed Are Those Who Mourn, Poor in Spirit, and Blessed Are the Meek.

"Eat, Drink, and Be Hungry" is an essay on how it was emptiness, not fullness, that Jesus blessed.

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September 2007, Vol. 51, No. 9

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Barry Ickes

Posted: September 11, 2007 3:50 PM

I find it appalling to see Matthew 5:6 turned into a social text rather than a description of attitude of those blessed of God concerning their spiritual state. With the plethora of OT & NT texts that address the attitudes of God's people toward the poor, why pervert the meaning of this text by suggesting a social application? That Chrysostom, John R. W. Stott (who should know better), Jim Forest, or Clarence Jordan makes such statements does not mean that their statements are correct. Karl Marx and adherents to Liberation Theology would surely concur with them but is this what the text is saying? It is little wonder that the Church today does not know the Bible, when its leaders teach what the text does not say. Jesus is addressing spiritual poverty.

Byron Nelson

Posted: September 11, 2007 1:49 PM


While all of the commentary included is helpful and offers wisdom, the most convincing interpretation to me is that of Mark Allan Powell, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, who emphasizes these words are to those who hunger and thirst for the day when things are made right, for they are the meek who have no share in this world's resources and they are those who mourn, for they have no reason for joy.

Raymond Takashi Swenson

Posted: September 10, 2007 3:45 PM


In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ is not offering blessings to the random person who seeks righteousness, but in every case the blessings are for those who come to Him, the source of living bread and living water, to have their hunger satisfied. None of the formulas of the Beatitudes work without Christ in the equation.

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