“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.” Hunger (gr. peinao) is to be famished, starved, and thirst (gr. dipsao) is to be dry. Both words are in the Greek present participle denoting a continuous and unquenchable hunger and thirst, literally the starving and dehydrated ones. The contextual metaphor is righteousness as spiritual nourishment: Ardent desire for right conduct before God that accords with His will and is pleasing to Him. This conduct must, therefore, include love of God and love of all people who God places in our life path, within our sphere of influence. It must include unflinching obedience to God’s will, His word, in thought, deed and action. It must include sacrifice, mercy rendered to the hurting world that surrounds us, including sacrifice of our time, our resources and our possessions. After all, are we not but stewards over these talents? And it must include passion, passion in love, passion in obedience, and passion in sacrifice – people of one thing passionately pursuing the heart of God. God puts into willing hearts the desire to be in right standing with Himself, then clothes these hearts with the gift of His righteousness, the blood of His beloved Son, so that His children can stand before Him -- God’s holy vision filtered by the precious blood of Jesus. The phrase “shall be filled” is a very strong and graphic term originally applied to the feeding and fattening of animals in a stall, and here expresses the complete satisfaction granted to the spiritually “hungry” and “thirsty”. This passage expresses a dichotomy between the two states of “unquenchable desire” and “complete satisfaction”, which can only exist simultaneously in God’s Kingdom. There is, co-existing, a constant and recurrent hunger for and satisfaction with God’s righteousness, a deep consuming growing hunger, abundantly satisfied yet never relieved. The spiritual nourishment received from one filling is expended in hungering and thirsting anew for another filling - for they shall be filled and filled and filled and filled... And the need only grows with each filling. Could this be the meaning of God being likened to a consuming fire, consuming His children with passionate desire for relationship with Himself? Spiritually prosperous are the ones who continually crave right standing with God, because they themselves shall be filled so as to be completely satisfied, while ever wanting more.
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