Articles - Bulletin
What Makes Us Hunger?
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matt. 5:6)
We live in a world that offers a lot of things in a lot of different ways. There are so many things that demand our attention and that allure us, attract us, and entice us. Many of the things in life that seem to fight for our attention aren’t evil but within themselves, good things. With so many different things, what causes one to hunger and thirst for righteousness above everything else? What causes one to seek first His righteousness above everything else in this world?
Well surly that question takes a great deal of thought and with such thought I’m sure that you’ll find more than one answer. If you employ the argument that ultimately there is only one true answer then surely we’d still agree that there are multiple layers to that answer.
What I believe lays at the very foundation of that answer is this: Because Jesus loves you He saved you! The very root of what causes me to hunger and thirst for righteousness is the simple yet powerful fact that I was saved by Christ because He loves me.
Paul explains this a little further in Romans 5:6-10 when he says: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
Notice that Paul doesn’t say that we were saved from persecution, oppression, tribulation, suffering, etc. No Paul says in Romans 5:9 that He saved us from the wrath of God. It’s true, you can’t fully understand the good news until you fully understand the bad news. The bad news is THE WRATH OF GOD!
Our New Testament Brothers and Sisters knew fully that obeying the gospel could very well cost them their lives at worse and probably persecution at best. Read Romans 8:35-36 and Hebrews 11:36-38 to get an idea of what they endured for becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. Why did they do it? Because being saved from the wrath of God was far more important than being saved from the wrath of men
Romans 1 tells us that God’s wrath is against sin. God’s wrath is against all manners of unrighteousness. Because God’s wrath is against sin that means that God’s wrath is against us because of our sin (Rom. 3:23). But thanks be to God through His Son Jesus that because He loved us He saved us.
The foundation of what causes us and helps us to hunger and thirst for righteousness has to be the realization of what we deserve…God’s wrath. But our Savior saved us from it. That’s what He bore when He hung on that cross. We have trouble in our day and age fathoming what Jesus went through enduring the physical crucifixion and how much pain He endured. But I dare say I don’t believe that’s what hurt the most. He took your sins, my sins, the sins of everyone and bore them on that cross enduring the wrath of God and for that moment the separation from God when He cried our “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” so that you and I would never have to.
If considering that great love that Jesus demonstrated by saving us isn’t enough to cause us to hunger and thirst for righteousness…
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matt. 5:6)
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