Thirsting for Righteousness

The 4th Beatitude listed in the Sermon on the Mount teaches us: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.”

What does it look like to hunger and thirst for righteousness as a believer? In the church, most people’s first instinct is to devise checklists to elevate our “holiness rating.” Thus, we think to ourselves that we need to pray more, read more, and go to church more.

However the entirety of Scripture presents a far different solution. Righteousness is not to be found in our actions; it is found in Christ alone! When Jesus encounters the adulterous Samaritan woman at the well, He promises her: “… whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst.” Later Jesus tells His own followers: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”

Ask yourself: what quenches our hunger and our thirst for righteousness? It seems that Jesus is quite deliberate in His choice of language. The answer is not to be found in our own duties, deeds, and strivings. To the contrary, the Gospel of John shows us that Jesus Himself is the very righteousness for which we hunger and thirst. He alone can satisfy us.

Jesus promises that those who seek after Him “will never thirst.” In light of this promise, how can we explain Christ’s words on the Cross? John’s Gospel tells us, “Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty.’”

This is like buying diet pills from a fat salesman. The One who claims to have a remedy to ensure that His followers “will never thirst” had declared that He was “thirsty.” How can this be? What are the Scriptures telling us?

His thirst must be significant. For eternity past, Jesus had existed in a state of perfect righteousness. He had no need of hungering or thirsting for righteousness, because He embodied true righteousness. Yet on the Cross, there was a beautiful exchange between mankind and Christ. He was cloaked in our sin, and He clothed us in His righteousness.

2 Corinthians 5:21 declares, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

On the Cross, for the first time in history, Jesus experienced what it was like to desperately thirst for righteousness. He suddenly knew the despair borne by an utter alienation from His Father. When Jesus cries out “I thirst,” He is not merely expressing a physical desire. Perhaps He is announcing that the beautiful exchange of the gospel was complete. He had taken our sin, and, with that, Jesus could declare, “It is finished.”

What a wonderful Savior! Jesus was willing to freely give His righteousness away and suffer thirst in order to fulfill His promise that we would never thirst again.