“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”
We know that there are many parallels between the physical world and the spiritual world. For example, if something is healthy it will grow. But one spiritual truth that doesn’t have a physical parallel is hunger and thirst. In the physical world, the more you eat and drink, the more you get full and satisfied. But that is not true spiritually. The more a person hungers and thirsts for righteousness, the hungrier and thirstier he gets and will never get satisfied. In Matthew 5:6, it is not appropriate to translate the end of the verse as “filled” or “satisfied”.
The word that Jesus used chortazo is a grazing term that means to feed or to fatten cattle, from the word for fodder or grass. Spiritually speaking, logic says that when one hungers and thirsts for righteousness, one can never get satisfied. Jesus would never want us to get to the place where we were satisfied with where we were spiritually. His desire is for us to continue to grow in our relationship with Him and our desire should be that He would continue to find areas in our lives for the work of the Holy Spirit.
But what about the believer who has lost his spiritual hunger and thirst for righteousness, who has little desire for the spiritual? The answer is: force feeding (from a comment by David Jeremiah). Someone who has lost their spiritual desire is going to have to force-feed themselves with the Word of God and prayer until they start to develop a new taste for the things of God. (“Oh taste and see that the Lord is good…” Ps. 34:8a). It will take discipline, diligence, and repetition in order for the hunger and thirst for righteousness to return.
Kenny
