Hungering for Salvation

The first three beatitudes (Matthew 5:2–10) testify to the heart of one awakened by the Spirit of God. Arthur Pink addressed these preliminaries to gospel faith. The first (poor in spirit) awakens the need for grace through the realization of the soul’s emptiness and spiritual poverty. The second (mourning) is a response of self-judgment, a consciousness of guilt, and a grieving over one’s lost condition. The third (meekness) portrays the end of self-justification and a total abandonment of all pretenses of merit before God.

The fourth (hungering and thirsting for righteousness) shows the awaken soul turning away from self to seek answers above. The awakened soul is to hunger is salvation, designated here as righteousness. There is abundant Old-Testament evidence to support the claim that righteousness here is salvation; for example, “Soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed” (Isaiah 56:1, see also 46:12, 13; 51:5; 55:8; 61:10).

Sadly, for many, salvation has lost its deep significance due familiarity and frequent use of the term. In the beatitudes, Jesus reveals the means to correct this dangerous drift—personal craving for righteousness. Hungering is to yearn for God’s favor and friendship. Because the soul is created in God’s image, it longs for real conformity to God’s likeness. That is what salvation is to produce.

Christ provides the repentant sinner with perfect righteousness to enable him to find acceptance before his holy and just God. Jesus made such righteousness available through His perfect obedience and sacrifice. He then imputes this righteousness to His own as a gift, the best robe. However, a truly born-again person yearns with intensive longing for more than a covering of imputed righteousness. He wants real sanctifying righteousness that transforms one into true Christ-likeness (Philippians 3:8, 14).  

Hungering and thirsting is on-going and ever-increasing desire. It is illustrated in Psalm 42: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (vv. 1, 2). Those who possess this longing will be filled, but the promise, like the condition, is not a finished satisfaction. The filling is a continual and ever-increasing gratification of the longing heart with new and ever-greater measures of grace. Salvation is, in this life, a continuing work of growing and maturing in renewal and conformity to Christ. As one hungers, he is being continually filled, but that filling leads only to new longings that require greater fillings. So it goes. The believer will never be fully satisfied this side of glory. Even in eternity there is an infinite gap between the creature and Creator.

The lesson to be taken from this truth should be a source of great comfort to believers at any stage of their walk with Christ. Those with little or weak faith who truly hunger for His righteousness are as blessed as those whose faith is strong. Those whose sanctification is imperfect will be as filled as those who have matured above their years. When any confess, cry out, and claim His promise, they will be filled. It is not those who are full that are blessed but those who continually hunger and thirst after righteousness. 

Inheriting the Earth

The third of the seven qualities of the one who stands in God’s favor (blessed) is meekness: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). Meekness is a difficult quality to identify. Scripture often pairs meekness with qualities that are used to define it. For example, meekness is not humility or lowliness because Jesus self-identified as one who is meek and lowly of heart (Matthew 11:29). The verse that most closely identifies this grace is Titus 3:2 where Paul reminds Titus to teach believers “to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy [meekness] toward all people.”

As previously stated, each of these graces builds on the previous grace. Poor in spirit begins the list and is defined as understanding one’s true state before God as utterly bankrupt and wholly unable to correct the situation. This condition leads to mourning over the horrible disorder that human sin and evil has inflicted on God’s created order and activity. Meekness is deference to God, recognizing the problem and submitting to God’s grace for real and permanent change. This is supported by Psalm 149:4: “He will beautify the meek with salvation.” 

There is a meekness that is constitutional, characterized by a natural lack of conviction and a love of ease. Many sinners have a pliant and impetuous spirit and are, thus, easily led into sin and evil. Eli and Jehoshaphat are biblical examples of this natural meekness. This is also why many confuse biblical meekness with weakness.

Godly meekness is a grace resulting from much suffering that is recognized as designed to moderate temper, destroy resentment, and curb carnal assertiveness. A meek and Spirit-filled Christian will not exercise self-will. He quietly submits to God’s sovereign authority as revealed in His Word, complies with His designs, submits to His rod. Meekness is bowing to one’s circumstances, even when such are negative and seemingly difficult to endure. “The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way” (Psalm 25:9).

Jesus was the example of meekness. In His incarnation, He made Himself nothing, humbled Himself in obedience even to death (Philippians 2:7, 8). Nothing in Him resisted the judgments of God but fully yielded to the will of God (John 18:11). He was led, not coerced, as a lamb to the slaughter. When reviled, He did not retaliate; when battered, He did not threaten. In like manner, a believer who has matriculated in the school of divine meekness will become mild, patiently enduring insults and injuries, teachable and easily admonished.

  However, a meek saint will never appear to be weak, yielding a principle of righteousness or compromising with evil. He will be jealous of his Lord’s glory, even to taking a whip to those who desecrate the Lord’s house or zealously confronting those who defile His glory (Numbers 12:3 compared with Exodus 32:19, 20). Such believers will literally inherit the earth (Psalm 37:11).

Mourners Comforted

The Sermon on the Mount was Messiah’s Mount Sinai of the New Covenant. It begins with seven characteristics of kingdom citizens who are found to be in the state of God’s favor—blessed. These beatitudes are in consecutive order, the latter building on the former. The first (poor in spirit) forms the foundation, “the rich soil in which alone other graces will grow and flourish” (J. R. Miller). 

There is a clear Jewish background to the sermon as well. The Jewish nation after four hundred silent years was longing for the fulfillment of God’s promises for restoration of the kingdom ruled by One in David’s dynasty. Jesus was that root of Jesse, the Davidic Messiah expected. He taught the yearning disciples that the kingdom was here, and that the kingdom was theirs.

The second beatitude involves those who mourned—who have an emotional reaction of sorrow to a sad situation, condition, or depressing circumstances. It does not mean to grieve over personal loss (expressed in a different word) but to mourn or lament the circumstances of that loss. This is illustrated in Matthew 9 where Jesus responded to John’s disciples inquiry as to why His disciples did not fast (a means of expressing lament): “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (v. 15). One does not lament the absence of the King when He is in their midst, at least temporarily. However, because of the hostility of the Pharisees, He would soon be taken from them. At that time, they would fast and mourn again.

The comfort promised the mourner would be the reversal of the circumstances of the lament. Of what would that comfort consist? Note, also, that the promised comfort is future—“shall be comforted.” While “theirs is the kingdom,” their comfort awaits future fulfillment.

For kingdom citizens (Christ followers) the new covenant age involves a present and future tension. The kingdom is now, but not yet. Thus, believers will constantly lament their circumstances as they seek to live out the kingdom principles in a foreign and very hostile world. Their Lord is with them through the Spirit (Romans 8:9, 10), but the Bridegroom is absent. His disciples lament His absence and long for His return to restore righteousness in a new earth (2 Peter 3:13).

Jesus charged the supposed leaders of God’s covenant people, the Pharisees, “You are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23). Kingdom citizens must also take this same stance (1 John 2:15–17; James 4:4). We are in the world but not of the world (John 15:19). We cannot be comfortable in this world. Our hearts must be set on things above (Colossians 3:1). Our life in this age must be characterized by lament and longing. We lament over the spiritual decline that is accelerating by the hour and we long for Jesus to return and restore Eden on earth. We lament the constant battle with the flesh and indwelling sin, and we long to be transformed into His glorious likeness (James 1:25). We are truly saved but not yet fully.