Righteousness for the Hungry and Thirsty

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” – Matthew 5:6. What does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness? Is righteousness about right relationships or justice—is it about one’s standing before God? Or does it include all three? Through this beatitude, Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, Walter Strickland, and Bob Hiller dive into the various theological debates around “righteousness” in the Bible. In this episode, the hosts examine claims from N. T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul. Together, we’ll consider why the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to sinners is an essential doctrine for the church.

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ON THIS EPISODE:

• Michael Horton is White Horse Inn’s founder and co-host. In addition to serving as a J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, he is a minister in the United Reformed Churches. He is the author of more than 30 books.
• Justin Holcomb is a Senior Fellow with Sola Media’s Theo Global. He is also the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, where he has served as the canon for vocations since 2013. He teaches theology and apologetics at Reformed Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
• Bob Hiller is the Senior Pastor of Community Lutheran Church in Escondido, California. He is also the author of Finding Christ in the Straw.
• Walter Strickland is Assistant Professor of Systematic and Contextual Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has contributed to, edited, and authored multiple books in his areas of research interest, which include the African American theological tradition, education theory, and theology of work.

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Transcript

Michael Horton

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” We’re going through the beatitudes on this edition of White Horse Inn. We’ve been going through each of the beatitudes, the blessings that Jesus gives, and we’ve been seeing how it’s an upside down kingdom that he’s establishing by these declarations of favor upon his people. He’s pronounced his blessings on those who lack essential things, in this case, righteousness. In the first place, they lack the perfect and objective righteousness that can stand in God’s judgment. Paul says that God saved us by sending Jesus at just the right time. What’s the right time? He says when we were powerless, that was the right time to send Jesus. But those who are justified by Christ’s imputed righteousness also seek to live out his righteous will in the world. Only hungry people eat, and God’s promise is that those who desire God’s righteousness, imputed and imparted, will get what they want, a full table overflowing with the fruits of his liberal generosity. It’s totally paradoxical. Only the poor are rich. Only the sinners are justified. Only the weak inherit the earth. Only those persecuted and reviled as the scum of the earth can reign forever. What do you really desire? What brings you a sense of fullness, a sense of meaning and purpose? Is it Christ and his righteousness? Jesus said in Matthew 6, “but if God so clothes the grass of the field which today is alive tomorrow, and then thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, ‘what shall we eat? What shall we drink? Or what shall we wear?’ For the gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to.” 

I have the privilege of talking about this wonderful multifaceted beatitude with Bob Hiller, senior pastor of Community Lutheran Church in Escondido and San Marcos and the Content Editor for Craft of Preaching over at 1517.org, Justin Holcomb, Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida, author and professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Walter Strickland, professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and elder at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I’m Michael Horton, Founder of Sola Media and J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California. Brothers, this is one more layer of paradox, isn’t it? And it’s also really a promise. Those who want it, get it. I love that. Those who want righteousness. Do you see this, first of all, as both imputed and imparted? I mean, this is righteousness in whatever form we have it from the Lord. He not only imputes the righteousness of Christ to us, but in that same union with Christ, we also receive the benefits of his sanctification.

Imputed and Imparted Righteousness

Bob Hiller

Yeah, I think so. I think I mentioned a few episodes ago that Jeff Gibbs, in his commentary on Matthew, says that when you read these beatitudes, the first two go together, the second two go together. And so if you have this idea that the meek will inherit the earth, once you realize you are meek and you are lacking and that you have nothing in and of yourself, you’re gonna long for things to be made right. And if the Lord promises you that you will inherit the earth, you will inherit all things at the resurrection, when he has made things right and restored things to the way they’re supposed to be, when he makes them ultimately righteous, you’re gonna hunger and thirst for that. Now, Christ comes in and accomplishes that for us by his dying and his rising. He is crucified for our sins and raised for our justification, our righteousness, so that he’s preparing us who hunger and thirst for that. He’s preparing us for the resurrection when things are all made right. So I do think it is all of that rolled into one, that here, this righteousness that Jesus is speaking of is the creation being put to rights on account of Jesus justifying us in his dying and his rising.

Justin Holcomb

And wanting that righteousness is actually wanting what God wants, so we need to expand it from only imputed righteousness. We’re going to get to that. But we need to figure out, because original creation was originally good. So the relationship between God and humanity, humanity and God, humanity and each other, humanity and creation. Shalom. Peace. Universal flourishing, peace, justice, all of that was wonderful, and that got disrupted, harmed, vandalized, as you know. Cornelius Plantinga refers to sin as the vandalism of shalom, which turns our relationship with God, that gets turned into idolatry, we worship anything but God, and love for each other and relationship into exploitation, in our relationship with creation as domination in not a cultivating sense. And so it’s this vandalism of shalom. Things are out of whack. They’re out of joint. They’re not the way they’re supposed to be, and to not want that which causes harm, conflict, friction across the board. That’s what Satan and sin has done. Then the rest of that, from Genesis 3 on, is just increased violence, increased idolatry, you know. It’s a catalog of cruelty all the way until God starts making promises. And so, having a big picture, it’s appropriate to say, this is wrong, this is not the way it’s supposed to be. Again, this is descriptive. All of these are, I’m poor, I’m mourning, I’m not important, I’m meek, I lack righteousness. The entire world lacks righteousness, it’s out of joint. This isn’t how it should be. We can’t fix it. God’s going to, and you will be satisfied. So I think that’s really helpful to put the big picture. As soon as you said it, Mike, the imputed, imparted is like, “oh, yeah.” This isn’t only, I mean, Jesus isn’t doing simply and only a discussion about imputed righteousness. We believe that plays into this. But having a big picture on this is really helpful.

Michael Horton

Yeah, see, it reminds us that there’s nothing wrong with the law. Heaven forbid. It’s God’s word. There’s nothing wrong with the law. The problem’s me. I. I’m the problem. So now what do I get from the law? The knowledge of sin. And that just drives me to despair. But I desire righteousness. I can honestly say that I have absolutely no possibility of standing before God’s judgment in my own righteousness. I think everyone else who knows me would agree. Can’t stand before the Lord at all, not for a day in my own righteousness. But I do long for it. I do long for righteousness. I long for, “Lord, Come quickly. Make things right. Thank you for making me right.” First of all, that objective fact. I already am declared righteous. The world hasn’t been made right yet, but Jesus already secured that at the cross, too. We’ve been saying all of these epithets, all of these beatitudes, are actually Jesus. He embodies all of them. He is the meek. He is the peacemaker. He is the one who mourns. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He is the one who inherits the earth by his humility and death and resurrection. And so here, Jesus is our righteousness. We start there. I’m already declared righteous right now. Jesus Christ is my righteousness, and one day the whole earth will be full of the glory and righteousness of the Lord.

Righteousness In Me and Out in Society

Justin Holcomb

I want to pursue this kind of righteousness out there. Again, we’re not avoiding the righteousness of our lack of righteousness in our own hearts, but there’s some passages that speak to this. One that I’ve always liked is Zechariah 7, because of how it plays out with the law. And it says, “thus says the Lord of hosts.” And this is right before in Zechariah 7 it talks about how they were doing all this worship and it’s talking about their worship and all this. And God says, “okay, while you’re doing all these fasts, what I want is this.” And he says, “thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another. Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.” That’s beautiful.

Michael Horton

Great summary of the law. Yeah.

Justin Holcomb

“But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear.” I mean, Jesus is talking to people like, that’s the disposition to hearing about righteousness. He’s going, “it’s great when you hunger for it, actually.” “‘They made their hearts diamond hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of the hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets. Therefore a great anger came from the Lord of hosts as I called and they would not hear. So they called and I would not hear,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘And I scattered them with the world, went across the nations. The land was left desolate so that no one went to and fro, and the pleasant land was made desolate.’” The picture there is beautiful of what does Shalom and peace look like? And that’s what that description is.

Michael Horton

And then how it becomes desolate. It’s really the picture and language of the Garden of Eden, isn’t it?

Justin Holcomb

Yes. And then what happens in Zechariah 8? God just starts giving promises. Just “thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I’m jealous for Zion. With great jealousy. I’m jealous for her.’” I instead of saying, “get it together,” he doesn’t double down on the law and rub their nose in it. He says, “I’m going to start making promises. You’re going to live to a ripe old age and have kids in the streets.” He just starts declaring promises. And then this beautiful part, Zechariah 8:14, it says, “‘and I purposed to bring disaster to you, and your fathers provoked me to wrath, and I did not relent,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘So again, I have purpose in these days to bring good to Jerusalem into the house of Judah.’ Fear not because of his promise of what he’s going to do. These are the things that you shall do. ‘Speak the truth to one another. Render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace. Do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. Love no false oath for all these things I hate,’ declares the Lord.” The must in Zechariah 7, after the promise of God, then becomes something that he actually works in you, and you shall do these things. This is no longer the condemnation of the law. It’s a description of the fruit of their gratitude after receiving the promise. And this is a beautiful picture of how but the righteousness that’s out there relates to the righteousness in our hearts that we need to pursue.

Bob Hiller

So this is Jeremiah talking, “I’m going to replace their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh so that they will all speak the law to each other, because they all know it. It will be part of their existence.” So it’s, again, to use that category distinction of descriptive of what’s going to happen, not merely prescriptive.

Justin Holcomb

Let me just end on the Zechariah 7:8, because this actually relates to the conversation from the last episode. It says that “you’re going to do these fasts,” by the way, in Zechariah 7, they had like four different fasts listed. And God says, “okay, you’re going to these fasts. He’d only list two of them.” He’s like, “calm it down a little bit. You are earning your own righteousness in your own minds.”

Bob Hiller

Very good at fasting, you are.

Justin Holcomb

And it says, “the house no longer be a house of fasting, but a season of joy and gladness and cheerful feasts.” I love this. It says, “the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord and seek the Lord of hosts. I myself am going. Many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem. And to entreat the favor of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, in those days, ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take the hold of the robe of a jew, saying, ‘let us go with you. For we have heard that God is with you.’” That’s a vision of how the meek will inherit the earth. Going back to the previous one is that we’re under the condemnation of the law. We clog up our ears. We don’t want to hear it. God makes promises to us, accomplishes his promises. Then, out of gratitude, we actually worship him through the very law that condemned us, and that becomes what he works in us. And then people go, “huh, God’s with you guys. We’re coming.” And then they go worship the Lord.

We’re Living in the Dawning of the New Creation

Michael Horton

Along the same lines, particularly the fact that something has changed here. We haven’t changed it. Something has changed that now has changed us. 1 John 2, beginning at verse 7, John says, “beloved, I am writing you no new commandment.” So this is the commandment to love. He’s saying, love each other. Love the brothers and sisters. Evidently, there was a lot of backbiting and a lot of infighting. “Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard.” Right? “Love your neighbor. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing you, which is true in him, Christ, and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.” It’s just a matter of fact. If you say, “I hate my brother,” you are still standing in darkness. “I’m not writing you a new commandment. This is love your neighbor.” Well, wait a second. No, now that it’s true in Christ and now it’s true in us. Now, eschatologically, use a big word, things have changed. We’re now living in the new creation, at least the dawning of the new creation. And we really are new creatures in Christ. We’re really justified. But we are also really new creatures in Christ, and we can begin to love each other.

Justin Holcomb

You are genuinely new, just not completely new. Yeah, but you are really new.

Michael Horton

Yeah. What a gift. We can love each other! Finally, we can love each other.

Bob Hiller

Which is great, but…

Michael Horton

Then the Lutheran’s gonna kill our party.

Bob Hiller

We bring the drinks. But one of the things I think is worth bringing up at this point is yes, we get glimpses of it, but we hear this promise of Zechariah, and we hear this description of John, and we say, “oh, man, I want that so bad.”

Michael Horton

I hear it, but I don’t see it.

What it Means to Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

Bob Hiller

“And then I don’t see it.” You know what that is called? Hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Absolutely. And blessed are you. So this is why Paul, I think in Romans 7, the Lutheran is talking, because now we’ve got Romans 7, this is where Paul is the picture of someone who hungers and thirsts for righteousness. “Because I know the law, I know the good I want to do. I see this and I think, this is it. And then I see my hands start to work and I’m like, ‘what’s going on? This is not what I want.’ I want to be righteous, but I can’t be righteous on my own. Who’s going to rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. The good I want to do, I don’t do. But I have this hope that there is no condemnation for me in Christ Jesus. And I long and I groan with the rest of creation, awaiting for the resurrection that’s coming my way.” So that hungry and thirsting, we get glimpses of it, we get tastes of it. Right now, what you’re describing from 1 John, Mike, that’s the appetizer. And it’s making us hungry for more.

Michael Horton

Exactly. That’s a great point.

Walter Strickland

So as I’m thinking about this beatitude, it reminds me of some believers who have been in environments where hatred towards another person has just been sort of normalized. But then it’s excellent to see how then, because of the righteousness that they’ve been given and their growing in Christ, they then begin to hunger and thirst for the righteousness that they’ve had experienced and desire to see that in the world in which we are living. So pastorally, how would you guys encourage somebody who has been given sort of social license not to hunger and thirst for righteousness in some areas or for some people, but are in need of being free to express that in real ways?

Bob Hiller

What this beatitude does not do is give us… It’s not saying this, “I hunger and thirst for you to be way more righteous. Cause you are way off man, and you need to get yourself fixed up.” I do think Paul is the example where he’s looking inside of himself saying, “I’m not experiencing the full reality of who I am on account of Christ Jesus, and I long for that.” But what it doesn’t give us license to do here is say, again, we talked about this, the last episode to begin dealing with the specs in someone else’s eye, when I’m not dealing with the log that’s in my own eye. The hungering and thirsting for righteousness is saying, “I want to get this log removed. And it’s a lot harder work than I realized. I need for Jesus first to declare me righteous, to declare me justified, so I know that that’s a reality I can start living into. So I need to receive that by grace alone first. So that by grace alone, the log gets removed.” And once that log starts getting removed, this sort of looking at someone else’s sin or someone else’s lack of righteousness, it changes. Because now you’re looking at them as, “man, there’s no way they’re any worse of a sinner than I am. And I want to come alongside them and love them. And I’m going to do what a Christian’s supposed to do. I’m going to give them the gospel. I’m going to preach Christ into their ears. I’m going to be what we in the Lutheran church, we call this mutual consolation and conversation of the brothers and sisters, where I’m going to be in their life, pointing them to Christ, giving them forgiveness, giving them hope so they can come with me and long for the righteousness that is ours in Christ Jesus. I long for them to join me in this righteousness.”

Michael Horton

I think a synonym for righteousness here, well, first of all, we know is Christ. Everything that we’ve been talking about, to hunger and thirst after righteousness is to hunger and thirst after Christ. But I also think, we have to remember there’s a real kingdom emphasis here. This is the old kingdom. The old covenant is now obsolete. And now the new covenant, the new kingdom is being established. I like what Calvin says on this point. He says that the old covenant, civil and ceremonial laws, were stapled to the moral law in the old covenant and in the new covenant, the sermon on the Mount is stapled to the moral law, and I really think that’s a helpful way of thinking about this. The typological kingdom, land flowing with milk and honey, so on and so forth, that typological kingdom Jesus fulfilled all righteousness in order to obtain for us. And now he gives that kingdom to us, which means now he gives his spirit, pours out his spirit in full measure. So we’re justified. We also have the spirit. We’re bearing the fruit of the spirit. But what’s the point? What’s the aim of all of this? It’s the kingdom. What am I really hungry for? What I’m hungry for is the kingdom. I’m hungering for the consummation of Christ’s reign over this good world that has gone wrong. That’s what I’m hungering for.

Justin Holcomb

I love the fact that you’re talking about cosmic righteousness and the reign of Christ in a passage about righteousness, where frequently protestant folks get criticized because we’re talking about it only in a personal, individualistic manner. Can we explore that? The righteousness of God, the righteousness of Christ, because you use the language of imputed and imparted. We have talked about righteousness out there, righteousness in here, my desire, my lack of it. But the gift, one of the ways that we are satisfied is because we do know after this teaching, some ministry was done, work was done by Christ, and he was perfectly righteous and that, that righteousness is imputed to us. But there’s debates about this. So we do have, guys, an author here who wrote a book called justification, where you actually talk about this. And I think it’d be really helpful just to describe for listeners, if you can summarize the debate, Mike, on how righteousness is understood and misunderstood with regard to justification. I think that’d be really helpful. And then there’s N.T. Wright, who your friends, I mean, he read your manuscript on justification and the New Perspectives on Paul. But can you summarize the debate with regard to righteousness, the discussion with regard to righteousness and particularly how it relates to justification?

N.T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul on Righteousness and Covenant of Faithfulness

Michael Horton

Sure. Tom Wright, N.T. Wright takes the position, as many others do, he’s not the only one who takes the position, that the righteousness of God in scripture is God’s covenant faithfulness. So in other words, the righteousness of God is not the righteousness that judges. It is God’s own faithfulness to his covenant. What this does is really make it impossible for us to read Paul’s discussion of the gospel in terms of the law and the gospel in Romans. It seems clear that Paul, first of all, is saying the whole human race is condemned. Let’s start there. “There is no one righteous. No, not one. Well, what about, I mean, what you said about the gentiles is exactly right. You’re in bigger trouble because you claim to have a judeo-christian ethic, at least jewish. You claim to have a biblical ethic, and you are hypocrites. You don’t follow it? No, there’s no one righteous. No, not one. In fact, the law only condemns. It does not justify the ungodly. But now the righteousness from God has been revealed, which is a gift in Jesus Christ.” Okay, that argument doesn’t make any sense if you interpret it as God’s covenant faithfulness. His whole point is to say you haven’t been faithful to the covenant and so you’re condemned. But even though the law condemns you, the righteousness of God condemns you. It’s not God’s covenant faithfulness. It’s your failure to be covenantly faithful. The law tells you that. But now the righteousness from God is a free gift imputed to you through faith alone. And now you stand before God as justified, as declared righteous. You stand before God now as covenantally faithful, which means you fulfilled the righteousness. So part of the problem with this New Perspective and other arguments around it, is that if you go through the whole Bible, all the righteousness of God passages, they represent a status of having fulfilled the commandments. That’s what it is. It’s not just kind of covenant faithfulness or, no, it’s not fulfillment of the gospel, it’s fulfillment of the law. You have done everything the law commanded you to do. That’s righteousness. The righteousness of God is “do it.” Do it and you will live. The gospel is “believe this, for it is done.” And that argument that Paul makes there just kind of falls apart. Not only that, but all of the passages in the psalms and elsewhere, it doesn’t hold water. The whole theory is bad lexically.

Justin Holcomb

Because God’s righteousness is given for judgment. God’s faithfulness of the covenant is under righteousness. So what you’re saying is God’s righteousness fulfills the covenant but shouldn’t be defined as covenantal faithfulness.

Michael Horton

Yeah, I’m not justified by God’s faithfulness. I’m justified by Christ’s faithfulness to the law imputed to me.

Justin Holcomb

That was very clear.

Bob Hiller

Can you define for me God’s covenant faithfulness? What is that?

Michael Horton

Here’s the deal. See, there’s no distinction between covenant of law and a covenant of promise, which Paul very evidently calls two covenants. There’s no distinction really between those covenants. They’re kind of smushed together. Law and gospel are kind of mingled together. So if God is going to be faithful to his covenant, you have to ask which covenant? If God is going to be faithful to the covenant that he made at Sinai, read Deuteronomy 28.

Bob Hiller

Yeah, that’s my confusion. Okay. Yeah.

Michael Horton

And it’ll tell you what will happen if they don’t fulfill it. But then you have the covenant of grace in Abraham and all the way back to the promise. Basically, the law doesn’t really have teeth, doesn’t really condemn me, and the gospel isn’t really Christ is enough.

Walter Strickland

In this conversation, it said that the folks who are proponents of a New Perspective on Paul are trying to affirm and uphold some of the cultural elements that were going on in the Old Testament. Proponents of the New Perspective are doing their best to try to understand the idea of covenant faithfulness within the jewish cultural context. Can you tell us how Second Temple Judaism and the culture surrounding that time informs this perspective of covenant faithfulness?

Michael Horton

Yeah, that’s a huge, huge, huge question, and I do deal with it at length in the Justification second volume. That’s one of the strengths and one of the weaknesses of the New Perspective. One of the strengths is they’ve done so much spade work around Second Temple Judaism that has really been illuminating. That has been very helpful. And it’s not just the New Perspective. There’s been a lot of work done in the last 50 years. But on the downside, the background of the New Testament is not Second Temple Judaism. The background of the New Testament is the Old Testament. Second Temple Judaism, by definition, Jesus did not have a very good impression of Second Temple Judaism.

Bob Hiller

That’s fair to say!

Michael Horton

Neither did Paul. So I don’t think it’s fair to make it normative. You got to go back to the Old Testament, what the Old Testament meant. Look, the bottom line is, if you want God’s covenant faithfulness under the terms of the law, you’re condemned. His faithfulness to that covenant requires that you be condemned. If you want to be saved, if you hunger and thirst after righteousness, you want to be justified, you want to be declared righteous, it’s only the free gift of Jesus Christ. He fulfilled the law for us, he bore the curse for us, he rose again for our justification. That is enough. Our covenant faithfulness plays absolutely no role in our justification. And this is part of the problem too. They broaden the definition of faith to faithfulness, smuggling in works. Because what is faithfulness? Works. But Paul says works, faith, total opposites. When it comes to justification, it’s either by faith or it’s by works. That’s the apostle Paul. That’s pretty clear.

Imputed Righteousness is Taught in Scripture

Justin Holcomb

And this is where it comes down to righteousness throughout Romans and other places. It’s a righteousness that is given to us. It’s imputed, it’s accounted to. You said, legal status within covenantal righteousness, so it’s a status of the covenant having been fulfilled. The covenant law being fulfilled. We’re justified by works. Christ’s work, Christ’s work for us. Adam fulfilled the law, fulfilled obedience perfectly, and therefore we are called what Jesus actually was. That’s the scandalous, that’s the shock. Though you were unholy and unrighteous, Christ died for the ungodly. And it’s not just forgiveness. This is the whole point is that you’re not just getting out of debt back to zero, you’re actually in addition. So you’re justified. Your sins are forgiven, and you are declared righteous. That’s what justification is saying, not just forgiveness of sins. You’re out of debt and you’ve been the recipient of an inheritance of righteousness.

Bob Hiller

This is why, Paul, to go back to some of this stuff with the New Perspective, and maybe I’m wrong on this, you can help me, but Paul uses Abraham as a very specific example. That it’s Abraham’s belief, not his obedience, that gets him right with God. Because he believed God and it was credited.

Michael Horton

It contrasts believing in Christ with doing works.

Bob Hiller

It’s the one who believes much, not the one who does much. And by “believes much,” it just means trusts Jesus so that you are declared righteous. And then this gets us to the hungering and thirsting. “Because I’ve received the declaration and now I’m hungry for more. Like, I can’t wait to see what this means at the resurrection when I see everything justified and put back to the place where it’s supposed to be. But right now I have it by promise. Then I will have it by sight.”

Walter Strickland

Yeah, this is what Philippians 3:9 is saying. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

Michael Horton

Yep.

Justin Holcomb

All these beatitudes have an eschatological edge. Meaning, like there’s a now and there’s more.

Bob Hiller

Yeah, right.

Justin Holcomb

And so what you were describing, Bob, was, “okay, I’m declared righteous.” But God makes us what he calls us, and he’s not done yet, so he’s in the process. We’re justified because our sins are forgiven. We’re declared righteous. The Holy Spirit’s working in us to will and do his good pleasure. He’s transforming us. And so we’re, you know, we’re dying to sin walking and all that, but then we will have more. There will be a time when we’re not just declared righteous, but we actually, there’s no sin in all of that. So there’s, there’s more to come. That hungering is satisfied in our being made right with God now, legally, in justification, and sanctification is being worked out. But there will be a time when we’ll be completely satisfied with that hunger for righteousness.

Bob Hiller

That’s why when you read, like, the book of Revelation and it’s describing the new heavens and the new earth, and “he’ll wipe every tear from our eyes, and there will be no more sorrow or suffering or pain or death any longer, for the old is gone and the new will come,” and you read that, this hungering and thirsting, you feel it well up inside of you because you know it’s true. You know it’s promised. You know it’s coming on account of his rising on our behalf. And that resurrection is the promise that we’re going to experience that, too. And it’s delightful to hope for. I just, I’m ready for it now. I’m hungry.

Walter Strickland

There’s some times when I kind of felt pressure to have to muster this desire. But then I’m reminded about what Paul says in Galatians 3. He says, “oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you this. Did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing in faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” And so for me, that frees me up to say, “you know what? If we are justified by Christ, then because the spirit is in us, we’ve received this as a gift, then that’s a gift that’s just going to continue to grow in us as we become more like Christ.” And so it’s not that pressure that we have to put on ourselves to muster this. We will experience this.

Michael Horton

Yeah. The hunger for righteousness is the fruit of regeneration.

Walter Strickland

Exactly.

Michael Horton

So everyone who’s regenerated hungers for righteousness. Again, this is just a statement of fact, and sorry if I’m repeating, but Jesus hungered after righteousness. What are we told? He said, “my food is to do the will of my father.” Jesus mourned, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was the meek and by that inherited the earth. Jesus is that. We could go down through the whole list. This is, first of all, Jesus. And it’s sort of like, you know, the blue team.vWe are. Jesus is the leader of the blue team. He’s blue everything. Everyone is blue on his team. We are wearing his blue t-shirt, his righteousness. We are also watching him, looking at him, following him. What is he doing? Where is he going? Watching how he moves to the basket or whatever. We’re learning from him. We’re growing under his tutelage. Whatever Jesus is like, I want to be like him. That’s what we’re hungering for. We all want to be like him. And we are objectively, in justification. We are becoming so in sanctification. But that’s what we don’t see completed yet. That’s what we hear about. We know we’re being sanctified because we have been justified. We know we will be glorified because we’re justified, but we don’t see it yet.

Walter Strickland

It reminds me of being dead and now alive. And also a lot of the illustrations in the New Testament that have to do with the growing of fruit. You know, an apple tree doesn’t have to, you know, concern itself with making apples.

Michael Horton

“I gotta really work at this apple thing.”

Walter Strickland

Right. Because we are a new creation, we make apples, and we’ll continue to grow in our ability to do so, but it’s because we are what we are, and I think that that’s so freeing for me.

Michael Horton

And other people will eat that fruit. We may not even see it as we’re producing it by God’s grace, but other people will be able to eat the fruit.