A Blessed Longing and True Godliness
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5:6-8 NIV) [see full text in button/link below]
What do you long for?
When you’re alone with your thoughts, is there some unfulfilled longing in your heart? Are you preoccupied with something? Do you sense something is missing?
I’ve heard a repeated statement that goes like this—There’s a God-shaped hole (or vacuum) in every human heart. There are variations of this thought attributed to or claimed by various people.
It’s a condensed summation of a personal observation by Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century mathematician and philosopher. What Pascal said is more articulate and complete, but the essence is—our deepest longings can only be filled with God.
Insights
These three Beatitudes express this deeper longing of the human soul. Longings that can’t be satisfied with anything less than a personal relationship with God. But as humans everywhere do, we try to fill or satisfy this deep longing in various ways.
All efforts on our part to fill this spiritual vacuum fall short. There is nothing and no one in all creation who can fill or take the place of the Creator of all. This vacuum or hole of deep longing in our soul is spiritual.
All humans have the imprint of God embedded in them. It’s called imago dei. Humanity was created in the image of God and with the capacity for a personal relationship with Him.
Redefining the Nature of God’s Kingdom
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
What comes to mind when you think of righteousness? In the time of Jesus, most people would consider the Pharisees as the best example of righteousness. But as Jesus pointed out often (Matthew 23:25, 27), the Pharisees had an external shell of righteousness of their own making.
It was a self-righteousness—a self-proclaimed sense of it. Sadly, this mindset prevails today as it did then.
The type of righteousness Jesus meant in this beatitude is a relational righteousness. A common way to explain this is—right-standing with God or having the approval of God. But such righteousness is only possible in a relationship with God (Romans 3:20-22).
When a person is poor in spirit, mourning, and meek, it shows they long for something greater than what this world has to offer. A hunger and a thirst for righteousness—true godliness—is a longing of the soul that only God Himself can fill.
God’s promise to those who hunger and thirst for a right relationship with Him is this—they will be filled. He will come and dwell in the heart of whoever opens themselves to Him (John 14:23). The next two Beatitudes show how this longing of the soul can be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
We find the word mercy in the Bible countless times. This is to be expected since it is the very nature of God (Exodus 34:6; Luke 6:36). The prophet Jeremiah declares His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23).
The essence of mercy is compassion and forgiveness. We cannot gain God’s mercy, but we can receive it when it’s given by God. God gives His mercy instead of condemnation or judgment by showing us compassion and forgiveness.
As citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, we are to do the same. We are to show mercy to others. God promises to show us mercy in the same way we are merciful to others. Jesus expounds on this further concerning forgiveness, which we’ll look at later in Matthew 6:14.
James, the half-brother of Jesus, helps us see why showing mercy is so important—
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (James 2:12-13 NIV)
When we don’t show mercy to others, we miss out on the promise of receiving God’s mercy, because mercy is greater and more powerful than judgment in God’s kingdom. This is a good thing. When we show mercy to others, it reflects the nature of God and His sovereign realm over those who choose to make Him their King.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
This is the most intimate and challenging of these three Beatitudes. Two questions come to mind for me—Who has a pure heart? How can we see God, who is Spirit and is in heaven?
In the Psalms, King David asks who can approach the holy hill of God and says it’s only those with “clean hands and a pure heart” (Psalms 24:4). I believe this is what Jesus speaks of in this Beatitude—a purity of heart that is internal and spiritual rather than the idea of pure morality and behavior.
But how can a person have this purity of heart? This sixth beatitude closely follows the Beatitudes before this one. It speaks of the person who hungers and thirsts for true godliness in their relationship with God. God is the only one who can purify our hearts. A pure heart speaks of devotion to God above all else.
This is the sense Jesus intended for being pure in heart. He says those whose hearts are undivided in their devotion to God will see God. How is this possible? Paul tells us it is with the eyes of our heart (Ephesians 1:18).
Whoever seeks God with an undivided heart—a heart unmixed or adulterated with selfishness and the worship of other things—will see God (Psalms 86:11; Ezekiel 11:19). God will reveal Himself to them in their time of prayer, and worship, and while reading through His Word of Truth, the Bible.
John declared that Jesus is the Word of God, and later in John’s gospel, Jesus refers to Himself as the Bread of Life (John 1:1, 14; 6:35 NKJV). When we read and study God’s Word, we are spiritually feeding upon the Lord, which satisfies our minds and hearts.
How has Jesus filled the longing of your soul?
Reflection—
Humanity was created in the image of God and with the capacity for a personal relationship with Him. When we are not in a relationship with God, we will have a longing in our soul that only the Lord can fill.
Prayer Focus—
Do you find yourself longing for things that don’t fulfill you? Ask God to make Himself known to you. Seek Him in prayer and His Word. Ask for His mercy and be willing to show this same mercy to others.
This is an excerpt from a soon-to-be-published book called The Heart and Soul of God’s Kingdom. Look for it on Amazon with my other books— Trip Kimball on Amazon
