If docile means easily taught, how can we easily learn righteousness? This devotion looks at how we are to hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Nuggets
- Righteousness isn’t about what God will or will not give us; it is all about our choice to be like Him.
- Righteousness is the ground on which the actions grow.
- We can be made righteous as it is something we have to learn – and God is more than willing to teach us.
Devotions in the The Beatitudes Show Us How to be Docile series
I know. We have talked so much about righteousness lately — and here we are again. Let’s look at it through the lens of being docile this time.
Let's Put It into Context
We are talking in this series about how disciples are to be docile. Docile means easily taught. As we grow in our relationship with God, we are blessed.
Blessedness means we have been perfected. For the disciple, perfection is holy, sanctified, and righteous.
Holy means to be set apart, perfect, and pure. Sanctification is the process where our lives are changed, and we made holy. Righteousness is the result of a solid relationship with God. Blackall said that righteousness is “living a life in sincere and perfect obedience to all the laws of God.”
Let’s do a recap of other devotions before we see what we can add from this verse. We know we learn by taking what we know as a foundation and processing new information in relation to it.
The definition of righteousness is “the actions and positive results of a sound relationship within a local community or between God and a person or His people” (Holman Bible Dictionary). Instead of just “uprightness,” the original definition was based on fulfilling the covenant and building relationships with God and others.
In other words, righteousness means being right with God, being holy as He is holy. Being holy is unique to God. Righteousness is what comes out of being holy, having faith, and loving as Jesus does. Being holy produces the righteousness.
It takes a process to get there. That is called sanctification. We progress in the process by obedience.
God knew before He created us that we would be disobedient. When we are disobedient, we have to confess our sins and repent in order to receive God’s forgiveness. God was always planning on forgiving us. His goal has always been being reunited with mankind.
Righteousness is the end goal. It has to come from God. It is all about putting the wisdom we have learned from growing in grace and knowledge into practice so that we are imitators of God. We have changed our character so that we live our lives according to how He calls us.
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Basic Needs
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness …” (Mt. 5: 6 CSB)
Hunger and thirst are basic needs. If we don’t eat and drink, we don’t live long.
We can’t live without God. Oh, yes. There are some saying they are living just fine without Him. They may be now. In the end, they won’t.
Let’s put a couple of points together. Elliot wrote, “Man may be measured by his desires.” The other is “This law of desire explains our spiritual poverty.”
Oh, wow. What great statements.
We talked about desires before. That was how we defined lust.
Our spiritual poverty is defined by that for which we lust.
Unfortunately, we generally lust for things of this world. That leads to our spiritual poverty – sinfulness.
But remember How Do Disciples Mourn? We said that, instead of being complacent with sin, we have to cry out (mourn) when we consider our sins, be genuinely deeply sorry for committing them, and are burdened because we know we will continue to sin while we are here on this earth.
Maybe spiritual poverty is more than just we’ve sinned.
We know we will never be able to not sin.
We feel guilty because of the sins we have committed.
We know there is nothing we can do to save ourselves.
We have to desire to be righteous. And what is righteous? Being like God.
Righteousness isn’t about what God will or will not give us. It is all about our choice to be like Him.
Chaplin said that righteousness is a “… state of mind and heart …” It isn’t the results of actions. It is the ground out on which the actions grow. Remember rooted and grounded?
We have to really desire to imitate God. We can’t think that we can do the minimum here. We have to actively strive to imitate God (and not just say we are made in His image imitation).
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Jordan listed three components to righteousness.
“(1) A death unto sin;
“(2) A renunciation of the world;
“(3) A deliberate choice of God.”
Wow! Those make really lofty goals for us, right? We have to stop sinning, stop focusing on this world, and start choosing God.
No biggy, right?
Please tell me that I am not the only one. I have been reading all these devotions on righteousness and wondering how in the world I am going to do all of that. And not mess up. Frequently.
How am I going to stop sinning? How am I going to withstand the pull of this life?
Oh, I want to focus on God. I am doing better than I was, but am I righteous? No way!
But God says in Matthew 5: 6 that we only have to hunger and thirst, not be perfect.
What did we say about obedience when we were putting this into context? God knew before He created us that we would be disobedient. God was always planning on forgiving us. He knows we will keep on sinning while we are in these earthly bodies.
But 1) we have to ask forgiveness. And 2) Just because it is only hunger and thirst, we can’t minimize it.
So, #1 first. God doesn’t want us to feel like such failures that we give up. There is only one sin that He can’t forgive — and that is unbelief.
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God wants us to keep trying and working on growing closer to Him. He knows we are going to have fits and starts at first. He also knows we are going to run into problems. He is looking for us to choose Him.
But #2, we can’t believe that we can purposefully go ahead and keep sinning. We are supposed to strive for righteousness.
God has to see evidence that we have chosen Him. He wants to make sure we aren’t just buying fire insurance. That evidence is our obedience.
Stuffed
“… for they will be filled” (Mt. 5: 6 CSB)
Oh, wow! Look at that promise. “… for they will be filled” (Mt. 5: 6 CSB).
We will be made righteous — and not just a little bit. This is total.
Well, if we are talking hungry and thirsty, getting full means we have enough to eat and drink. If we are talking about our desires, we are going to get what we desire.
Barker noted that filled meant “satisfied because it quenches the desire of sin.” Won’t that be a glorious day when that promised to us is fulfilled!
Watson also said that the fullness wasn’t just going to be until the next meal. It was going to be constant. Well, this is from God, isn’t it? He doesn’t do things half heartedly. It is going to be grace, peace, and bliss (Watson).
Making the Connections
We can be made righteous. It is something we have to learn. God is more than willing to teach us — if we are docile and let Him.
A lot of people think God made us so we are children of God — we don’t have to do anything else. It doesn’t work that way. We ran away from home. God puts one condition on taking us back. We have to believe and submit.
There has to be evidence of that submission. It can’t be just words that we’ve said. We have to show with our lives we are trying to imitate Him.
Making the Connections to Self-Discipline
This is going to be a process, folks. God is going to have a lot to do in our sanctification process to change us from holy to righteous. That is going to take discipline on our part.
How Do We Apply This?
Yeah, we can desire for righteousness. What is Satan going to do? He is going to throw his whole arsenal at us. Butcher said it this way: “The desire for righteousness is met by the actual presence of sin. Jesus died that sin might be removed.”
Yeah, we can desire for righteousness. What is Satan going to do? He is going to throw his whole arsenal at us. Butcher said it this way: “The desire for righteousness is met by the actual presence of sin. Jesus died that sin might be removed.”
We need to hunger and thirst (desire) to do our part in the spiritual warfare. We can only do this by seeking God.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
To read Has God Provided Everything We Need?, click the button below.
We need to listen to God and obey everything He tells us. That includes all the tough stuff we would rather not do.
Chaplin wrote that “it is a desire not merely for doing righteously, but for being righteous.” That means we have to let the sanctification process change our character.
God is not going to be tricked. We expects us to be genuine — genuinely submissive, genuinely mourning, genuinely obedient. That will make us righteous.
Loving Father. We hunger for You. We thirst to be like You. Help us to grow through the sanctification process so that we are righteous and ready for our eternal home. Amen.
What do you think?
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I have studied the Beatitudes a couple of times as part of larger Bible studies and, the more I read them, the more I want to know! I would love to find a really good book or Bible study that focuses just on the Beatitudes. Can you recommend anything?
Sorry, I do not know of a good book or Bible study. I am like you and would love to dig deeper into the Beatitudes. The website that I generally use did not have much at all for any of the verses. I will keep you in mind if I find anything.
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