Longing for the Righteousness of God

Exploring what it means to have a deep spiritual desire for justice and holiness in our lives.

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“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” — Matthew 5:6

The fourth beatitude stands at the very heart of the Sermon on the Mount. It gives voice to the deep ache of the human soul yearning for God’s life to take root within it. In the first three beatitudes, Jesus describes the receptive posture of the disciple: poor in spirit, mourning over sin, meek before God and neighbor. But here, in the fourth beatitude, the tone shifts. The language moves from receptivity to desire. It names the longing that drives the spiritual life forward. The blessed life is not only marked by humility before God, but by a hunger for what God alone can give.

Yet Jesus does not speak of hunger and thirst abstractly. Throughout scripture these metaphors were used because they are familiar, God’s people have experienced them first hand. Hunger and thirst are conditions of survival. To hunger is to need. To thirst is to depend. These are not metaphors chosen merely for poetic beauty; they are realities known intimately by the poor and the marginalized. When Jesus spoke of hunger, he most likely spoke to those who knew of stomachs aches, felt the anxiety of scarcity, and who understood what it meant to wait for daily bread. Any spiritual reading of this beatitude must remain tethered to the lived reality of those who hunger and thirst. Otherwise, righteousness becomes detached from the world and our daily lives.

From a biblical sense, this physical hunger is connected to the spiritual life of God’s people. It is most obvious in the history of Israel wandering in the wilderness. Forty years of wandering became a lesson in trust for them, teaching that life depends not merely on bread, but on God’s sustaining word (Deuteronomy 8:3). Israel’s cries are recorded in the psalms and echo this embodied longing.

“My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” — Psalm 63:1

Hunger, in scripture, is the language of utter dependence.

Together, hunger and thirst reveal this deep spiritual truth of dependence. Just as the body cannot survive without food and water, the soul cannot live without the righteousness of God. This righteousness is not something we generate through ambition or self-improvement. As St. Augustine confessed, our souls are restless until they find rest in God. For Augustine, this restlessness is not a defect of the soul but evidence of grace already at work. Desire itself is awakened by God’s initial movement toward us.(1) This beatitude is an invitation to recognize and trust the desire God has placed within us.

To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to desire that both our hearts and the world be set right. The Greek word δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē) carries a deeply relational meaning. Righteousness is not simply a private virtue; it implies living in right relationship with God, with neighbor, and with creation. In scripture, righteousness names covenant faithfulness, alignment with God’s reconciling purposes for all things rather than moral achievement.(2) And in the Old Testament, we read that righteousness and justice are inseparable. To live rightly before God is to seek justice for others, especially for those denied dignity or voice. The prophets insist that faith or worship divorced from justice is hollow.

“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” — Amos 5:24

Righteousness can only be expressed through justice, mercy, and humility before God (Micah 6:8). Any longing for righteousness that does not include concern for the hungry, the poor, the oppressed and those marginalized falls short of the biblical vision for living in right relationship, δικαιοσύνη.

This desire for righteousness, therefore, has both an inward and an outward direction. Inwardly, it is a spiritual desire to be transformed by divine grace, to reflect the character of Christ through humility and love. Outwardly, it is an ethical yearning for God’s justice to take shape in the world. It is a desire for truth to overcome deception, for mercy to triumph over retribution, and for peace to replace violence. Those who hunger for righteousness are not content with the world as it is, because they see what God intends the world to be.

To live in right relationship is not sustained by human effort. Like physical appetite, it can be dulled. Comfort, distraction, and complacency can numb our desire for God and for justice. We can easily become desensitized to how the world is and assimilate to it. For this reason, the Christian tradition has long understood hunger for righteousness as something that must be formed, practiced, and sustained by the Holy Spirit. Prayer trains our attention toward God. Fasting reminds the body of its dependence and reawakens desire. Almsgiving and ministry redirect our righteousness away from self toward love for our neighbor. Repentance frees the heart from sin and restores openness to grace. Jesus teaches on these practices not as means of earning righteousness, but as ways of opening ourselves up to be shaped by God’s grace. As Rowan Williams observes, such practices slowly “school our attention,” reshaping what we notice, desire, and love.(3)

Righteousness ultimately finds its fulfillment in Christ himself, who is both its source and its substance. In him, right relationship with God ceases to be an abstract ideal and becomes incarnate and tangible.

“And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” — 1 Corinthians 1:30

To hunger for righteousness, then, is to hunger for Christ, the Bread of Life (John 6:35). Communion with the living God reshapes our desires so that we begin to want what God wants. To be filled with righteousness is to be drawn into the life of Christ’s self-giving love.

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.” — Galatians 2:20b

This desire for righteousness challenges the world’s assumptions about power and success. To live in the world success is achieved through self assertiveness. However, the desire for righteousness is driven by self-giving love. The cross reveals that divine strength is made known through sacrifice and service. Hunger for righteousness teaches us to see power through humility and honor through mercy.

This beatitude also reveals the tension between the “already” and the “not yet” of God’s kingdom. Through Christ, we experience righteousness now, renewed by the Spirit. We are stirred with a desire to right wrongs and work toward reconciliation. Yet the world remains stuck in sin, injustice, and violence. So our hunger for righteousness continues. This ongoing hunger is not a failure of faith but a sign of hope. We live between grace received and glory awaited, longing for the day when Christ makes all things new (Revelation 21:1–5).

Our hunger and thirst for righteousness is embodied most fully in the Eucharist. There, real hunger meets divine generosity. We come not because we are full, but because we acknowledge our need. Through the bread and wine, we receive the righteousness we long for and are sent to live what we have just received. As Alexander Schmemann, dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York, wrote that the Eucharist is where the world receives “the sacrament of God’s love,”(4) and where our hunger is transformed into communion. Every celebration of the table proclaims God’s trustworthy promise: those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.

Ultimately, to hunger and thirst for righteousness is to share in God’s own desire for the world. It is a restlessness to settle for injustice, to tolerate violence, or to accept sin; it is a hope that stirs the church awake and remain alert for God’s kingdoms. As our Baptismal Covenant affirms, this hope inevitably expresses itself in striving for justice and peace and in respecting the dignity of every human being.(5)

The truly blessed are those who cannot be satisfied by comfort alone, because their deepest appetite is for the righteousness of God. And in that longing, they discover not only discipline and struggle, but joy. Joy because the One who awakens this hunger also promises to satisfy it.

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(1) Augustine, Confessions, I.1

(2) Greek Lexicon, s.v. δικαιοσύνη

(3) Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p. 73.

(4) Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World, p. 23 – 66.

(5) Book of Common Prayer (1979), p. 305.