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Matthew 5:1-2, 6 – Seeing the crowds, He [Jesus] went up on the mountain, and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him. And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: … “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
There’s a thing that happens to many of us when we’re fairly young—some older than others. That’s when something deeply wrong, evil, and unjust happens to you, or to someone you care about, and you sit back and wait for justice to come down on the person who did it. But time goes by, and you realize—the wicked person is getting away with it! Either nothing at all has happened to that person, or only a slap on the wrist—only a token punishment, quickly forgotten.
So you feel outraged. And maybe you take your outrage to someone you trust—a parent, a teacher, a pastor—and they tell you bluntly: “Yes, but that’s the way the world is.” And it hurts. And you go away angry, because something in your gut tells you it should not be this way at all. You want to pursue it, to make justice happen! But you can’t. You investigate, and discover all the options for bringing this person to justice are now closed. Nothing more can be done. It’s over.
At this point you can go two ways. You can give up completely, and grow bitter and cynical. You might even decide that doing good is a waste of time, since the evildoers come out ahead so often.
Or you can feed and cherish that drive for justice. You can continue to hunger and thirst after righteousness, even though you didn’t get it in this case. Some people will even devote their lives to fixing the problem, whatever it is, in order to bring justice.
That’s clearly the better choice. And Jesus says it’s not a waste of time! He says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
When? Where? Obviously not in this world, ruined as it is. But they will be satisfied, because the Lord Himself, who is justice, has come into our world to cleanse it of all evil and to remake it in righteousness. And how is He doing that? Through His own suffering, death, and resurrection.
God deals with our unrighteousness, not by destroying us, but by redeeming us. He chooses to cleanse us, remake us, raise us from spiritual death—and He does all this using His own body and blood. Jesus pays the price of justice for our wrongdoing in His own body on the cross.
And now that Jesus has risen from the dead, He gives us new hearts like His own—hearts that love justice, that care about what is good. He gives us His Holy Spirit, who works in us every day to make us more like Jesus. The Spirit is getting us ready for that day when we come into that kingdom God has promised us, “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13b). And on that day, all our hunger and thirst will be satisfied, because we will be with the Lord forever—and He is our righteousness.
WE PRAY: Dear Father, help me when I see injustice and evil. Use me to correct it however You will. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Kari Vo.
Reflection Questions:
- What is one area of life in which you definitely feel a hunger for righteousness and justice?
- Could God be calling you to become part of the solution to that evil?
- Why is it a bad idea to let yourself get cynical about injustice on earth?
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