The Beatitudes: The Biblical Pattern of Christian Experience

Introduction

After having considered the first three Beatitudes, it is perhaps useful to briefly review the entire structure of the first seven before we proceed to focus on the fourth and central of these Beatitudes.

In observing these seven indispensable jewels of the Christian’s experience comprehensively, it is noteworthy that this fourth Beatitude has the central and pivotal position among all of them. We shall soon discover that this Beatitude is Christ’s description of the exercise of saving faith, an experience which Christ here establishes as the central experience of the Christian life. The exercise of faith is so to speak the axle around which all Christian experience revolves.

Thus it becomes evident that, relative to this fourth and central Beatitude, there is a unique relationship between the first three and last three Beatitudes. Briefly stated, in the first three Christ describes the disposition of heart which results in the exercise of faith, and in the last three the disposition of life which is the fruit of the exercise of faith. We could also say that the first three Beatitudes give us the inner dimension of Christian experience, whereas the last three give us the external dimension-both dimensions being inseparably united by the exercise of faith. In other words, it is the internal operation of the Holy Spirit in the heart which will inevitably cause the Christian—be it for the first time or by renewal—to hunger and thirst after the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. This in turn will inevitably bring forth the fruits of Spirit-wrought holiness.

We have thus far considered the disposition of heart which results in the exercise of faith; that is, we have listened to Christ as He has defined for us the essential elements of the discovering ministry of the Holy Spirit whereby He prepares the heart of an elect sinner for the exercise of faith. We have learned that the first of these three marks is the discovery of one’s spiritual poverty. The Spirit will make the sinner conscious that he is without God and without hope in the world—that the very essence of our deep fall is that we have lost God Himself and thereby have become inexpressibly poor. He thereby makes room for Christ as the way whereby sinners are restored in the presence and fellowship of God.

This in turn will cause the sinner to mourn, for by the mysterious operation of God’s Spirit he now yearns for the very God he misses. How the sinner mourns when it pleases God’s Spirit to hold before him the mirror of God’s holy law whereby he discovers sin to be the reason why there is a breach between God and his soul! How this will cause such a sinner to mourn with David, “Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight.”

This poor, mourning sinner will also become a meek sinner when the Spirit of God confronts him with the spotless attributes of the God whom he misses and against whom He has sinned. He will teach him that such a God can by no means clear the guilty, and that His holy and just character demands eternal judgment upon despisers of His holy law. For such a sinner who has been made poor, mourning, and meek by the Holy Spirit there remains but one confession: “Woe is me! for I am undone.” It is only in this way that a sinner will learn to despair of ever restoring the breach between God and his soul by his own efforts. He will instead begin to hunger and thirst for the perfect righteousness of Christ who alone has perfectly met the perfect requirements of the perfect attributes of His perfect Father.

Thus in the first three Beatitudes Christ answers the following critical questions for us: “What is saving conviction? What are the essential elements of a Spirit-wrought knowledge of misery?” Christ here states with divine precision what His Spirit has taught the saints of all ages, namely, that only those sinners will truly hunger and thirst for His righteousness who are acquainted with their spiritual bankruptcy, who mourn over their sin, and as meek sinners subscribe to the justice of a holy and righteous God. Something of these three elements—be it to a lesser or greater degree —will be present in every saving conviction, elements which have in common that they are all God-focussed—the focus being on the person of God, the law of God, and the attributes of God.

Such sinners will need a righteousness which exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Such sinners will yearn for the God-given righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Definition of Terms

In order to better understand Christ’s definition of the exercise of faith, we must briefly examine the meaning of the key words in this text, namely, “righteousness,” “hungering,” and “thirsting.”

Righteousness

The meaning of the English word “righteousness” is very simple and straightforward: “that which is right” This is closely related to the meaning of the Greek word found in our text. This word is a derivative of the Greek word for “justice,” and it therefore means that which fulfills the claims of justice. Within the context of Scripture—when used in reference to God—this word then obviously means that which fulfills the claims of divine justice. “Righteousness” is therefore that which perfectly conforms to the requirements of God’s attributes as expressed in His holy law. In relating all this to our English word we could say that “righteousness” is that which is right, that is, that which perfectly conforms to God’s perfect standard—His law.

In examining the usage of this word in Scripture (and all words related to it) it is evident that this word is used in a twofold sense. To be righteous either means “to be in a right relationship to,” or “to do that which is right.” Relating this to our aforesaid definition, a righteous person is one who is in a right relationship to God and who does what is right in the sight of God.

It will at once be clear that this was true for Adam before he fell. In our covenant head we were created in a right and harmonious relationship to our Creator, a relationship which fully and flawlessly conformed to His holy and righteous character. The inevitable fruit of this relationship was very evident, for it was Adam’s chief delight to do what was right—to live in perfect, loving, devoted, and worshipful obedience to his Maker. Adam was truly a righteous man in the dual sense in which we find it throughout Scripture.

How tragically this changed as a result of his and our deep fall! The blessed relationship with our magnificent Creator was broken. From that day on we are no longer righteous—we are no longer in a right relationship to God and we no longer desire to do that which is right. Ever since that wretched day the words of the Apostle Paul have been an unmistakable reality for Adam’s pos terity: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10).

Our fall, however, did not change God’s character at all. From eternity to eternity He is a righteous God. Scripture bears abundant testimony to this. “For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness” (Psa. 11:7);

“Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne” (Psa. 97:2); ‘The LORD is righteous in all His ways” (Psa. 145:1 7). This means, therefore, that in order for man to again be in a right relationship with God the requirements of His righteous character must be met. This, however, has become a total impossibility for fallen man, an impossibility so powerfully stated by Christ Himself in Matthew 5:18,20, where we read, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” What a wonder it is therefore that that which is utterly impossible with man is fully possible with God! For it has been the eternal good pleasure of the very God whom we have rejected and offended to provide a perfect righteousness whereby fallen and unrighteous sinners can become righteous again, that is, whereby fallen sinners can again be restored into a right relationship with God and do that which is right in His sight.

How evident it is that this righteousness is none other than the matchless righteousness of the one Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ, who by His active obedience has done that which was perfectly right on behalf of unrighteous sinners and who in His passive obedience restored the broken relationship between God and His people. It is therefore no wonder that Scripture so highly exalts that righteousness. Daniel already prophesied of it when he wrote, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness” (Dan. 9:24). With His one substitutionary sacrifice Christ brought in the everlasting restoration of the relationship between God and His fallen creatures, a wonder which caused Paul to jubilate, “For he hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

Yet, how blind is the natural man for all that has been stated in the foregoing —blind for the infinitely holy character of his Maker, blind for his own unrighteousness, and blind for the fact that by his own doings he can never again meet the requirements of God’s holy law. This is why Paul writes about fallen men —especially fallen men who are religious—that they “being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Rom. 10:3).

Therefore, apart from the mighty, discovering ministry of God’s Spirit, fallen man will never despair of his own righteousness and hunger and thirst for the divine righteousness of Jesus Christ. What a miracle it is therefore, a miracle which exceeds the miracle of creation, that throughout the world sinners are yet to be found who do indeed hunger and thirst after that righteousness! The nature and intensity of that desire will become evident when we examine the words “hungering” and “thirsting.”

Hungering and Thirsting

Christ, in describing the desire of His spiritual subjects, could not have selected two better words—so universally understood—than the words “hungering” and “thirsting.” There is not one human being who cannot identify with this intense yearning for sustenance and refreshment, a yearning which relates to the most basic and fundamental desires and needs of human existence. All living human beings cannot but hunger and thirst. From our own experience we know that the nature of hunger and thirst is such that these desires must be satisfied. Prolonged deprivation from food and drink will result in an intolerable situation and will ultimately incapacitate us. Therefore, throughout human existence, men and women who have had to suffer from hunger and thirst have become ingenious in devising ways to satisfy those throbbing desires in some way, even if as in World War II it meant eating flower-bulbs and licking out empty soup barrels. A living man must eat and drink or else he faces certain death.

It is this most basic of all human desires which Christ uses here to describe the true spiritual desire of all the citizens of God’s kingdom. The logical deduction is very obvious here: Where there is spiritual life there will be such spiritual hungering and thirsting. Those who have been made spiritually alive by God’s Spirit cannot but hunger and thirst after righteousness. It is equally obvious that this spiritual hungering and thirsting is as intense as natural hungering and thirsting and that also this spiritual desire is therefore a desire that must be satisfied.

We may thus say that the spiritual citizen of God’s kingdom yearns with an intense yearning for that twofold righteousness: he yearns to be in a right relationship with God and he yearns to live right before God, or we could simply say, he yearns to be justified and sanctified. Christ, the living personification of the written Word of God, here conveys to us the inseparable relationship between these two cardinal benefits of the covenant of grace.

What we read in the following passages is therefore characteristic of what we find throughout Holy Writ: “I have longed for Thy salvation, O LORD; and Thy law is my delight” (Psa. 119:174); “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous” (1 Jn. 3:7).

Thus it is this intense yearning for divine righteousness that Christ here identifies and describes as the exercise of faith. Since this twofold righteousness directly relates to God Himself—a right relationship to Him and a right life before Him—it at once becomes plain that it is God Himself whom the true Christian yearns for and that God in Christ is the true and only object of saving faith. How beautiful is the harmony of the Beatitudes! For we observe here that a God-centered knowledge of our misery will inevitably and of necessity result in a God-centered and God-focussed panting after the righteousness of Jesus Christ, a righteousness which fully conforms to the perfect demands of a holy and righteous God.

Therefore, in conclusion we can say that the true citizen of God’s kingdom is a person who, with his whole being pants after God Himself with a yearning as intense as for natural hunger and thirst, and a yearning which of necessity must be satisfied. This is the yearning which we find expressed in Psalm 42:1: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God,” and in Psalm 84:2, “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” This hungering and thirsting after righteousness is the yearning of a poor, mourning, and meek sinner, who in the depths of his lost condition learns to cry out, “Give me Jesus else I die!” It is a yearning of the soul which is exclusively the result of the saving operation of God’s Spirit, and which He in His time will also satisfy, “for they shall be filled”!

The Lord willing, we hope to consider the all-important experiential implications of these words to which we have alluded already and which we find expressed by Paul: ‘That I may win Christ, and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:8–9). May God grant that by His grace this may also be or become the confession of our life.

Bartel Elshout is presently on leave of absence as evangelist, and is translating W. Brakel’s The Christian’s Reasonable Service (Redelijke Codsdienst).

Deze tekst is geautomatiseerd gemaakt en kan nog fouten bevatten. Digibron werkt voortdurend aan correctie. Klik voor het origineel door naar de pdf. Voor opmerkingen, vragen, informatie: contact.

Op Digibron -en alle daarin opgenomen content- is het databankrecht van toepassing. Gebruiksvoorwaarden. Data protection law applies to Digibron and the content of this database. Terms of use.

Printen