Wholeness is an Adventure into Love
The fourth Be-Attitude says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6).
The experience of the love of God may be compared to the awe inspired by a flaming sunrise. Both awaken an expectation of a new day, of coming bliss, contentment and satisfaction; of wholeness.
A Paradox
But as we explored previously, (https://wp.me/p22zu5-ce) the first three Be-Atitudes are more like descending into a dank dungeon, unexpectedly leading us in the opposite direction, ever deeper into the valley of humiliation. Confronted with the perfection of God, we are shocked at the horror found in our hearts and brought to mourn: sin has ruined us, and our case is hopeless.
Once we begin to see what we were made for, we can no longer be content to remain trapped inside the person we have become. We begin to desire something more, for wholeness.
And this is where the fourth Attitude of Being takes us.
Righteousness Indicates God Himself
Righteousness Means Life Made Right
“Righteousness” is a word that has picked up a lot of baggage. It can sound like moral scorekeeping, like being “right” by following enough rules to a certain standard. But righteousness is much more than that.
It is life made right with God. It is the alignment of our inner life and our outward life brought into harmony with Him. It is the wholeness that results when the new person we are inside and the life we live outside are in lockstep with God.
Wholeness is not something we manufacture by trying harder to be good. It grows out of a relationship with God. It is a solar system where God is the Sun and the virtues, compassion, kindness, honesty, justice, humility, courage, patience, and generosity are the planets that derive life and sustenance from Him. Notice that these are not primarily rules, they are qualities that constitute a well rounded, a person, one who is whole. Righteousness in this view is not merely keeping to rules, it is the positive transformation into a whole person.
The Core Is Love
At the heart of that relationship is love.
Paul describes it beautifully:
“Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” (Ephesians 3:17–19 NLT)
Notice that love has dimensions: wide, long, high, deep and beyond complete understanding. Those dimensions are not mathematical textbook facts. They are a universe to keep exploring with His encouragement and resources.
Paul’s vision of spiritual maturity is not grim moral improvement. It is becoming rooted in love until the life of God fills us.
To hunger and thirst for righteousness then, is ultimately to hunger for God Himself, to know Him, to experience Him, to be made right with Him, to delight in Him, and to have His life become real in us and flow through us.
We are not looking for a better version of ourselves.
We are looking for God.
Most commentaries use this Be-Attitude to castigate, suggesting areas of shortcoming to correct. This legal approach results in guilt, a far cry from the bliss Jesus pronounces as gospel grace. Law is the effort we offer God. Grace is what God has done and offers as a gift. Shift the Be-Attitude from a legal requirement to a relational one, and it then describes something else: a wholeness that grows not from meeting a standard, but from growing in love. The contented bliss Jesus is not earned, it is bestowed. It is grace, not law.
Law condemns. Grace liberates, freeing us to gladly display the virtues of Jesus through the delight of pleasing the One who loves us. The result is not a lessening of moral standards; it is their amplification. A task done out of duty is done without spirit, with dullness. A task done out of love goes the second mile with sparkling joy.
Not Attainment, But Desire
Discouragement may whisper that you lack such a desire. Perhaps your hunger for God seems weak, inconsistent, or even absent.
But the very awareness of that hunger, or even the longing to have it, is itself an awakening of the heart.
When David desired to build a temple for God, the Lord said to him:
“Because it was in your heart to build a temple for my Name, you did well to have this in your heart.”
—1 Kings 8:18
God noticed what was in his heart, even though David would not be the one to complete what he desired to do.
I sing like a crow but thrill to great music; the greater the music, the fiercer my hunger to hear it. If that’s true of music, how much more of God? How great is our King, and He withheld nothing, even pitching His tent among us. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
God is shaking us, awakening us to delight in Himself.
A compass needle is drawn toward the north through the pull of the magnetic north. Grace operates in a similar manner.
God is our true North, and His grace has magnetized our hearts.
Beneath all our other longings is a deeper hunger, a pull toward the only place where we can find our true wholeness.
We may wander. We may lose our bearings. We may even point in the wrong direction for a time.
But the pull remains.
And perhaps this is the most beautiful thing of all:
The hunger itself is evidence of grace.
God is not standing at a distance waiting for us to find our way to Him.
His grace is continually drawing us home.
Progressing People 
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