September 29 Daily Devotional

The hunger for holiness

To hunger and thirst after righteousness is nothing but the longing to be positively holy.... The man who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is the man who wants... to show the fruit of the Spirit in his every action ... [It]... is to long to be like the New Testament man, the new man in Christ Jesus…. It means that one’s supreme desire in life is to know God and to be in fellowship with Him, to walk with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the light. ‘Our fellowship’, says John, ‘is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.’ He also says, ‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all’... In the end [it] is nothing but a longing and a desire to be like the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Look at Him; look at His portrait in these Gospels; look at Him when He was here on earth in His incarnate state; look at Him in His positive obedience to God’s holy law; look at him in His reaction to other people, His kindness, His compassion, His sensitive nature; look at Him in His reaction to His enemies and all that they did to Him. There is the portrait, and you and I, according to the New Testament doctrine, have been born again and have been fashioned anew after that pattern and image. The man, therefore, who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is the man who wants to be like that. His supreme desire is to be like Christ.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, pp. 79–80