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I believe that most people in the world want to be right. I certainly don’t know a soul who wants to be wrong, plans so that he is wrong, works so that he is wrong. Do you? I don’t think so. It may be true that a lot of us want to do as we please and call it right, or what feels good and assume that it is right, but we don’t really want to be wrong. Being wrong somehow suggests that something bad is going to happen as a result of what we have done. That’s generally the idea about right and wrong: you do good and good things will happen; you do wrong and bad things are going to happen. So along comes Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount saying:

Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Highly favored are those who are hungry to be right. Now, I do think there is a difference between what Jesus calls a hunger and a thirst for righteousness and the habit a lot of us have for simply wanting to be right. David, when he was speaking along these lines said:

My tongue shall speak of your word: for all your commandments are righteousness.

So if I’m hungering and thirsting after righteousness then I am hungering and thirsting after God’s commandments. That a little bit of a funny way to put it, don’t you think? When salvation is by grace (and it is by grace, let’s make no mistake about that) why should a Christian go hungering and thirsting after the commandments of God? After you have salvation, what else is there?