To Hunger

Sanctification is that process by which the Holy Spirit conforms the believer’s heart and mind to the standard of Jesus Christ. It happens in every Christian (which is why they call them “Christians” after all). Christians are being made Christ-like in a gradual process that continues throughout the believer’s life and is only completed in the life to come.

I wanted to say all that -- a pretty standard definition of the term “sanctification”-- to get it out of the way before saying this:sometimes it seems an awful long way from reality in me.

And I suppose this can also be said: that it seems so far from reality in me has been something that just hasn’t mattered much to me of late.

That’s a sorry fact. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that Matthew 5:6, the fourth beatitude, is one of the highest and purest descriptions of the Christian life that can be found in the Bible.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

David had this hunger, for sure. You see it in his prayer to God in Psalm 51:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, / and renew a right spirit within me. 

The Christian walk will always involve this coming to grips with one's own uncleanness. We must from time to time stand in the place where Jesus stood, when Jesus said to him, "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of man." Mt. 16:23