They Shall Be Fattened – by Joseph Cortes

Matthew 5:6 reads, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”

Blessed is makarios in the Greek, but unfortunately some dictionaries have translated it as happiness or happy. Happy is a temporary physical state that we experience when reacting to something that pleases us, but this scripture never said that. If you look at the King James Version, it is closest to the accurate meaning. The meaning of this verse is obvious, and I will point those things out, including how some of the Sinai manuscripts that many translators are using now have huge errors.

Returning to this verse and makarios, blessed, the closest translation in English would be fully satisfied, but when the King James 1611 version was written, there was a different understanding of what blessed was. One of the stronger meanings for blessed was, bathed in the blood of something; in this case, Christ. So really, blessed, would mean ‘fully satisfied are the ones that are bathed in the blood.’ Yes, I am sure these people didn’t understand what Jesus was saying — or maybe they did– but somewhere along the line, we’ve lost the translation. The translators of 1611 that put the King James Bible together to use the right word here; blessed, fully satisfied and bathed in the blood. Where do you think we get ‘God bless you’ when somebody sneezes? Basically, you are telling someone literally ‘God bathe you in the blood of Jesus Christ’ when you sneeze. And why not; usually sneezing leads to a cold, viruses, flu, or sickness. Why not be bathed in the blood of Jesus Christ? Read this verse again with that understanding,

“Blessed [fully satisfied or bathed in the blood] are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled [chortazo in the Greek, being filled and satisfied].”

Also, in the Greek, hunger is very clear: keep yourself constantly hungry. Don’t get filled up and kick back doing nothing or take a nap spiritually. Jesus was saying we are to stay hungry for righteousness throughout God’s Word in the Old and New Testaments. We are constantly being reminded to seek righteousness, not our own righteousness, but God’s righteousness. Keep yourself hungry for God’s righteousness and thirst, or eagerly long for those things which the soul is refreshed and strengthened by.

I have read many messages on this verse and many miss the promise here. What I love about the Greek is that God is saying, “Fully satisfied and bathed in the blood of Jesus Christ are they which do keep themselves hungry and longing for those things of which the soul is refreshed and strengthened and those things as righteousness for they shall be [and this is the best translation found with a wonderful promise that goes along with the type of righteousness that God implants in us] they shall be fattened.” Fattened! Yes, we are to be fat cats in God’s righteousness. “for they shall be fattened.”

The problem with most Christians today is that they fatten themselves up in their own self-seeking ways which produces self-righteousness. Our checklist for Jesus will only make sure that we look righteous, act righteous, and we smell righteous. However, if one of those, we are nothing more than a smelly dirty dog. I know some of you won’t like to hear that, but that’s what we become because of our own checklist of righteous works. God is not looking for that. He could have produced robots filled with righteousness if He wanted to, but He didn’t. And since we failed, since Adam failed, and since no one can live up to the law, He had to send someone who would bathe us in the blood. All we must do is keep ourselves spiritually hungry, constantly longing for the refreshment that gives us strength in our soul, which is the righteousness given by God to fatten us.