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Thoughts of a saint and slave
by Sam Isaacson
Last week we looked at the concept of ‘seek first the Kingdom of God’ as described in Matthew 6:33. This week we will finish this mini-series by looking at the meaning of ‘seek first…His righteousness’.
Now an ever-useful free online dictionary describes righteousness as ‘adhering to moral principles’, but when referring to God I think it means more than that: when we look at God’s righteousness we do not think about Him ‘adhering to moral principles’ but more Him defining them, and in His very character eternally existing in adherence to moral principles. What, then, does it mean to seek His righteousness?
It’s His righteousness
The first thing to state here is that in seeking His righteousness we do not look to perform particular actions in order to enable God’s righteousness. Now that sentence is a bit complicated but perhaps an example will help. We cannot say that God’s righteousness is enabled by the fact that, for example, a Christian gives a poor person a bed for the night; His righteousness is eternal and a part of His character rather than a result of actions. To clarify: we cannot add anything to God; He does not need us!
Seeking…
So we come to the meaning of this word: ‘seek’. We know that God is righteous, and have seen His righteousness ultimately demonstrated as He dealt with the very existence of sin in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. While ‘the wages of sin is death’ (Romans 6:23) those wages earned by our sin have been paid by Christ dying on the cross, and the meaning of Jesus’ words ‘It is finished!’ carry with them in the original Greek the sense of being ‘paid in full’; God’s righteousness, for Christians, does not need any more seeking out because we have all received it!
So what does Jesus mean?
My thoughts on this are that Jesus, in telling us to seek God’s righteousness, is referring to us seeking a recognition of God’s righteousness in our lives. This means two things:
Firstly it means that we must display God’s righteousness by being ‘little Christs’ (the meaning of the word Christian) i.e. by doing ‘righteous acts’ in our day-to-day lives. This would mean obeying the law, following the rules at work and not manipulating or abusing them, reading the Bible and responding appropriately and so on. We should seek to live out the words of Ephesians 2:10 and do the ‘good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.’
Secondly it means drawing non-Christians we know closer to God’s ultimate display of righteousness on the cross. Hopefully by performing the good works in response to the previous point unbelievers will be attracted to our way of life, but I do not think we should pretend that living a Christian life is just about being good; we are commanded by Jesus to make disciples (i.e. other Christians) of those in our immediate vicinity, as well as those in the wider community and even those in other countries (see Matthew 28:19-20). Let us, therefore, be challenged to seek God’s righteousness in the lives of every unbeliever we come into contact with. Let’s just close with some familiar words of Jesus, from John 3:16:
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life. Do we believe that whoever believes in him will have eternal life? That’s what it means to seek God’s righteousness: let’s declare His righteousness as displayed on the cross through actions and through words to all those we know today, believing He will act!
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