I have an old friend who has built his life on this scripture (Matthew 6:33).
“But seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these
things will be added to you.”
But… exactly what does this mean? What is ‘first’? ‘The kingdom of God’ – what does this mean? His righteousness? And how do we seek??? (I know I’ve written about this scripture before but as I discover more about what this means, at least for me, I like to share my understandings and hopefully hear yours.0
Seek: We’ve seen and read about seeking in other scriptures. The most famous one is also found in Matthew.
“Ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will
be opened to you.” (7:7)
Ask, Seek, Knock. The underlining theme is … you will. If you seek then you will find. But it is us who do the doing. If we don’t seek, how do we know what we find when we find ‘it’? It (in this case, seeking but applicable to everything) has to be a value for you, something you are not only willing to do but will take the time and effort in order to discover. Do you want to seek – handing it to you on a platter rarely works.
Next, what is it you should be seeking? This scripture says – the kingdom of God and His righteousness. This is an amazing, lifelong, intentional act. You won’t find ‘it’ immediately and when you enter the beginning understanding, you discover that you’ve only scratched the surface and that this will continue to grow as you give yourself to the adventure of discovery. Personally, the discovery regarding righteousness is something that I found amazing and humbling.
Righteousness: as a beginning step, read 2Corinthians 5:17-21, especially:
“…For our sake He made Him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that
in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (v. 21)
We all know that we aren’t righteous and we don’t act this way. But we do have a ‘get out of jail free card’, it’s called salvation. When we accept Jesus as Lord we are made a new creation (5:17) and are made righteous! What a glorious gift and standing.
Do we fail? Of course. But our God provided a way back into the standing of righteousness.
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1John 1:9)
This is never license. It is an understanding of what we did, the ramifications of our words/actions and a determination, a purposing to not repeat – to honor our status as righteous.
The result… ‘all these things’ shall be added. Do you even know how to define for yourself what ‘all these things’ are? Wrong focus. This discussion is only a first step on the path. There is so much to learn, to understand, to apply. The beginning is to seek.
