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It is important to see verses 31 to 33 together. Verse 31
repeats the prohibition against being anxious about food, drink and
clothing. Verse 32 adds: “For
the Gentiles seek all these things”.
This shows that in the vocabulary of
Jesus `to seek' and `to be anxious' are interchangeable.
He is not talking so much about anxiety as about ambition. Now
heathen ambition focuses on material necessities. But this cannot be
right for Christians partly because “Your heavenly Father knows that
you need them all”, but mostly because these things are not an
appropriate or worthy object for the Christian's quest.
He must have something else, something higher, as the Supreme
Good which he will energetically seek: not material things, but
spiritual values; not his own good but God's; in fact not food and
clothing, but the kingdom and the righteousness of God.
This is no more than the elaboration of teaching already implicit
in the Lord's Prayer. According
to this, Christians must and do recognize the needs of the body ('give
us our daily bread'), although our priority concerns are with God's
name, kingdom and will. We cannot pray the Lord's prayer until our
ambitions have been purified. Jesus
tells as to `seek first God's kingdom and righteousness'; in the Lord's
Prayer we turn this supreme quest into petition.
1. Seeking first God's kingdom
When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God he was not referring to the
general sovereignty of God over nature and history, but that specific
rule over his own people which he himself had inaugurated, and which
begins in anybody's life when he humbles himself, repents, believes,
submits and is born again. God's
kingdom is Jesus Christ ruling over his people in total blessing and
total demand. To `seek
first' this kingdom is to desire as of first importance the spread of
the reign of Jesus Christ. Such
a desire will start with ourselves, until every single department of our
life - home, marriage and family, personal morality, professional life,
and business ethics, bank balance, tax returns, life-style, citizenship
- is joyfully and freely submissive to Christ.
It will continue in our immediate environment, with the
acceptance of evangelical responsibility towards our relatives,
colleagues, neighbours and friends.
And it will also reach out in global concern for the missionary
witness of the church.
We must be clear, then, about true missionary motivation.
Why do we desire the spread of the gospel throughout the world?
Not out of sinful imperialism
or triumphalism, whether for ourselves or the church or even
`Christianity'. Nor just
because evangelism is part of our Christian obedience (though it is).
Nor primarily to make other people happy (though it does).
But especially because the glory of God and of his Christ is at
stake.
God is King, has inaugurated his saving reign through
Christ, and has a right to rule in the lives of his creatures.
Our ambition, then, is to seek first his kingdom, to cherish the
passionate desire that his name should receive from men the honour which
is due to it.
To accord priority to the interests of the kingdom of God
here and now is not to lose sight of its goal beyond history.
For the present manifestation of the kingdom is only partial.
Jesus spoke also of the future kingdom of glory and told us to
pray for its coming. So to `seek first' the kingdom includes the desire
and the prayer for the consummation at the end of time when all the
King's enemies have become his footstool and his reign is undisputed. |
