SEEK FIRST (Part 3)

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness”  Matt. 6:33

Now we know that the word translated kingdom comes from the Greek basileia.  We know that God establishes His kingdom through His own personal announcement – another creation spoken into existence.  Human agency is not part of this creation.  It is God’s plan on behalf of humanity, energized and executed by God.  We discovered that the essence of this kingdom is to be found in a relationship, not a realm.  We will find it only by searching for the correct correspondence between the king and us.  The Kingdom of God is nothing less than God’s rightful authority over all of creation.  When my motivation is clear, when I see that God calls me into a community with Him, I will suddenly be confronted by the fact that the God who created everything that exists wants me to be a citizen of His kingdom right here where I am.  I have the choice to look for His rule in every aspect of life.  I have the choice to search for His design in every part of the world.  If I do, says Jesus, I will find what I am looking for.  I will know who He is and who I am.  I will discover the most important relationship in existence.

There is an associated phrase in Jesus’ command to “seek”.  We are to look for more than God’s rightful rule (although that is quite a lot, as we have seen).  We are also to seek God’s righteousness.  This word is critically important in the Bible.

Righteousness is an unfamiliar word today.   We probably have mental images of some minister preaching fervently about how sinful and guilty we are, shouting out that we need God’s righteousness.  Or we may have no idea at all what this word is really about.  We only know that it makes us feel uncomfortable.  But it shouldn’t.  It is really a legal word.  It’s not much different than the actions of a courtroom trial.  In American justice, when the verdict is read, the defendant is either guilty or not guilty.   But in British law, there is another category – innocent.  We all know what guilty means.  Not guilty is simply a legal term that means there was not enough evidence to prove the defendant was guilty.  It does not mean that the defendant did not commit the crime.  This is why the British system has the category “innocent”.  This term means that there is proof that the defendant did not commit the crime.

In order to understand “righteousness”, we need to think about God’s courtroom.  We have been accused of crimes against God’s holy law.  In this case, there isn’t any hope of defense because we know, and so does God, that we are really guilty.  We are never going to get the proof needed to show we are innocent.  But we will also never get by with “not guilty” because the case against us is a slam-dunk.  God would have no trouble at all proving that we really did violate His standard.  Righteousness is another word for the verdict “innocent”.  It doesn’t apply to us since we are clearly guilty.  But in this verse, Jesus tells us that we need to “seek” it.  How is that possible?

Let’s do some digging in the languages of this word and see if we can answer that question.  The Greek word dike is the base word for an entire group of words surrounding the concept of “righteousness”.  This base word means “justice”.  The idea of justice in the New Testament is closely connected with the idea of covenant law in the Old Testament. In order to understand the way the New Testament uses dike, we need to start with the Hebrew word sedeq. This word occurs more than 250 times in the Old Testament.  It means of moral conformity to a norm or standard.  It is used to describe the judgments of the human beings who were to make decisions on the basis of the truth without partiality.  It is applied to all sorts of standards, from weights and measures to ethical conduct.

But the real emphasis behind this word is its implication that the ultimate test of being pure and just is found in man’s obedience to the ordinances of God.  When men are disobedient, their sin manifests itself in injustice, self-aggrandizement, victimization of others, willful disregard for compassion and corruption.  This sad state is true of both individuals and nations.  Breaking God’s law has far reaching consequences not only for disrupted spiritual harmony but also for the foundations of personal integrity and societal values.

The Bible ascribes perfect righteousness to the character of God.  God’s moral perfection is the basis not only of His absolute intolerance of sin but also of His sacrificial act of mercy.  The standard of righteousness is God Himself and the exercise of this standard is to be seen in God’s just demand for obedience and in His offer of forgiveness.  The Old Testament demonstrates that God’s law is binding and unchangeable.  Since it is based exclusively on God’s character, it is not open to negotiation by men.

When Jesus lived, the Jewish concept of law had deteriorated into a fixed set of percepts regulating nearly every activity of life.  Righteousness was seen as the balance sheet of a man’s life, the result of adding up all his good deeds and subtracting all his sins.  This form of piety characterized the Pharisees.  Jesus reacted strongly against this false righteousness because it was based on the idea of showing God that I am “not guilty”.  In other words, I would go to God’s courtroom and present a character-witness defense.  For every bad thing I had done, I would try to demonstrate something good in order to erase the bad deed.  This is a kind of plea-bargaining with God.

“Yes, God, I know that I lusted after Joe’s daughter.  Yes, I admit that I cheated my business partner.  Oh, that’s right.  I recall the times that I lied and those couple of times when I lost my temper.  But I really didn’t mean to hit him, you know.  I just couldn’t help it.  But wait, God.  Don’t forget all the good things I did.  I gave a little extra to the church that year.  And I was always nice to the neighbors.  I was a good father.  I took care of my family.  I even helped at the mission once or twice.  And I never killed anyone or swore.  Doesn’t that count for something.”

Acting as though my status before God can be measured by how much good I do denies that I need God’s gift of grace.  Even more importantly, this kind of behavior suggests that I can achieve moral holiness on my own.  But God clearly says that no human effort will ever match up to the standard of holiness.  Old Testament prophets proclaimed this teaching over and over.  Nevertheless, most people disregard it.

When Jesus taught that seeking God’s kingdom and seeking righteousness were equally important and equally valid endeavors, he did not mean that we should put all of our efforts into working toward a balance sheet of good actions.  He was adamantly opposed to this mistreatment of God’s grace.  We should remember that Jesus gave us the summary lesson on righteousness in the third Beatitude (Matthew 5:6).  There is proclaimed that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.  But Jesus knew full well that the terms he used for hunger and thirst would recall images of judgment.  The imagery carried with it a great deal more than physical deprivation.  In fact, the Jews remembered the passages from Deuteronomy and Isaiah where hunger and thirst were signs of God’s wrath poured out on a disobedient people.  They saw God inflict hunger and thirst on His enemies (Lam. 5:10 and Neh. 5:3) and on His chosen people (Isaiah 65:13).  These people believed that hunger and thirst were signs of God’s punishment and rejection.

Therefore, to hunger and thirst meant to be under the condemnation of God.  This was not just a social condition.  It did not demand a change in mental outlook.  It was about obedience and disobedience.  It was holy judgment.  My hunger was not the result of some social or political or economic circumstance.  Those might be the vehicles that brought about the condition of depravity, but ultimately my hunger was the result of God’s vengeance poured out on my life.

The religious clergy of Jesus’ audience believed that God exercised control over life’s physical realm as part of His moral accounting.  Those who are obedient to His Law are rewarded.  Those who are not obedient are punished.  It is all a matter of the balance scale.  They thought that if my good deeds outweigh by bad deeds, I have hope of being spared God’s wrath.  But if my current accounting is deficient, God may use such common human needs like food and drink to correct the scales.  He may decide to punish me now, thereby rectifying the imbalance in the present, or He may withhold His immediate wrath and punish me in the future.   Hunger and thirst represent two separate functions of punishment – either chastisement for the purpose of instruction and purification or suffering due to disobedience.

Jesus rejects all this plea-bargaining.  So should we.  Why try to find excuses for our condition?  We are guilty.  Actually, the first step in redemption is to admit that this is true.  What we lack is innocence.  The unfortunate part of life is that this is something we cannot acquire, ever!

So, why does Jesus tell us to seek righteousness?  He tells us to fervently chase after righteousness because if we do we will discover our total dependence.  Once we get past the plea-bargaining excuses, once we admit that we are hopelessly guilty, we seek a way out of our impossible dilemma.  We need to be innocent.  That is the only status acceptable in God’s kingdom.  And the only way we can be judged “innocent” is if God proclaims us “innocent” in spite of our true guilt.  The man who is righteous is considered innocent, not because he is guiltless of breaking laws but because he has a right standing before God.  This can be the case only because God Himself attributes righteousness to us since each of us has clearly acted in disobedient ways.

There are some people who are singled out by their own internal keen awareness of the need for something essential.  They are the ones who know that life is missing something vital, something that can only be supplied by God Himself.  They are the ones who recognize that the elements needed to make life what God intended life to be are painfully absent.  And they know something very important.  They know that they cannot provide whatever it is.  They are helpless to rectify this situation.

If God were only the Judge in His courtroom, we would be finished.  We could never make it out alive.  But God is more than the Judge.  He is also our advocate.  He is our lawyer.  The is one of the meanings of the term paraclete, the Greek word for the Holy Spirit.  It means someone who stands up for us, in both a legal and personal sense.  God comes to bat for us.  He says, “Hold on.  This woman is one of my children.  Jesus died for her.  Jesus paid the penalty for breaking the holy law.  I am here to remind the Court of the rule of double jeopardy – you can’t be found guilty for the same crime twice.  Jesus already took the verdict.  So, she should be set free.”

Your advocate won’t argue that you should be found “innocent”.  He won’t argue that you are not guilty.  What he will argue is that your crime has already been paid for.  In spite of your guilt, you should go free.  In other words, you should be treated as if you were innocent.

God’s righteousness is not a static set of rules to which human beings must ascribe.  God is actively engaged in the exercise and application of His righteousness.  God’s rule is the active involvement of His righteousness with our deficiency.   In simple terms, God is holy.  We are not holy and can never be holy based on our own efforts.  We will forever fall short of God’s standard.  But this does not mean that God casts us aside as unworthy.  Amazingly, in spite of our unworthiness under His own rules for life’s order, He counts as righteous those who recognize their unrighteousness and seek His help.  We can think of the stories of Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel and many others who knew their essential unworthiness in front of a holy God and yet, God established them as righteous.

Seeking righteousness is a message that is only for those who already know their essential depravity.  They feel the pangs of unworthiness, the dregs of life out-of-synch, the pain of knowing that life was not intended to be like this.  And they also know that they can’t do anything about it.  They are helpless victims of the lack of righteousness.  They need something that they cannot give themselves.  They need to be right with God but they know that nothing they can do will make it happen.

Do you know what it is like to be continually unsatisfied with your standing before God?  Has your life been under the specter of slow death from the lack of His grace?  Can you feel those racking pains that accompany spiritual starvation?  If you said, “Yes”, then you are most fortunate.  You are seeking.  This is the only attitude that will bring your Advocate to your side.

In our modern world, it is very important to see that Jesus does not say that we will be empowered to find righteousness.  He doesn’t promise a sudden insight or spiritual trick that will make us acceptable or even capable of getting what we need.  The desire for righteousness is not self-fulfilling.  What Jesus says is that righteousness will be given to you.  We are not going to suddenly be empowered to belly-up to the bench of the Judge and show him how worthy you are.  No, you can only receive righteousness as a gift, a declaration that double jeopardy means you go free.  That is the basis of our eternal gratitude to Jesus.  He took our place.

In an age when personal rights are in the forefront, we as Christians would be well served by remembering that there is no personal bill of rights for a Christian.  There is only unmerited, underserved grace from the Creator God though His Son Jesus the Christ.  Standing on my personal rights automatically excludes me from those who seek.  I substitute self-rights for right selflessness.  When my rights become the standard of my life, I exclude myself from being counted as if I were innocent.  I tell God that I want to do it on my own.  And the result is that I cannot receive God’s bounty.  It’s a world turned upside-down.  God gives to those who cannot offer anything except their need.  Blessing falls on the undeserving.

We are a part of the community of the forgiven.  We were not able to understand our need, nor find the pathway to serenity, until we acknowledged the utter futility of our own standards of conduct.  Living according to our rules only brought us desperation and death.  But once we knew that our rules were self-delusions, we also knew that by ourselves we could never throw off the weight of our disobedience.  God offered us forgiveness and the appropriation of His righteousness as soon as we reached the point of surrender.  His grace meant new life.  It still does, one day at a time.

Jesus tells us to seek the rightful rule of God over all things (His kingdom) and, at the same time, seek that place where we come to end of ourselves and throw our lives on His grace.  God promises to provide everything we need.  Everything.