Kingdom First! Blueprint for a Great Society

The phrase Seek Ye First has indeed grown worse for wear over the last two centuries. Its importance has been superseded by its descent into the mire of tired cliches. Add to this the stunning absence today of powerful expositions of its source verse (within the Sermon on the Mount) and you get a formula for preserving the form while being traitor to the substance.

While Chalcedon does promote the hashtag #SeekYeFirst, we don’t do this to merely circulate a catchy slogan. We labor to galvanize men to concrete action, driving them to read the entirety of Matthew 6:33 and to connect its whole message firmly to the other parts of the great engine of Christ’s work in the world. Once we deactivate our comfortably convenient cruise control and press pedal to the metal, the results will be world-shaking precisely because they will be world-embracing.

Trajectory of the Kingdom

We begin by taking a closer look at a remarkable transaction regarding God’s kingdom, one laid out by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:24. We must grasp the significance of the kingdom in respect to the work the Son was given to do by the Father. James P. Ware puts the central thought forward for us.

First Corinthians 15:24 is the only verse in the entire Bible in which God is said to receive something from a human being!1

The Lord Jesus Christ, fully man and also fully God, is able to give to the Father, Who receives the kingdom from His hand. As Ware further explains,

The Son’s bestowal of the kingdom on the Father (15:24), something even the most exalted creature could not do, reveals His divine nature and equality with the Father. Conversely, the Son’s submission to the Father (15:28) reveals the perfection of His human nature, by which He brings those who are His Own into the fullness of their adoption, inheritance, and glory.2

This transaction occurs after all Christ’s enemies are destroyed, including death. Paul is teaching that the kingdom is currently in the world and in process of expansion here and now.

The reign of Christ as king (basileuein) here is his present reign at the right hand of God. This is recognized by the great majority of expositors. It is also necessitated by the context. The reign of Christ must culminate in the defeat of all his enemies (15:25). The last of these enemies to be abolished will be death (15:26). But the abolition of death will come through the resurrection of the dead at Christ’s Parousia (15:23). Therefore the reign of Christ in 15:25, which will culminate in the resurrection, must refer to the present kingly reign of Christ.3

Paul’s message of Christ’s overthrow of death meant a total overthrow of humanism’s received wisdom about the world.

Against the background of the ancient world into which the gospel came, the implications of Paul’s characterization of death as God’s “enemy” are enormous. This was a striking and new philosophical claim, which put all of reality into a new light. It distinguishes (in a way the ancient philosophical class could not have imagined) between the God-given, good creation and the death and evil that now infect it. And it proclaims an almighty and good creator, who is neither the author of death nor indifferent to it but is its implacable enemy – and its ultimate conqueror.4

But to imagine that Christ is simply running a demolition company against His opposition is to misunderstand the total focus of this passage. There is more to Christ’s conquest than merely defeating His enemies. There lies within the bosom of Paul’s doctrine a blueprint for a great society.

But this subjection to Christ in v. 27 is wider than the placement of all the enemies under Christ’s feet in v. 25, embracing not only the hostile powers but “all things” (15:27). Therefore the subjection to Christ in v. 27 must also include a positive sense denoting the right ordering of creation. Through subjection to Christ, all things are “placed in their proper order under the risen Christ, in order for them to be brought to the goal designed for them by the Creator in accord with Psalm 8.”5

Christ doesn’t turn over a world of smoking ashes to the Father, for He drives the “restitution of all things” and completes it before He returns from heaven (Acts 3:21). Only then can the Father be “all in all” as Paul so strikingly describes it.

Paul’s rhetorical flourish, in climaxing ten instances of the word all in 15:24-15:28 with God becoming all in all in 15:28, is almost playful, but it has the weightiest of points: only by Christ’s abolishing of “all” opposing powers (15:24), his conquest of “all” enemies (15:25), and the subjection of “all things” to him (15:27-28b), can God become “all in all” (15:28c).6

This is the Pauline context for the kingdom’s conquest over everything, and we must mark the point Ware makes above and not miss the passage’s “positive sense denoting the right ordering of creation.” There will be Christian reconstruction regardless how maligned the term may be today … not by might, nor by power, but by His spirit (Zech 4:6).

Seek Ye First

Christ is not concerned with chronological sequence when He says to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. He is instructing us concerning priority, concerning the weightiest matter, of what is first in importance, as Davies notes: “The word is here emphatic, meaning ‘above all else,’ not ‘first in a series.’”7

It is not only Christ’s kingdom that is to be our highest priority, but His righteousness also. Davies sees an interesting historic connection here while discussing the question of one’s first concern, but we will later expand on that point from scripture rather than from merely historic considerations:

Perhaps the thought is this: the kingdom, being God’s sovereign rule which will reach its climax at the consummation, is already present (in Jesus) and one should make it his first concern to belong to it in the here and now, to come into its sphere of working. (This would make Mt 6.33 resemble the rabbinic call to take upon oneself the malkut of heaven, to do the will of God as it is revealed in Torah; see Urbach 1, pp. 400-19).8

What would be so bad if the kingdom of God wasn’t really our primary concern? Marcus Dods points out why that approach is a non-starter for the Christian.

All men would be willing to make the kingdom of God the second thing, but each man would like to choose his own first thing. Every man has some first object, it may be life, or honor, self-respect, or a pure conscience which he would rather preserve than anything else. But the demand here made is no more than saying we are moral creatures, made in God’s image; and morality, if not supreme, is not morality. To put the kingdom in the second place is to annul it.9

As so many do put the kingdom in second place (or lower), it is no surprise to see it limping, crippled, through our culture offering empty platitudes for the salt and light it was appointed to disperse throughout the world.

But there is another way in which Christ’s command can be subverted: when we think that we can stop seeking once we’ve “found” God’s kingdom. This pietistic life hack runs roughshod over the Greek that our Lord uses when He issued this command, as Hendriksen notes.

The verb seek implies a being absorbed in the search for, a persevering and strenuous effort to obtain (cf. 13:45). The form of the verb that is used also allows the rendering, “Be constantly seeking” (cf. Col. 3:1). Note: seek first; that is, give God the priority that is his due (2  Cor. 4:18).10

We’ll see further on how this continuous seeking applies to His righteousness as expressed in His precepts, and the consequences of that ceaseless search.

Hendriksen expands further on the implications of a seeking that doesn’t terminate on this side of the grave.

The listeners are exhorted, therefore, to acknowledge God as King in their own hearts and lives, and to do all in their power to have him recognized as King also in the hearts and lives of others, and in every sphere: education, government, commerce, industry, science, etc. … It stands to reason that when God is recognized as King, righteousness will prevail.11

Buttrick sheds light on the issue men face when confronted by this teaching: “Yet how can a man live for a ‘kingdom’? The word is forbidding, and the idea kindles no excitement.”12 Of course, this is precisely the problem, and Buttrick lays much blame at the feet of previous generations of Christians in setting aside Christ’s directives to us:

Suppose the church in the nineteenth century had taken seriously the demand of Christ that the gospel should be carried through the world; would wars then have been so likely to desolate our earth? We place the kingdom second, and so spend more money for jails and hospitals than we would have spent on decent homes and city planning. Henry Drummond used to say to his theological students: “Don’t be an amphibian, half in one world, half in another”; and again, “Do not touch Christianity unless you are willing to seek the kingdom of heaven first. I promise you a miserable existence if you seek it second.”13

When our priorities fail to align with Christ’s instruction in Matt. 6:33, our lives and our culture become marked by disorder. Says Buttrick, “We seek pleasure first, and find nausea. We seek safety first, and find a cowardly and defenseless mind. We seek profits first, and find fratricide.”14

Seek His Righteousness

We need to dispel a common error concerning what kind of “righteousness” is intended when Christ commands us to seek His righteousness. It is not righteousness that is imputed to us as a gift, but concerns rather our active obedience. Nolland puts it this way:

It could be righteousness that comes from God, but that would be to introduce a new thought not encouraged either by the main drift of the sermon or by earlier uses of “righteousness.” It is better to have the reference be to the righteousness that God requires of us, that he approves of, or something similar (Jn 6:28-29, 2 Co. 1:12; Jas. 1:20).15

Broadus rules out passive righteousness as the object of our seeking:

We must not introduce here the idea of imputed righteousness, which is foreign to the tone of this discourse, and does not distinctly appear anywhere in the Gospels, being chiefly set forth in Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Philippians.16

Carson is just as firm in seeking the word’s meaning from Christ’s immediately preceding use of the term.

To seek God’s righteousness is not, in this context, to seek justification (contra Filson, McNeile). “Righteousness” must be interpreted as in 5:6, 5:10, 5:20, 6:1. It is to pursue righteousness of life in full submission to the will of God, as prescribed by Jesus throughout this discourse (cf. Przybylski, pp. 89-91).17

But it’s not enough to define righteousness correctly, as corresponding to our conduct as measured against God’s moral standards. The point of Christ’s command here is to prioritize both God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, the two being sought in tandem as equally our first priority. We don’t just seek His kingdom first, we also seek His righteousness first! As Dods says, “Righteousness is not to be postponed for anything else; and if the spirit of Christ cannot be carried into the forms which business has taken, these forms must go.”18

Some commentators try to find some other “home” for the righteousness to be sought. Davies, however, analyzes all the options to conclude that

We are left with the fourth interpretation, which is supported by two facts. (1) The kingdom is both present and future in Matthew. (2) The possibility for righteousness belongs to the present (see below), and “all these things” can also be had now. So the future does not seem to be the sphere of application.19

We must therefore close ranks with the argument Davies makes in how to understand the “righteousness” we are to be continually seeking.

Moreover, the interpretation of dikaiosene as the righteousness that God requires better fits Matthean usage elsewhere (see on 5.20). So God’s righteousness is here the norm for human righteousness, just as in 5.48 God’s perfection is the norm for human perfection. (cf. Przybylski, pp. 89-91). In addition, and against many commentators, “righteousness” is only God’s demand. The notion of gift can only be read into the text.20

We will follow Davies’s exposition to see the tendons, ligaments, and sinews that pull all the key pieces together.

Are We Great or Least in the Kingdom?

The tendency to draw a sharp line between God’s kingdom and His righteousness contravenes the very text we’re dealing with. Davies comes close to fusing the two together in his commentary:

To seek God’s righteousness and God’s kingdom amounts to the same thing. Righteousness is the law of the realm, the law of God’s kingdom; and to participate even now in God’s eschatological rule one must strive for the better righteousness of 5.20. Righteousness is the narrow gate that leads to the life of God’s kingdom. Thus to seek the kingdom is to seek righteousness and to seek righteousness is to seek the kingdom.21

The important take-away is that the phrase “and His righteousness” isn’t an afterthought or caboose to the main train of thought. Davies had earlier commented on Matt. 5:18-19:

Within the present context in Matthew, 5.19 follows well upon 5.18: if the law remains valid even down to its jots and tittles, then it must be practiced and taught in its entirety. A liberal attitude towards the law is not in order; all antinomian tendencies are excluded.22

If jots and tittles have in fact fallen away, how can 5.19 enjoin the keeping of even the least of the commandments? 5.19 presupposes that the time of the law’s demise, the time prophesied by 5.18, has not yet come to pass.23

We have it on Christ’s Own authority that the only way to be great in His kingdom is to teach and do even the least commandments of God. To loosen the least commandment and teach men so consigns you to being least in the kingdom.

That the Great Commission has a connection to Matt. 6:33 is set forth by Dr. John Frame.

In Matthew 6:33, Jesus tells his disciples to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” “These things” are things such as food and clothing mentioned in the preceding context. So Jesus sets the kingdom as the goal of human life. Believers ought to make it their highest goal to contribute to the historical program of the kingdom of God. They should carry out the Great Commission, to make disciples for Jesus. They should do what they can to defeat evil and all that opposes God in the world and bring people to a willing recognition of Christ as King of kings.24

Dr. Frame digs further into the Sermon on the Mount to provide additional context.

Those in the kingdom are to be salt and light in the earth (vv. 13:16). They keep the law, not just externally, but from the heart (vv. 17-48). Note that the kingdom and law are not opposed.25

The element of expansion intrinsic to the kingdom’s progress in the world is equally clear in Frame’s assessment. “God’s intention is that believers will not keep the kingdom to themselves, but will bring it into all spheres of human life.”26

There is a significant linguistic bridge between Matthew 5:19 and the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20. The specific word for teaching (didaskoo [didaze]) appears in both passages with a twist unique to the New Testament: these are the only two verses where it isn’t Christ doing the teaching: the word is being applied to His people doing the teaching in both instances, and this sense appears nowhere else.27 We should take this link seriously: the two passages cast light upon one another. Christ’s previous usage illuminates His subsequent instructions about the content of our teaching.

In other words, we should treat “teaching all things whatsoever I have commanded you” as a parallel to Christ’s statement in Matt. 5:19 about “doing and teaching even the least of the commandments.” The linguistic bridge that ties these points together is a unique one, and not a mere accident or meaningless coincidence. The teaching we are enjoined to do involves even the least of the commandments as much as it involves all things Christ has commanded. We are expected to be great in the kingdom, not loosening the King’s law to suit our own self-interest. The general thrust of “teaching all things I have commanded” specifically includes everything down to the “least of the commandments,” providing the detailed blueprint for a world in which all nations are born in Zion (Psalm 87).

The Liberty of the Kingdom

Christ is surely interested in liberating men from their anxiety about the future. Broadus puts forward the correct understanding of how this works out according to Christ.

Seek first his kingdom, and there will be no need of afterwards anxiously seeking food and raiment, etc., for they will be added, not indeed without seeking, but without anxious seeking; and so there will in this way be no occasion left for anxiety about them.28

Scripture commends provident forethought and prudence, and none of those conflicts with Matt. 6:34 once correctly translated. Gibson provides a useful insight.

At the time the translation was made, “to take thought” meant to be anxious, as will appear from such a passage as that in the first book of Samuel (ix. 5), where Saul says to his servant, “Come and let us return; lest my father leave caring for the asses, and take thought for us.” Evidently in the sense of “be anxious about us.” It is then, manifestly, not against thoughtfulness and providence, but against anxious care that the caution is directed.29

The servants of the King of kings are not to be enslaved to anyone or anything, least of all undue anxiety and breathless worry. When our first priority is God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, we are released from any anxious forms of care. The liberty thus opened up to His people is a true gift indeed. Gibson sees anxious worry as an evil in itself, thus:

Although this evil seems to lie in the opposite direction from that of avarice, it is really the same both in its root and its fruit, for it is due to the estrangement of the heart from our Father in heaven, and amounts, in so far as it prevails, to enslavement to the world. The covetous man is enslaved in one way, the anxious man in another: for does not our common language betray it every time we think or speak of “freedom from care”? We need not wonder, then, that our Lord should connect what He is about to say on this evil so closely with what He has said on the other, as He does by the use of the word therefore: “Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life.”30

Another liberty we desire is liberty from the sword, from the threat of lethal force. Dr. Rushdoony quotes H. B. Clark favorably31 regarding the connection of peace and the expansion of God’s kingdom. Clark fills out the picture for us. Notice the precondition for this liberation: the fulfillment of Matt. 6:33 in the midst of the argument.

According to the Scriptures, “there is no peace unto the wicked,” and it is futile to cry “peace, peace, when there is no peace.” If men would have peace, they must “seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness,” for peace is the “work of righteousness” and there can be no lasting and universal peace until “righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” It is “in the last days” and when “the Lord alone shall be exalted” that “…the nations .. shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”32

Liberation from the threat of war and violence becomes greater over time, for “of the increase of His government and of peace, there shall be no end…” (Isa. 9:7a).

David tells us that he walks at liberty because he seeks God’s precepts (Ps. 119:45). The seeking of God’s righteousness in Matt. 6:33 dovetails with the continual seeking of God’s precepts, and bears the fruit of liberty in its fullness. As the original Hebrew puts it, “I walk in a wide space, because I seek Thy precepts.” Seeking any other kingdom, or any other pretended righteousness, lands you in a constricted, narrow space.

The Expanding Kingdom

Mark Rushdoony wrote of his father’s view of the kingdom. The higher the priority Dr. Rushdoony placed on the kingdom, the greater the resistance among those who were content to say in effect, “Honey, we shrunk the kingdom. Don’t change a thing!”

My father’s reference to “all areas of life and thought” being brought subject to the Word of God meant just that, and the multiplicity of topics he touched on reflect the scope of his understanding of the needed work of the Kingdom. It is easy for most people to read at least something in his writing and say, “I’m not sure I want to go there.” This is, I believe, the very reason why many avoid using him—despite points of agreement, everyone can find something in Rushdoony they do not like. His full-orbed view of the faith was reflected in how he viewed his ministry, a pioneering work of exploring a distinctly Biblical approach for others to pursue. Many were leery of following him in such a bold and expansive Kingdom vision and so were standoffish or used him selectively; in many circles, the reaction was outright hostility.33

Note here the concern with the needed work of the kingdom, which arose due to Dr. Rushdoony having a bold and expansive Kingdom vision. In effect, most Christians were willing to seek the kingdom of God second, just not first. Anyone making it their first priority was deplatformed. As a subsequent detractor asserted, “the church” was “the end” of all Christian activity.34 Those who preach a gospel this truncated are generally hostile toward any who refuse to “limit the Holy One of Israel” (Ps. 78:41). Christ’s kingdom cannot be locked up inside the walls of the church: it will shatter obstacles in its way until the Father is finally all in all.

The Kingdom’s Priority as a Life Framework

A proper “seek ye first” orientation provides a life-giving, even life-enhancing, framework or structure for our lives. Dr. Rushdoony sets his discussion in the context of prayer within Christian marriage, which makes the application all the more convicting when men’s priorities become skewed.

To return to St. Peter’s statement, if the architecture of life becomes humanistic, if a man and woman move in terms of essentially humanistic considerations, their prayers are hindered. They may be as devout as Louis XIV, and they may pray intensely and earnestly, but the essence of their life’s structure is out of balance. It is not that a concern about everyday material things is wrong, since it emphatically is not. The question is one of structure: is the basic architecture, design, or pattern of our life in conformity to God’s law-word? If we seek “first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness,” then “all these other things shall be added” unto us (Matt 6:33).

 

But if we deny God and His law-word, then our word becomes law to us, and we drift into madness and death. Not surprisingly, Foucault, who has proclaimed the death of man, began an earlier work with these words: “we must renounce the convenience of terminal truths.” There is then nothing to bind man to man, nor anything to bind man to life. Foucault is logical: without the structure of God’s truth, man cannot live, and the only conclusion which remains for man is suicide.35

The continual prioritization of God’s kingdom, God’s righteousness, God’s law, God’s precepts, God’s preeminence in all things, leads us away from cultural suicide to life. Seek Ye First is nothing less than a framework that imbues our reality with meaning that will outlive all the false empires and kingdoms that clamor for our patronage.

Our kingdom doesn’t lend itself to humanists who want a visible kingdom, for God’s kingdom “cometh not by observation,” growing slowly like leaven transforming three whole measures of meal. Our king isn’t here on earth, but we learned from the centurion whose faith exceeded that of all Israel that the King of kings need only give the word and it is done. No obstacle will impede the growth of the kingdom which we seek, and the righteousness which we extol when we say with Paul, “Yea, we establish the Law” (Rom. 3:31).

1. James P. Ware, The Final Triumph of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2025), p. 220.

2. Ware, p. 240.

3. Ware, p. 225.

4. Ware, p. 228.

5. Ware, p. 233.

6. Ware, p. 244.

7. W. D. Davies, Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (New York, NY: T & T Clark, 1988), vol. 1, p. 660.

8. Davies, p. 660.

9. Marcus Dods in Spence & Exell, eds., The Pulpit Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, n.d.), v. 15, p. 263.

10. William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to St. Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1973), p. 354.

11. Hendriksen, p. 354.

12. George A. Buttrick in The Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1951), vol. 7, pp. 323-324.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), pg. 315.

16. John A. Broadus, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist Publication Society, 1881), p. 151.

17. D. A. Carson, Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995), vol. 1, p. 182.

18. Dods, ibid.

19. Davies, p. 661.

20. Davies, p. 661.

21. Davies, p. 661.

22. Davies, p. 496.

23. Davies, p. 497.

24. John Frame, Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2013), p. 98.

25. Frame, p. 99.

26. Frame, p. 99.

27. See Davies, p. 497, to wit: “Only here and in 28.20 is Jesus not the subject of didaskoo.”

28. Broadus, p. 151.

29. John Monro Gibson, “Matthew” in The Expositor’s Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House 1982 reprint), vol. 4, p. 719.

30. Gibson, p. 719.

31. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Phillipsburg, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1973), p. 281 (p. 285 in 2020 edition).

32. H. B. Clark, Biblical Law (Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2011 [1943]), pp. 63-64.

33. https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/rousas-john-rushdoony-a-brief-history-part-vii-hes-on-the-lords-side

34. Ibid.

35. Rushdoony, p. 444 (pp. 452-453 in 2020 edition by Chalcedon/Ross House Books).