Seeking Him "First" - Not Enough

Thinking through that 6:33 verse

One of my professors – a theology professor named Dr. Al Coppedge – held discipleship groups in his home across many years of his tenure at Asbury Seminary.  One evening, as we huddled in his living room, he asked a wide-open question about a verse we had just read in the Gospel of Matthew. 

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you.

The question was, “What do you guys think about this verse?”  No one said anything, and I definitely had an opinion, so I said, “I don’t like it.”

“Oh?” said Dr. Coppedge as my friend’s heads swiveled in my direction to see what potentially heretical thing I was getting ready to say. 

“Yeah,” I continued.  “It seems to me like using the word ‘first’ leaves it open to put something second, or third, or fourth.”  I had more to say, but since by the looks of the faces my standing in the group seemed to be sinking, I just shut up.  If I wanted to continue my commentary, I would have said this: “The Church is full of people who put God first and prioritize Him with their time, talent and money.  But after that, they do what they want with their business, their leisure time, their habits. Church people generally don’t mind this passage – they feel like they are already living this verse.”  At any rate, the study went on that evening and I felt a bit embarrassed by it all.

About a year later I am in Kansas studying for my doctorate and gathering students in my own living room for a Bible study on…Matthew 6:33.  And, in a year’s time, I still didn’t really like the verse much for the same reason.  Surely there had to have been a better word than “first.”  I decided before the crowd arrived to go check the voluminous Greek word resource called the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament known in the scholarly world by the name of one of the editors, Kittels. I looked up the word for “first” in the Greek – proton – and started reading the handful of paragraphs Kittel offered to explain proton.  Lo and behold, proton means…first.  In fact, it was so obvious I felt like the paragraphs were screaming back at me from these couple of pages words to the effect of, “Hey dummy, proton means first and…that’s it.  First, one before two, two before three. First.”  I felt that my friends back at the seminary would really have relished the moment if they had been there. 

I was about ready to throw the book back on the shelf but decided before doing so flipping to the last page to see how the article ended up.  And there, on page 870 of the sixth volume of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament was this gem:

…the sense “above all” occurs elsewhere in the NT only at Mt. 6:33.  The meaning here cannot be that one must first seek after God’s kingdom and then after other things.  “Above all” is the only meaning which corresponds to the central position which orientation to the kingdom of God has in the proclamation of Jesus.  Indeed, proton is so exclusive here that it carries the implication of “only.”

Soren Kierkegaard wrote a book titled “Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.” The title had it right.  Blessed are the poor in spirit…Blessed are the pure in heart - those who have cleansed their hearts of other things and have decided the King and His Kingdom is the only priority of their lives.  Seek ye only…  A radical call to purity and exclusivity.  Jesus calls us to divest ourselves of all other people, places and things that compete for attention and settle on Christ, and Christ alone for our salvation, sanctification, and destiny in Him.

I once preached a sermon series titled “How Do You Spell Christianity?” One of the sermons was O-N-L-Y.  No doubt, there is a certain beauty in purity and only-ness, and a certain power.

By grace, make it so Lord Jesus!