Christian Priorities
Fall 2023
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Matthew 6:33
Priorities. We all have them. Whether consciously or not, we prioritize things, plans, events, and even people every day. We begin our day with some kind of mental or written list that arranges things according to their importance to us. In the average home, matters of top importance at the start of the day are getting dressed, having something to eat, getting the kids up and ready for school, getting ready for work, etc. We don’t even think about them as “top priorities” but our actions plainly show that they are. Things that fall farther down the list are there because we believe they’re not as critical. Keeping that doctor’s appointment is more important than cleaning the windows, which can wait until some later time in the day, week, month, or even year. Establishing and acting upon our priorities is something we will do all our lives, and it has a tremendous impact on the kind of lives we lead, especially when it comes to Christian priorities.
When Christ said to His disciples, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you”, He was addressing this very subject of Christian priorities. The Lord states three fundamental truths about it. First, we learn from the word but that the Christian’s priorities must be quite different from the world’s priorities. Second, the Christian’s priorities must be focused on matters of spiritual rather than temporal importance because it’s the “kingdom of God and His righteousness” that we are to seek first. Finally, there are promised blessings that come when we get our priorities right. Let’s look more closely into these three truths.
From that little word but, we see that when it comes to getting our priorities right, there are serious challenges and dangers that face us. Christ is contrasting the priorities of the pagan world with those who belong to the kingdom of God. The danger for Christians is adopting the world’s priority list as their own. Christ deals with a very real problem that Christians have had to struggle with in every age: worries about the temporal necessities of life. Five times in the closing verses of Matthew 6, Christ uses the word thought, a word that denotes anxious thought, to show that these worries stem from unbelief.
When you doubt that God will take care of your temporal needs (food, clothing, housing, etc.), it is easy to begin thinking that the most important thing in life is to lay up earthly treasures for yourself rather than to lay up heavenly ones. You can easily fall into the trap of serving mammon instead of God. But that’s exactly the world’s thinking, and such thinking is unworthy of a child of God. The worldling has no Father in heaven who has promised to care for him and to supply his every need, but you do. Christ assures you that your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. When the proverbial cupboards are bare, God sees it. He hasn’t forgotten you. He will supply just what you need exactly when you need it. Fearful fretting about temporal matters is a real hindrance to getting priorities straight.
Christ gets to the heart of the matter when He tells us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” That is to be at the top of the list. To give a full exposition of what that means is impossible in this article, but the obvious point is that the most important things to you as a Christian are relating to your spiritual life, not your temporal life. The term first implies that there are seconds, thirds, fourths, and so on. Many things clamor for the top spot on our priority lists. We need to know how to assess their value so that we don’t give first place to things that are secondary.
We need to take a serious inventory of what is important to us, why it’s important, and how we show the level of importance it has in our lives. Otherwise, we end up majoring in minor things and minoring in major things which only compounds our difficulties in putting the kingdom of God first in our lives.
But what does this look like in real time? It simply means that our chief priority in life is to seek the extension of God’s rule in this world. More specifically, when seeking the kingdom of God is our top priority, nothing is more important to us than Christ ruling over everything.
It means that we will seek the promotion of Christ’s rule in the church. He is the only King and Head of the church, and therefore, His will trumps every other will. We may have our opinions about what is right or wrong for the church. We may have our own ideas about what our church should or shouldn’t do in its various ministries. But the thing that must be foremost is to know the mind of Christ—to know what Christ wants, what Christ deems best, and what Christ declares is good or not good for His church. To seek the kingdom of God is to seek the will of Christ for every decision, every detail, and every endeavor of His work. When God’s people have the promotion of Christ’s rule in the church as their top priority, it will have a powerfully positive effect on the harmony, usefulness, and happiness of the church. If they don’t, the reverse will be true.
Seeking first the kingdom of God also means that the promotion of Christ’s rule in our homes is top priority. There is an intimate connection between this point and the one I’ve just made. When families live under the rule of Christ as they ought, when they honor Christ as the head of their homes, they bring that same spirit into the life of the church. They become a powerful influence for good in God’s work!
But homes where the rule of Christ is given very little place—where wives rebel against their husbands, where husbands treat their wives as chattel, where children disregard the Word of God and their parents do little to correct it—such homes have a very different effect on the life of the church. Those families become a powerful influence, not for the good of the church, but for its ill.
Who is running your home? Is Christ given His rightful place in your marriage, in your finances, in your plans? As a family, do you consistently meet around the Word of God and the throne of grace? Is His law the law of your home? Is obedience to His rule a matter of the highest importance?
Seeking first the kingdom of God also means that your chief priority is the promotion of Christ’s rule in your heart. Putting God’s kingdom first really begins on the personal level. When you earnestly seek something, it’s because your heart desires it. The more important it is to you, the deeper will be your desire. The moment the apostle Paul was converted on the Damascus Road, he said, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” His heart’s desire was to know and do the will of Christ, and it became his top priority the rest of his life. Paul put first things first, and so must we.
If something comes into competition with seeking God’s rule and righteousness, we know what should have first place. Martha got her priorities upside down when she thought her sister Mary should be helping her serve their guests instead of sitting at Christ’s feet to hear His Word. Do you spend time sitting at Christ’s feet each day? What do you give first place to at the start of the day—the television, internet, or radio, or the reading of God’s Word and the place of prayer? What is it that gets your best thoughts and holds your deepest interest—your job or the work of God? When something comes into competition with your attendance at the house of God, what wins? When something competes for your tithes and offerings to the Lord’s work, what gets preference? What is it that concerns you more than anything else? There’s only one answer to these questions if Christ is your first love.
The final thing to see is the blessing that the Lord promises to those who put first things first: “… all these things shall be added unto you.” Matthew Henry sums this up beautifully: “O what a blessed change would it make in our hearts and lives, did we but firmly believe this truth, that the best way to be comfortably provided for in this world, is to be most intent upon another world!” Let us all, by the grace of God, strive to put first things first.
Rev. John Wagner
Retired minister, formerly Columbia, SC