“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matthew 6.33

This one thing?
So far it seems that the “one thing” that really matters in life is knowing God through Jesus Christ. As we know God – really engage Him personally, intimately, and from the depths of our being – we learn to fear and love Him at the same time, and we desire to please, serve, obey, and continue with Him at all times, in all we do.

We find that gazing on His moral and spiritual beauty is well worth the seeking and waiting we have to do in order to know Him as He intends. And especially as we focus on discovering the Lord Jesus Christ, speaking to us through all the revelation of God, do we find a Friend we can trust and who can lead us ever more deeply into the knowledge of the living God.

Knowing God is the consuming passion of all those God has called into His Kingdom and glory, all who have made the Kingdom turn.

More “one things”
Jesus, as we listen to Him, confronts us with His own set of “one things” that He would have us embrace.

All the Word of God, which speaks of Jesus, can be summed up in the commands to love God and our neighbor (Matt. 22.34-40). If we meet God in His Word, we will love Him, and, loving Him, we will walk in His way, know His goodness, and show His love to our neighbor. We cannot love our neighbor if we do not love God; and we cannot love God if we do not seek Him through Jesus Christ in His Word.

Jesus also calls us to seek the Kingdom of God, that realm of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit by means of which Jesus is advancing His eternal purposes on earth as they exist in heaven (Rom. 14.17-19). We’ll have more to say about this pursuit in a later installment in this series.

We may know the Lord Jesus, and through Him, our heavenly Father, through the works He is doing. Chief among these is the work of extending righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit to men and nations everywhere. This comes through the proclamation of the Gospel of the Kingdom, in which we call people to repent and believe the Good News that in Jesus Christ God has made a way for us to escape our slavery to sin and be liberated into a life-changing relationship with the living God.

From there we seek the Kingdom increasingly in our own lives and spheres of experience. We strive violently, as it were (Matt. 11.12; Lk. 16.16), to lay aside our sinful ways and be clothed on with our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 4.17-24). The Kingdom of God is real power, spiritual power, to make all things new in our lives (1 Cor. 4.20; 2 Cor. 5.17-21). As we grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord (2 Pet. 3.18) and join Him in seeking the progress of this heavenly realm, we walk with Him according to His agenda, join hands with Him in His work, and thus deepen that relationship of love with Him that daily spurs us on to faithfulness and obedience.

“One thing” like all the others
Jesus commands us to make seeking the Kingdom of God our highest priority in every area of life. But this “one thing,” like the others we have seen thus far, turns out to be yet another conduit, another avenue, along which we make progress in the knowledge of God and in making Him known to others.

Through seeking the Kingdom we bring the reality of the risen Christ, and the power of His eternal reign, into the everyday details and situations of our lives, so that, like Jesus on the mount of transfiguration, the glory of the eternal God, Whom we know, fear, love, and serve, begins to be manifested through all our words and works (1 Cor. 10.31).

Through our relationship with Jesus Christ we stand in the hope of glory (Rom. 5.1, 2). By seeking His face on His eternal throne and through His infallible Word, we engage Him in His glory, and are transformed by His Spirit to reflect His very image and that of His eternal realm.

From there we go forth each day, citizens in the Kingdom of God’s dear Son, having listened to Him as He shows us the Father, to show that we know Whom we have believed by bringing His glory to bear and His Kingdom to light in every area of our lives.

This “one thing” too is but one more privileged and passionate means by which we may know God and make Him known.

Next steps: Use the following words to write a single sentence describing your relationship with Jesus Christ: fear, love, seek, contemplate, obey, hear. Share that sentence with a Christian friend and ask your friend to respond.

T. M. Moore

Additional Resources

This week’s study, Kingdom Passion, is the third of an eight-part series on The Kingdom Turn, and is available as a free download. T. M. has written two books to complement this eight-part series. You can order The Kingship of Jesus by clicking here, and The Gospel of the Kingdom by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.