Third, there are those who make wealth the means by which they seek and promote the kingdom of God, but they do so in a way that really makes wealth the direct object of their seeking and striving. Claiming that they ultimately have God in mind, they nevertheless center their lives around wealth and other material things, so that if they pay any attention to the kingdom of God at all, it is obviously little more than an afterthought to them.

Some are rather bold about this. I have heard several people assert that although it is true that this verse tells us to seek first the kingdom of God, the best way to seek first the kingdom is to first get as rich as possible! So what if you study, pray, sacrifice, preach, and counsel? A rich person can pay to train up a hundred people like you at one stroke!

According to them, the way to put the kingdom first is not to do anything for the kingdom right away, but to have a larger "vision," like getting really rich first so that you can make large financial contributions to churches and ministries. This is how their mind works. They are so deceived that they think this is the right thing to do, and they even think that this is what this verse is really teaching, so that they are not embarrassed to freely admit this. From their perspective, those who seek the kingdom of God through sacrifice and discipline, prayer and study, are in fact inferior in vision and in ability.

Of course, this is just an excuse for disobeying the verse. It claims that the best way to obey the verse is by doing exactly the opposite of what it commands. Jesus makes it clear that to seek first the kingdom of God means that we are not to seek after wealth and other material things, the things that the unbelievers consider most important, and the immediate objects of their ambition and desire.

Any interpretation of this verse is false that makes wealth the object of our seeking, and the kingdom as merely the means to wealth, or the excuse to seek after wealth. The verse teaches that the kingdom is the object of our seeking, and other things are at best the means by which we seek the kingdom, and we are never to turn these means into the objects of our seeking. Whether we are speaking of our job, money, education, time, skill, knowledge, and even our family, we are not to place these things higher than the kingdom of God, but we are to use these things as the means and the contexts by which we serve God and seek his kingdom. The kingdom of God is to be the direct object of our attention; any view that compromises this is false.

(to be continued)

Recommended:

Vincent Cheung, The Sermon on the Mount

Benjamin B. Warfield, "This- and Other-Worldliness," in Faith and Life

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