James Nisbet Commentary - Matthew 6:33 - 6:33

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James Nisbet Commentary - Matthew 6:33 - 6:33


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THE ECONOMIC PRECEPTS OF CHRIST

‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’

Mat_6:33

To recognise these precepts of the Sermon on the Mount as high and beautiful may in some important degree touch and mould our dispositions. But we fail to make the intended use of them if we do not receive them as authoritative. And yet it is inevitable, perhaps, that in the cold mood in which we come to these precepts, we should ask, Are they commands of universal authority? If we are to accept the authority of what Christ says, that authority must not be identified with the letter of the precept. We must penetrate through the letter to the spirit, to the principle of which the letter is the expression. This is the secret of the teaching of Christ.

I. To whom was Jesus speaking?—The supposed impractical character of the precepts of this discourse has been sometimes explained by the suggestion that they were addressed only to the small company of the followers of Jesus. That might have been so. But it seems certain that, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is addressing a larger audience. The teaching has manifestly a general character. He was addressing, no doubt, His disciples. But by His disciples we are to understand all who were willing to accept Him as their Master.

II. What was implied in discipleship?—Supposing that there were hundreds or thousands willing to receive instruction from Him, what did He desire to make of them? He was always speaking about a kingdom. To instruct men as His disciples was, in the mind of Jesus, to prepare them for the Kingdom of God. He does not define the kingdom, He illustrates it.

III. The kingdom we seek.—There are things which men, by their natural impulses, desire on earth—the things which gratify the senses, the means which enable them to exalt themselves. They who would be disciples of Jesus Christ must not give their minds to these, must not set their affections upon them. They must seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Imagine the two classes of interest set in express competition with each other. On the one hand, the good things of earth; on the other, the things that are invisible. Christ points to the two classes thus competing for man’s affections, and says imperatively to His disciples, ‘Seek not those; seek ye these.’

IV. An imperative command.—Yes, imperatively, and at first without qualification. There can be no question, in the school of Christ, what our aims should be. With whatever consequences, at whatever cost, the Christian is called upon to set his affections upon things above. On every account, and with no misgivings, listen reverently to these precepts of Christ as laying down the law of your Christian life. Do not embarrass yourselves with the syllables of the letter. Suffer Christ to speak paradoxically if He will. Be sure that He knew what sort of address men’s consciences wanted. The community will assuredly be the more prosperous in all that belongs to secure and diffused well-being, for the prevalence of the mind that sets duty above inclination, service above pleasure.

—
The Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies, d.d.



THE PRINCIPLES OF THE KINGDOM

‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God.’

Mat_6:33

These are words of the kind with which we find it hard to deal sincerely; too true to be denied, too high to be practically accepted, we are tempted to pass them by with some kind of complimentary acknowledgment. Yet evidently they were not meant for this—they were meant to be entirely practical, they were spoken for all to hear, and therefore for all to use.

The principles of the Kingdom of God! How shall we understand this? How shall we make it more than a phrase? We cannot look at the words without turning to Him Who spoke them. We Christians, to find our knowledge of the Kingdom of God, must look to Christ our King.

I. In uprightness.—Well then, first, you honour the Kingdom of God by simple integrity, by plain and honourable uprightness. We have, thank God, much of this in English public life. But if so, we have not only to be thankful for it, but most carefully to preserve this. It is not everywhere so. But even if we put aside the meaner and graver breaches of uprightness, there may still be slighter but very real forms of it. The appointment of officers for other reasons than that of greater fitness for the place; the hushing up or defence of abuses for fear or favour’s sake; even the preference of party to public interest are temptations to his uprightness which every man who enters public life must encounter. Our safeguard lies in the uprightness of upright men, and their pattern is the uprightness of Christ.

II. In service.—But no one would say that uprightness was a sufficient account either of the character of Jesus, or of the kingdom which He declared. He came ‘in the form of a servant,’ ‘as one that serveth,’ and the Law of Service was stamped upon His kingdom. Service is the great privilege of men, and higher place means opportunities of higher and wider service. It is true that our talk often disguises this. We talk of high place as something to be won. We wish a man joy because he comes into office as mayor, or judge, or bishop, as though he were the winner of a prize; and yet other words which we ourselves use strike a higher note. We talk of the highest in office as public servants. Here is indeed a test for us whether we put the Kingdom of God first. Its citizens are servants, servants of their God, and servants of their fellow-men. The main motive of the Christian, the motive which he recalls every day, which is with him when he prays, which will guide him ‘at the pinch,’ at a difficult point, should not be to win honour, credit, applause, income, influence; but to serve, to set forward by his own toil and effort a better state for men, to bear a little of the burthen which presses upon the poor and the suffering.

III. In love.—Or follow one step farther. What is it that is to make men serve, not in act only, but in heart and will? What makes the mother drudge for her child, or the man think no pains too great to do the least service to one woman among all the rest, what makes the soldier ready to die? It is love—love of kindred, love of mistress, love of country or home. And love is the Magna Charta of the Kingdom of God; love to God and man its deepest two-fold law; love was the very meaning of Jesus Christ in love and death.

—
Bishop E. S. Talbot.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE PROMISE AND ITS CONDITION

These words have been grievously misunderstood through neglect of the occasion of their utterance. They formed part of the Sermon on the Mount. The Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, is one of the expressions which, to Matthew’s mind, links this great utterance together. To seek this kingdom and this righteousness is the command of Christ.

I. The promise.—The words are not uttered as a stern command, imposed with the threat of some terrible penalty, but they are part of a promise, a way out of a difficulty, a counsel of the highest wisdom, a precept of the only satisfying philosophy of life. We live in a world of moth and rust, a world where thieves break through and steal away our joys. But, then, this is not all. There is another world, not far off, but near; not future only, but here and now because eternal—a world where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. There we may treasure our treasures, and our hearts may dwell on them with no fear of robbery or decay. Between these two worlds we must always be making our choice. Two masters no man can serve. The text contains a softening and sustaining truth in a world of much bitterness and of much disappointment. The subjects of the kingdom are the care of the King—the righteous man is in the hand of God.

II. And its condition.—The condition of this blessedness is no mere feeling of discontentedness with the present, no mere sentiment of disgust with the transitory and unsatisfying pleasures of the world; it is no morbid and morose desertion of the enjoyments of this life; still less is it a renouncing of its duties and its responsibilities. It is not an abandonment, but a consecration of everything. It is not a refusal to have a treasure at all, because the treasure will take to itself wings and fly away; but it is the grateful recognition that the treasure is from God, God’s gift for a Godward use. The teaching of the text, as Christ’s teaching so often does, contains a paradox. You are not to be anxious; then begin and never cease a persistent, diligent, whole-hearted search. You seek for rest; then stir yourself to exertion. You are burdened and worn out; well, then, take a new yoke on your weary shoulders. You want to save your life; then lose it. But His teaching, strange as it sounds, corresponds to our deepest needs. The mind that is burdened finds no relief in idleness, but must engage in a new interest. The heart that is breaking must cling, if it can, to some other love. The soul that is dying must rouse itself to a new effort.

III. Message to old and young.—You are growing into years, it may be, and you are beginning to be horror-stricken because your treasure and your heart are on earth, and you find that here there is no abiding. Or, it may be, you are still young and ardent. Yes, rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, but listen—listen to the word of warning. The things that are seen are for a time, but the things that are not seen are for ever. Set your mind, then, on the things above, and not on the things on the earth. First things first. To old and to young the message is the same. Here, then, is an ambition for the young and for the old—an ambition to do the will of God, to do the will of Him that sent you into the world.

—
Dean Armitage Robinson.

Illustration

‘Suppose the case—and it is not an imaginary one—suppose the case of a man who should set about, after a fashion, to be religious, for the sake of the temporal advantages which he believes will follow, in God’s providence, upon a religious course. Conceive that such a person goes to church, and says his prayers, and studies his Bible, from a general sense that, in the long run, those on the whole are the best off who attend to their duties to God. Can that man claim the assurance of the text? Is he “seeking first the Kingdom of God”? and shall, therefore, “those things be added unto him”? The answer is obvious. Whatever is a man’s motive, that is the first thing. Therefore the man whom I am supposing is not “seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” for he is seeking “first” the temporal advantages to which his religion is confessedly subservient. It may be in the order of time, second; but in the order of his thoughts, it is first. Therefore that man is not keeping the condition, and he has no warrant to expect anything at God’s hands.