b. True or Christian ambition: God’s rule and righteousness
A Christian’s ambition: not material security but God’s rule
(Matthew 6:19–34)
In the first half of Matthew 6 (1–18) Jesus describes the Christian’s private life ‘in the secret place’ (giving, praying, fasting); in the second half (19–34) he is concerned with our public business in the world (questions of money, possessions, food, drink, clothing and ambition). Or the same contrast could be expressed in terms of our ‘religious’ and our ‘secular’ responsibilities. This distinction is misleading, because we cannot separate these into water-tight compartments. Indeed, the divorce of the sacred from the secular in church history has been disastrous. If we are Christians, everything we do, however ‘secular’ it may seem (like shopping, cooking, totting up figures in the office, etc.) is ‘religious’ in the sense that it is done in God’s presence and according to God’s will. One of the emphases Jesus makes in this chapter is precisely on this point, that God is equally concerned with both areas of our life—private and public, religious and secular. For on the one hand, ‘Your heavenly Father sees in secret’ (4, 6, 18), and on the other, ‘Your heavenly Father knows that you need’ food, drink and clothing (32).
In both spheres also the same insistent summons of Jesus is heard, the call to be different from the popular culture: different from the hypocrisy of the religious (1–18) and now different also from the materialism of the irreligious (19–34). For although the Pharisees were largely in his mind at the beginning of the chapter, it is ‘the Gentiles’ whose value-system he now bids us renounce (32). In fact Jesus places the alternatives before us at every stage. There are two treasures (on earth and in heaven, 19–21), two bodily conditions (light and darkness, 22, 23), two masters (God and mammon, 24) and two preoccupations (our bodies and God’s kingdom, 25–34). We cannot sit on the fence.
But how shall we make our choice? Worldly ambition has a strong fascination for us. The spell of materialism is hard to break. So in this section Jesus helps us to choose well. He points out the folly of the wrong way and the wisdom of the right. As in the previous sections on piety and prayer, so here regarding ambition, he sets the false and the true over against each other in such a way as to invite us to compare them and see for ourselves.
This topic confronts us with fresh urgency in our generation. As the world’s population continues to mushroom and the economic problems of the nations become more complex, the rich are still getting richer and the poor poorer. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the facts. The old complacency of bourgeois Christianity has been disturbed. The sleepy social conscience of many has been stabbed awake. There has been a fresh discovery that the God of the Bible is on the side of the poor and the deprived. Responsible Christians are uneasy about affluence and are seeking to develop a simple life-style which is appropriate both in face of world need and out of loyalty to their Master’s teaching and example.
1. A question of treasure (19–21)
Here the point to which Jesus directs our attention is the comparative durability of the two treasures. It ought to be easy to decide which to collect, he implies, because treasures on earth are corruptible and therefore insecure, whereas treasures in heaven are incorruptible and therefore secure. After all, if our object is to lay up treasure, we shall presumably concentrate on the kind which will last and can be stored without either depreciation or deterioration.
It is important to face squarely and honestly the question: what was Jesus prohibiting when he told us not to lay up treasure for ourselves on earth? It may help if we begin by listing what he was (and is) not forbidding. First, there is no ban on possessions in themselves; Scripture nowhere forbids private property. Secondly, ‘saving for a rainy day’ is not forbidden to Christians, or for that matter a life assurance policy which is only a kind of saving by self-imposed compulsion. On the contrary, Scripture praises the ant for storing in the summer the food it will need in the winter, and declares that the believer who makes no provision for his family is worse than an unbeliever. Thirdly, we are not to despise, but rather to enjoy, the good things which our Creator has given us richly to enjoy. So neither having possessions, nor making provision for the future, nor enjoying the gifts of a good Creator are included in the ban on earthly treasure-storage.
What then? What Jesus forbids his followers is the selfish accumulation of goods (NB ‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth’); extravagant and luxurious living; the hardheartedness which does not feel the colossal need of the world’s under-privileged people; the foolish fantasy that a person’s life consists in the abundance of his possessions; and the materialism which tethers our hearts to the earth. For the Sermon on the Mount repeatedly refers to ‘the heart’, and here Jesus declares that our heart always follows our treasure, whether down to earth or up to heaven (21). In a word to ‘lay up treasure on earth’ does not mean being provident (making sensible provision for the future) but being covetous (like misers who hoard and materialists who always want more). This is the real snare of which Jesus warns here. ‘Whenever the Gospel is taught’, wrote Luther, ‘and people seek to live according to it, there are two terrible plagues that always arise: false preachers who corrupt the teaching, and then Sir Greed, who obstructs right living.’
The earthly treasure we covet, Jesus reminds us, ‘grows rusty and moth-eaten, and thieves break in to steal it’ (NEB). The Greek word for ‘rust’ (brōsis) actually means ‘eating’; it could refer to the corrosion caused by rust, but equally to any devouring pest or vermin. Thus in those days moths would get into people’s clothes, rats and mice eat the stored grain, worms take whatever they put underground, and thieves break into their home and steal what they kept there. Nothing was safe in the ancient world. And for us moderns, who try to protect our treasure by insecticides, rat poison, mouse-traps, rustproof paints and burglar alarms, it disintegrates instead through inflation or devaluation or an economic slump. Even if some of it lasts through this life, we can take none of it with us to the next. Job was right: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return.’
But ‘treasure in heaven’ is incorruptible. What is this? Jesus does not explain. Yet surely we may say that to ‘lay up treasure in heaven’ is to do anything on earth whose effects last for eternity. Jesus was certainly not teaching a doctrine of merit or a ‘treasury of merits’ (as the medieval Roman Catholic Church called it), as if we could accumulate by good deeds done on earth a kind of credit account in heaven on which we and others might draw, for such a grotesque notion contradicts the gospel of grace which Jesus and his apostles consistently taught. And in any case Jesus is addressing disciples who have already received the salvation of God. It seems rather to refer to such things as these: the development of Christlike character (since all we can take with us to heaven is ourselves); the increase of faith, hope and charity, all of which (Paul said) ‘abide’; growth in the knowledge of Christ whom one day we shall see face to face; the active endeavour (by prayer and witness) to introduce others to Christ, so that they too may inherit eternal life; and the use of our money for Christian causes, which is the only investment whose dividends are everlasting.
All these are temporal activities with eternal consequences. This then is ‘treasure in heaven’. No burglar can steal this, and no vermin destroy it. For there are neither moths, nor mice, not marauders in heaven. So treasure in heaven is secure. Precautionary measures to protect it are unnecessary. It needs no insurance cover. It is indestructible. Therefore, Jesus seems to be saying to us, ‘If it’s a safe investment you’re after, nothing could be safer than this; it’s the only gilt-edged security whose gilt will never tarnish.’
2. A question of vision (22, 23)
Jesus turns from the comparative durability of the two treasures to the comparative benefit to be derived from two conditions. The contrast now is between a blind person and a sighted person, and so between the light and darkness in which they respectively live. The eye it the lamp of the body. This is not literal, of course, as if the eye were a kind of window letting light into the body, but it is a readily intelligible figure of speech. Almost everything the body does depends on our ability to see. We need to see in order to run, jump, drive a car, cross a road, cook, embroider, paint. The eye, as it were, ‘illumines’ what the body does through its hands and feet. True, blind people often cope wonderfully, learn to do many things without eyes, and develop their other faculties to compensate for their lack of sight. Yet the principle holds good: a sighted person walks in the light, while a blind person is in darkness. And the great difference between the light and the darkness of the body is due to this small but intricate organ, the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. In total blindness the darkness is complete.
All this is factual description. But it is also metaphorical. Not infrequently in Scripture the ‘eye’ is equivalent to the ‘heart’. That is, to ‘set the heart’ and to ‘fix the eye’ on something are synonyms. One example may be enough, from Psalm 119. In verse 10 the psalmist writes: ‘With my whole heart I seek thee; let me not wander from thy commandments,’ and in verse 19, ‘I have fixed my eyes on all thy commandments.’ Similarly, here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus passes from the importance of having our heart in the right place (21) to the importance of having our eye sound and healthy.
The argument seems to go like this: just as our eye affects our whole body, so our ambition (where we fix our eyes and heart) affects our whole life. Just as a seeing eye gives light to the body, so a noble and singleminded ambition to serve God and man adds meaning to life and throws light on everything we do. Again, just as blindness leads to darkness, so an ignoble and selfish ambition (e.g. to lay up treasure for ourselves on earth) plunges us into moral darkness. It makes us intolerant, inhuman, ruthless and deprives life of all ultimate significance.
It is all a question of vision. If we have physical vision, we can see what we are doing and where we are going. So too if we have spiritual vision, if our spiritual perspective is correctly adjusted, then our life is filled with purpose and drive. But if our vision becomes clouded by the false gods of materialism, and we lose our sense of values, then our whole life is in darkness and we cannot see where we are going. Perhaps the emphasis lies even more strongly than I have so far suggested on the loss of vision caused by covetousness, because according to biblical thought an ‘evil eye’ is a niggardly, miserly spirit, and a ‘sound’ one is generous. At all events Jesus adds this new reason for laying up treasure in heaven. The first was its greater durability; the second the resulting benefit now on earth of such a vision.
3. A question of worth (24)
Jesus now explains that behind the choice between two treasures (where we lay them up) and two visions (where we fix our eyes) there lies the still more basic choice between two masters (whom we are going to serve). It is a choice between God and mammon, that is between the living Creator himself and any object of our own creation we term ‘money’ (‘mammon’ being the transliteration of an Aramaic word for wealth). For we cannot serve both.
Some people disagree with this saying of Jesus. They refuse to be confronted with such a stark and outright choice, and see no necessity for it. They blandly assure us that it is perfectly possible to serve two masters simultaneously, for they manage it very nicely themselves. Several possible arrangements and adjustments appeal to them. Either they serve God on Sundays and mammon on weekdays, or God with their lips and mammon with their hearts, or God in appearance and mammon in reality, or God with half their being and mammon with the other half.
It is this popular compromise solution which Jesus declares to be impossible: No one can serve two masters … You cannot serve God and mammon (notice the ‘can’ and the ‘cannot’). Would-be compromisers misunderstand his teaching, for they miss the picture of slave and slave-owner which lies behind his words. As McNeile puts it, ‘Men can work for two employers, but no slave can be the property of two owners,’ for ‘single ownership and fulltime service are of the essence of slavery’. So anybody who divides his allegiance between God and mammon has already given it to mammon, since God can be served only with an entire and exclusive devotion. This is simply because he is God: ‘I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other.’ To try to share him with other loyalties is to have opted for idolatry.
And when the choice is seen for what it is—a choice between Creator and creature, between the glorious personal God and a miserable thing called money, between worship and idolatry—it seems inconceivable that anybody could make the wrong choice. For now it is a question not just of comparative durability and comparative benefit, but of comparative worth: the intrinsic worth of the One and the intrinsic worthlessness of the other.
4. A question of ambition (25–34)
It is a pity that this passage is often read on its own in church, isolated from what has gone before. Then the significance of the introductory Therefore I tell you is missed. So we must begin by relating this ‘therefore’, this conclusion of Jesus, to the teaching which has led up to it. He calls us to thought before he calls us to action. He invites us to look clearly and coolly at the alternatives before us and to weigh them up carefully. We want to accumulate treasure? Then which of the two possibilities is the more durable? We wish to be free and purposive in our movements? Then what must our eyes be like to facilitate this? We wish to serve the best master? Then we must consider which is the more worthy of our devotion. Only when we have grasped with our minds the comparative durability of the two treasures (corruptible and incorruptible), the comparative usefulness of the two eye conditions (light and darkness) and the comparative worth of the two masters (God and mammon), are we ready to make our choice. And only when we have made our choice—for heavenly treasure, for light, for God— therefore I tell you this is how you must go on to behave: do not be anxious about your life … nor about your body … But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness (25, 33). In other words, our basic choice of which of two masters we intend to serve will radically affect our attitude to both. We shall not be anxious about the one (for we have rejected it), but concentrate our mind and energy on the other (for we have chosen him); we shall refuse to become engrossed in our own concerns, but instead seek first the concerns of God.
Christ’s language of search (contrasting what the Gentiles seek with what his followers are to seek first, 32, 33) introduces us to the subject of ambition. Jesus took it for granted that all human beings are ‘seekers’. It is not natural for people to drift aimlessly through life like plankton. We need something to live for, something to give meaning to our existence, something to ‘seek’, something on which to set our ‘hearts’ and our ‘minds’. Although few people today would use the language of ancient Greek philosophers, yet what we are seeking is, in fact, what they called ‘the Supreme Good’ to which to dedicate our lives. Probably ‘ambition’ is the best modern equivalent. True, in dictionary terms it means ‘a strong desire to achieve success’ and therefore often has a bad image, a selfish flavour. It is in this sense that Shakespeare in his King Henry VIII brings this appeal to Thomas Cromwell: ‘Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away Ambition. By that sin fell the angels …’ But ‘ambition’ can equally refer to other strong desires—unselfish rather than selfish, godly rather than worldly. In a word, it is possible to be ‘ambitious for God’. Ambition concerns our goals in life and our incentives for pursuing them. A person’s ambition is what makes him ‘tick’; it uncovers the mainspring of his actions, his secret inner motivation. This, then, is what Jesus was talking about when he defined what in the Christian counter-culture we are to ‘seek first’.
Once again our Lord simplifies the issue for us by reducing the alternative possible life-goals to only two. He puts them over against each other in this section, urging his followers not to be preoccupied with their own security (food, drink and clothing), for that is the obsession of ‘the Gentiles’ who do not know him, but rather with God’s rule and God’s righteousness, and with their spread and triumph in the world.
a. False or secular ambition: our own material security
Most of this paragraph is negative. Three times Jesus repeats his prohibition Do not be anxious (25, 31, 34) or ‘Don’t worry.’ And the preoccupation he forbids us is food, drink and clothing: What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? (31). Yet this is precisely ‘the world’s Trinity of cares’: for the Gentiles seek all these things (32). We have only to glance at the advertisements on television, in newspapers and in public transport to find a vivid modern illustration of what Jesus taught nearly two millennia ago.
A few years ago I was sent a complimentary copy of Accent, a new glossy magazine whose full title was Accent on good living. It included enticing advertisements for champagne, cigarettes, food, clothing, antiques and carpets, together with the description of an esoteric weekend’s shopping in Rome. There were articles on how to have a computer in your kitchen; how to win a luxury cabin cruiser or 100 twelve-bottle cases of Scotch whisky instead; and how 15 million women cannot be wrong about their cosmetic choices. We were then promised in the following month’s issue alluring articles on Caribbean holidays, staying in bed, high fashion warm underwear and the delights of reindeer meat and snowberries. From beginning to end it concerned the welfare of the body and how to feed it, clothe it, warm it, cool it, refresh it, relax it, entertain it, titivate and titillate it.
Now please do not misunderstand this. Jesus Christ neither denies nor despises the needs of the body. As a matter of fact, he made it himself. And he takes care of it. He has just taught us to pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ What is he saying then? He is emphasizing that to become engrossed in material comforts is a false preoccupation. For one thing, it is unproductive (except perhaps of ulcers and yet more worry); for another it is unnecessary (because ‘your Father knows what you need’, 8 and 32); but especially it is unworthy. It betrays a false view of human beings (as if they were only bodies needing to be fed, watered, clothed and housed) and of human life (as if it were merely a physiological mechanism needing to be protected, lubricated and fuelled). An exclusive preoccupation with food, drink and clothing could be justified only if physical survival were the be-all and end-all of existence. We just live to live. Then indeed how to sustain the body would be our proper first concern. So it is understandable that in emergency famine conditions the struggle to survive must take precedence over other things. But for this to be so in ordinary circumstances would express a reductionist concept of man which is totally unacceptable. It would downgrade him to the level of animals, indeed to that of birds and plants. Yet the great majority of today’s advertisements are directed towards the body—underwear to display it at its shapeliest, deodorants to keep it smelling sweet, and alcoholic beverages to pep it up when it is languishing. This preoccupation prompts these questions: is physical well-being a worthy object to which to devote our lives? Has human life no more significance than this? The Gentiles seek all there things. Let them. But as for you, my disciples, Jesus implies, they are a hopelessly unworthy goal. For they are not the ‘Supreme Good’ in life.
We need now to clarify what Jesus is prohibiting, and what reasons he gives for his prohibition. First, he is not forbidding thought. On the contrary, he is encouraging it when he goes on to bid us look at the birds and the flowers and ‘consider’ how God looks after them. So the familiar AV ‘Take no thought’ is mistaken and misleading. Secondly, he is not forbidding forethought. I have already mentioned the Bible’s approval of the ant. Birds too, which Jesus commends, make provision for the future by building their nests, laying and incubating their eggs, and feeding their young. Many migrate to warmer climes before the winter (which is an outstanding example of provident—though instinctive—forethought), and some even store food, like shrikes which stock their own larder by impaling insects on thorns. So there is nothing here to stop Christians making plans for the future or taking sensible steps for their own security. No, what Jesus forbids is neither thought nor forethought, but anxious thought. This is the meaning of the command mē merimnate. It is the word used of Martha who was ‘distracted’ with much serving, of the good seed sown among thorns which was choked by the ‘cares’ of life, and by Paul in his injunction, ‘Have no anxiety about anything.’ As Bishop Ryle expressed it: ‘Prudent provision for the future is right; wearing, corroding, self-tormenting anxiety is wrong.’
Why is it wrong? Jesus replies by arguing that obsessional worry of this kind is incompatible both with Christian faith (25–30) and with common sense (34), but he spends more time on the first.
1. Worry is incompatible with Christian faith (25–30). n verse (30) Jesus dubs those who get het up over food and clothing ‘men of little faith’. The reasons he gives why we should trust God instead of being anxious are both a fortiori (‘how much more’) arguments. One is taken from human experience and argues from the greater to the lesser; the other comes from sub-human experience (birds and flowers) and argues from the lesser to the greater.
Our human experience is this: God created and now sustains our life; he also created and continues to sustain our body. This is a fact of everyday experience. We neither made ourselves, nor keep ourselves alive. Now, our ‘life’ (for which God is responsible) is obviously more important than the food and drink which nourish it. Similarly our ‘body’ (for which God is also responsible) is more important than the clothing which covers and warms it. Well then, if God already takes care of the greater (our life and our body), can we not trust him to take care of the lesser (our food and our clothing)? The logic is inescapable, and Jesus enforces it in verse 27 with the question: Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? It is uncertain whether the last word of his question (hēlikia) should be translated ‘span of life’ (RSV) or ‘stature’ (AV). It can mean either. To add half a metre to our stature would be a remarkable feat indeed, although God does it to all of us between our childhood and adult life. To add a period of time to our lifespan is also outside our competence. A human being cannot achieve this by himself. Indeed, far from lengthening his life, worry ‘may very well shorten it’, as we all know. So just as we leave these matters to God (for they are certainly beyond us), would it not be sensible to trust him for lesser things like food and clothes?
Next, Jesus turns to the subhuman world and argues the other way round. He uses birds as an illustration of God’s supply of food (26) and flowers to illustrate his supply of clothing (28–30). In both cases he tells us to ‘look at’ or ‘consider’ them, that is, to think about the facts of God’s providential care in their case. Some readers may know that I happen myself to have been since boyhood an enthusiastic bird-watcher. I know, of course, that bird-watching is regarded by some as a rather eccentric pastime; they view the likes of me with quizzical and patronizing amusement. But I claim biblical—indeed dominical—warrant for this activity. ‘Consider the fowls of the air,’ said Jesus according to the AV, and this in basic English could be translated ‘watch birds’! Indeed, I am quite serious, for the Greek verb in his command (emblepsate eis) means ‘fix your eyes on, so as to take a good look at’. If we do take an interest in birds and flowers (and we should surely, like our Master, be gratefully aware of the natural world around us), then we will know that although birds neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet our heavenly Father feeds them, and that although the lilies of the field (anemones, poppies, irises and gladioli have all been suggested as alternatives to lilies, although the reference may be general to all the beautiful spring flowers of Galilee) … neither toil nor spin, yet our heavenly Father clothes them, indeed more gorgeously than Solomon in all his glory. This being so, can we not trust him to feed and clothe us who are of much more value than birds and flowers? Why, he even clothes the common grass which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven!
‘You see,’ writes Martin Luther with great charm, ‘he is making the birds our schoolmasters and teachers. It is a great and abiding disgrace to us that in the Gospel a helpless sparrow should become a theologian and a preacher to the wisest of men … Whenever you listen to a nightingale, therefore, you are listening to an excellent preacher … It is as if he were saying “I prefer to be in the Lord’s kitchen. He has made heaven and earth, and he himself is the cook and the host. Every day he feeds and nourishes innumerable little birds out of his hand.” ’ Similarly, this time quoting Spurgeon: ‘Lovely lilies, how ye rebuke our foolish nervousness!’
More familiar to most of us will be the doggerel:
Said the robin to the sparrow:
‘I should really like to know
Why these anxious human beings
Rush about and worry so.’
Said the sparrow to the robin:
‘Friend, I think that it must be
That they have no heavenly Father,
Such as cares for you and me.’
It is a delightful sentiment, yet not a strictly accurate reflection of the teaching of Jesus. For he did not say that birds have a heavenly Father, but rather that we have, and that if the Creator cares for his creatures, we may be even more sure that the Father will look after his children.
2. Problems relating to Christian faith. I need at this point to allow myself a digression in order to comment on three problems related to the child-like Christian faith which Jesus asks of us. All three are big problems and can only be touched on here, but because they arise in our minds from our Lord’s basic promise that our heavenly Father can be trusted to feed and clothe us, it would be wrong to evade them. I will state them negatively in terms of the three liberties which faith does not take in the light of God’s promise, or of the three immunities which his promise does not give us.
First, believers are not exempt from earning their own living. We cannot sit back in an armchair, twiddle our thumbs, mutter ‘my heavenly Father will provide’ and do nothing. We have to work. As Paul put it later: ‘If anyone will not work, let him not eat.’ With characteristic earthiness Luther writes: ‘God … wants nothing to do with the lazy, gluttonous bellies who are neither concerned nor busy; they act as if they just had to sit and wait for him to drop a roasted goose into their mouth.’
Jesus used birds and flowers as evidences of God’s ability to feed and clothe us, as we have seen. But how does God feed the birds? One answer would be that he does not, for they feed themselves! Jesus was an acute observer. He knew perfectly well about birds’ feeding habits, that some are seed-eaters, others carrion-eaters or fish-eaters, while yet others are insectivores, predators or scavengers. God feeds them all right. But the way in which he does so is not by stretching out to them a divine hand filled with food, but by providing in nature the wherewithal to feed themselves. One could say something similar about plants. ‘The flowers perform neither men’s work in the field (“toil”), nor women’s work at home (“spin”),’ yet God clothes them. How? Not miraculously, but by a complex process he has arranged in which they draw their sustenance from the sun and the soil.
It is the same, then, with human beings. God provides, but we still have to co-operate. Hudson Taylor learnt this lesson on his first voyage to China in 1853. When a violent storm off the Welsh coast threatened disaster, he felt it would be dishonouring to God to wear a life-belt. So he gave his away. Later, however, he saw his mistake: ‘The use of means ought not to lessen our faith in God, and our faith in God ought not to hinder our using whatever means he has given us for the accomplishment of his own purposes.’
Similarly, God does not cast all his children in the role of the prophet Elijah and supply our food miraculously through angels or ravens, but rather through the more normal means of farmers, millers, market gardeners, fishermen, butchers, grocers and the rest. Jesus urges upon us the necessity of a simple trust in our heavenly Father, but his understanding of faith was neither naive (ignorant of second causes) nor archaic (incompatible with modern science).
Secondly, believers are not exempt from responsibility for others. I say this in relation to the second problem, which is one of providence, rather than of science. If God promises to feed and clothe his children, how is it that many are ill-clad and under-nourished? It will not do, I think, to say rather glibly that God does look after his own children, and that the poor who lack adequate food and clothing are all unbelievers outside his family circle, for there are certainly Christian people in some drought- and famine-stricken areas of the world in very severe need. It does not seem to me that there is a simple solution to this problem. But one important point should be made, namely that the most basic cause of hunger is not an inadequate divine provision, but an inequitable human distribution. The truth is that God has provided ample resources in earth and sea. The earth brings forth plants yielding seed and trees bearing fruit. The animals, birds and fish he has made are fruitful and multiply. But men hoard or spoil or waste these resources, and do not share them out. It seems significant that in this same Gospel of Matthew the Jesus who here says that our heavenly Father feeds and clothes his children, later says that we must ourselves feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and will be judged accordingly. It is always important to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. The fact that God feeds and clothes his children does not exempt us from the responsibility of being the agents through whom he does it.
Thirdly, believers are not exempt from experiencing trouble. It is true that Jesus forbids his people to worry. But to be free from worry and to be free from trouble are not the same thing. Christ commands us not to be anxious, but does not promise that we shall be immune to all misfortune. On the contrary, there are many indications in his teaching that he knew all about calamity. Thus, although God clothes the grass of the field, it is still cut down and burnt. God protects even sparrows, which are so common and of such minimal value that two are sold for a farthing and five for two farthings, one being thrown in for luck. ‘Not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will,’ Jesus said. But sparrows do fall to the ground and get killed. His promise was not that they would not fall, but that this would not happen without God’s knowledge and consent. People fall too, and aeroplanes. Christ’s words cannot be taken as a promise that the law of gravity will be suspended on our behalf, but again that God knows about accidents and allows them. Further, it is significant that at the end of this paragraph the reason Jesus gives why we are not to be anxious about tomorrow is: Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day (34). So there will be ‘trouble’ (kakia, ‘evil’). A Christian’s freedom from anxiety is not due to some guaranteed freedom from trouble, but to the folly of worry (to which we shall come later) and especially to the confidence that God is our Father, that even permitted suffering is within the orbit of his care, and that ‘in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose’.
This was the assurance which fortified Dr Helmut Thielicke while he preached a course of sermons on the Sermon on the Mount in St Mark’s Church, Stuttgart, during the terrible years (1946–1948) which immediately followed the second world war. He often alluded to the scream of the air-raid sirens, alerting people to yet more devastation and death from allied bombs. What could freedom from anxiety mean in such circumstances? ‘We know the sight and the sound of homes collapsing in flames … Our own eyes have seen the red blaze and our own ears have heard the sound of crashing, falling and shrieking.’ Against that background the command to look at the birds and the lilies might well have sounded hollow. ‘Nevertheless,’ Dr Thielicke went on, ‘I think we must stop and listen when this man, whose life on earth was anything but birdlike and lilylike, points us to the carefreeness of the birds and lilies. Were not the sombre shadows of the Cross already looming over this hour of the Sermon on the Mount?’ In other words, it is reasonable to trust in our heavenly Father’s love, even in times of grievous trouble, because we have been privileged to see it revealed in Christ and his cross.
So then God’s children are promised freedom neither from work, nor from responsibility, nor from trouble, but only from worry. Worry is forbidden us: it is incompatible with Christian faith.
3. Worry is incompatible with common sense (34). Returning from our digression on the problems of faith, we have now to notice that worry is as inconsistent with common sense as it is with Christian faith. In verse (34) Jesus mentions both today and tomorrow. All worry is about tomorrow, whether about food or clothing or anything else; but all worry is experienced today. Whenever we are anxious, we are upset in the present about some event which may happen in the future. However, these fears of ours about tomorrow, which we feel so acutely today, may not be fulfilled. The popular advice ‘Don’t worry, it may never happen,’ is doubtless unsympathetic, but perfectly true. People worry that they may not pass an exam, or find a job, or get married, or retain their health, or succeed in some enterprise. But it is all fantasy. ‘Fears may be liars;’ they often are. Many worries, perhaps most, never materialize.
So then worry is a waste—a waste of time, thought and nervous energy. We need to learn to live a day at a time. We should plan for the future, of course, but not worry about the future. ‘One day’s trouble is enough for one day,’ or, ‘Each day has troubles enough of its own.’ So why anticipate them? If we do, we double them. For if our fear does not materialize, we have worried once for nothing; if it does materialize, we have worried twice instead of once. In both cases it is foolish: worry doubles trouble.
It is time to sum up Jesus’ exposition of the world’s false ambition. To become preoccupied with material things in such a way that they engross our attention, absorb our energy and burden us with anxiety is incompatible with both Christian faith and common sense. It is distrustful of our heavenly Father, and it is frankly stupid. This is what pagans do; but it is an utterly unsuitable and unworthy ambition for Christians. So just as Jesus has already called us in the Sermon to a greater righteousness, a broader love and a deeper piety, he now calls us to a higher ambition.
b. True or Christian ambition: God’s rule and righteousness
It is important to see verses 31 to 33 together. Verse 31 repeats the prohibition against being anxious about food, drink and clothing. Verse 32 adds: For the Gentiles seek all these things. This shows that in the vocabulary of Jesus ‘to seek’ and ‘to be anxious’ are interchangeable. He is not talking so much about anxiety as about ambition. Now heathen ambition focuses on material necessities. But this cannot be right for Christians partly because your heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but mostly because these things are not an appropriate or worthy object for the Christian’s quest. He must have something else, something higher, as the Supreme Good which he will energetically seek: not material things, but spiritual values; not his own good but God’s; in fact not food and clothing, but the kingdom and the righteousness of God. This is no more than an elaboration of teaching already implicit in the Lord’s Prayer. According to this, Christians must and do recognize the needs of the body (‘give us our daily bread’), although our priority concerns are with God’s name, kingdom and will. We cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer until our ambitions have been purified. Jesus tells us to ‘seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness’; in the Lord’s Prayer we turn this supreme quest into petition.
1. Seeking first God’s kingdom. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God he was not referring to the general sovereignty of God over nature and history, but to that specific rule over his own people which he himself had inaugurated, and which begins in anybody’s life when he humbles himself, repents, believes, submits and is born again. God’s kingdom is Jesus Christ ruling over his people in total blessing and total demand. To ‘seek first’ this kingdom is to desire as of first importance the spread of the reign of Jesus Christ. Such a desire will start with ourselves, until every single department of our life—home, marriage and family, personal morality, professional life and business ethics, bank balance, tax returns, life-style, citizenship—is joyfully and freely submissive to Christ. It will continue in our immediate environment, with the acceptance of evangelistic responsibility towards our relatives, colleagues, neighbours and friends. And it will also reach out in global concern for the missionary witness of the church.
We must be clear, then, about true missionary motivation. Why do we desire the spread of the gospel throughout the world? Not out of a sinful imperialism or triumphalism, whether for ourselves or the church or even ‘Christianity’. Nor just because evangelism is part of our Christian obedience (though it is). Nor primarily to make other people happy (though it does). But especially because the glory of God and of his Christ is at stake. God is King, has inaugurated his saving reign through Christ, and has a right to rule in the lives of his creatures. Our ambition, then, is to seek first his kingdom, to cherish the passionate desire that his name should receive from men the honour which is due to it.
To accord priority to the interests of the kingdom of God here and now is not to lose sight of its goal beyond history. For the present manifestation of the kingdom is only partial. Jesus spoke also of a future kingdom of glory and told us to pray for its coming. So to ‘seek fast’ the kingdom includes the desire and the prayer for the consummation at the end of time when all the King’s enemies have become his footstool and his reign is undisputed.
2. Seeking first God’s righteousness. It is not clear why Jesus distinguished between his kingdom and his righteousness as twin but separate objects of our priority Christian quest. For God’s rule is a righteous rule, and already in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus has taught us to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be willing to be persecuted for it and to exhibit a righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees. Now we are told to seek first the righteousness of God in addition to seeking first the kingdom of God.
Let me make a tentative suggestion about the difference between the two. God’s kingdom exists only where Jesus Christ is consciously acknowledged. To be in his kingdom is synonymous with enjoying his salvation. Only the born again have seen and entered the kingdom. And to seek it first is to spread the good news of salvation in Christ.
But God’s ‘righteousness’ is (arguably, at least) a wider concept than God’s ‘kingdom’. It includes that individual and social righteousness to which reference has been made earlier in the Sermon. And God, because he is himself a righteous God, desires righteousness in every human community, not just in every Christian community. The Hebrew prophets denounced injustice not only in Israel and Judah, but in the surrounding heathen nations as well. The prophet Amos, for example, warned that God’s judgment would fall on Syria, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon and Moab because of their cruelty in warfare and other atrocities, as well as on God’s people. God hates injustice and loves righteousness everywhere. The Lausanne Covenant, framed at the Congress on World Evangelization in July 1974, includes a paragraph on ‘Christian social responsibility’ which begins: ‘We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all men. We therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society.’
Now one of God’s purposes for his new and redeemed community is through them to make his righteousness attractive (in personal, family, business, national and international life), and so commend it to all men. Then people outside God’s kingdom will see it and desire it, and the righteousness of God’s kingdom will, as it were, spill over into the non-Christian world. Of course the deep righteousness of the heart which Jesus emphasizes in the Sermon is impossible to any but the regenerate; but some degree of righteousness is possible in unregenerate society—in personal life, in family standards and in public decency. To be sure, Christians want to go much further than this and see people actually brought into God’s kingdom through faith in Jesus Christ. At the same time, we should not be shy of maintaining that outside the circle of the kingdom righteousness is more pleasing to God than unrighteousness, justice than injustice, freedom than oppression, love than hate, peace than war.
If this is so (and I do not see how it can be gainsaid), then to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness may be said to embrace our Christian evangelistic and social responsibilities, much as do the ‘salt’ and ‘light’ metaphors of Matthew 5. In order to seek first God’s kingdom we must evangelize, since the kingdom spreads only as the gospel of Christ is preached, heard, believed and obeyed. In order to seek first God’s righteousness we shall still evangelize (for the inward righteousness of the heart is impossible otherwise), but we shall also engage in social action and endeavour to spread throughout the community those higher standards of righteousness which are pleasing to God.
What, then, is our Christian ambition? Everybody is ambitious to be or to do something, often from early years. Childhood ambitions tend to follow certain stereotypes— e.g. to be a cowboy, astronaut or ballerina. Adults have their own narrow stereotypes too— e.g. to be wealthy, famous or powerful. But ultimately there are only two possible ambitions for human beings. So far we have seen how Jesus contrasted a false with a true ambition, a secular (‘Gentile’) with a Christian, a material with a spiritual, treasures on earth with treasures in heaven, food and clothing with the kingdom and righteousness of God. But beneath and beyond all these there is a contrast more fundamental still. In the end, just as there are only two kinds of piety, the self-centred and the God-centred, so there are only two kinds of ambition: one can be ambitious either for oneself or for God. There is no third alternative.
Ambitions for self may be quite modest (enough to eat, to drink and to wear, as in the Sermon) or they may be grandiose (a bigger house, a faster car, a higher salary, a wider reputation, more power). But whether modest or immodest, these are ambitions for myself— my comfort, my wealth, my status, my power.
Ambitions for God, however, if they are to be worthy, can never be modest. There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God. How can we ever be content that he should acquire just a little more honour in the world? No. Once we are clear that God is King, then we long to see him crowned with glory and honour, and accorded his true place, which is the supreme place. We become ambitious for the spread of his kingdom and righteousness everywhere.
When this is genuinely our dominant ambition, then not only will all these things … be yours as well (i.e. our material needs will be provided), but there will be no harm in having secondary ambitions, since these will be subservient to our primary ambition and not in competition with it. Indeed, it is then that secondary ambitions become healthy. Christians should be eager to develop their gifts, widen their opportunities, extend their influence and be given promotion in their work—not now to boost their own ego or build their own empire, but rather through everything they do to bring glory to God. Lesser ambitions are safe and right provided that they are not an end in themselves (namely ourselves) but the means to a greater end (the spread of God’s kingdom and righteousness) and therefore to the greatest of all ends, namely God’s glory. This is the ‘Supreme Good’ which we are to seek first; there is no other.