The born-again Christian must not become content with just being spiritually alive with no purpose or consideration to growth and maturity, any more than it is right for person in their fleshly existence to expect to remain an infant, or never mature to adulthood. It is God’s desire for all that are allowed to live and walk in His saving Grace to mature and become a disciplined follower of Jesus Christ. But the reality of things are such that some, even most, born again Christians follow at such a great distance behind Jesus that He has to continually yell at the top of his lungs just so they can hear Him. Others follow here and there as it suits their purpose, swerving off the path into the woods or taking illicit excursions to unseemly places. Some don’t even care to follow, thinking it is not a concern of God’s now that they are saved from going to Hell, and they are quite happy to believe the fallacious doctrine of ‘once saved always saved’ and that God is content with having them be content with just being ‘saved’.

Others think that God needs their good judgment on matters and their wise help. They run ahead of Him, telling Him where to go, what to do, why He should do things, or what is needed. It amounts to leading Him, which is not hard to see is a really ridiculous thing for someone to do who claims to be a follower of somebody. But then there are those, real disciples, who follow so closely that they are following in His footsteps one step behind, so close they can hold His hand and hear His most quiet and intimate whispers. They cleave to Him and do not let the World, flesh or Satan cleave them from Him. Regardless of your distance, whether you need to get closer and stop fooling around, or whether you are close enough to touch the hem of His garment and look into His eyes the big question will always remain – did you seek the righteousness of God today and forsake your own ways and will? Did you?…

Seek Ye First The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness
In the following passage from the Word, Jesus proposed a shocking and highly radical way of life to all would-be disciples. Addressing them with boldness He told them about a spiritual way in which they could be obsessed with seeking God’s righteousness and the glories of the kingdom of heaven. They could turn from residing in the fleshly way in which earth-bound people naturally find themselves, always obsessing on the carnal, servants of mammon (material), serving with conviction and devotion the things of this temporary life, rather than the eternal things of salvation. Jesus told them all things will be provided when we seek the righteousness of God and not our own.  

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
   Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
   Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
   Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
   And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
   And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
   Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
   Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
   (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
   But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
   Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Matt 6:24-34

Jesus taught the crowd that they could not serve two masters. He summarized the battle as the opposing ideals of God’s goodness versus material goods and money. We will love one and despise (or forget) the other. That is just the way reality works. He warned potential believers that food, drink, raiment and the general provisions of life were what unbelievers continually sought after and habitually pursued, when in fact, it was not necessary to live that way in such dread and fear. He encouraged the people to trust God and believe that God would be so impressed with any soul that sought His will and His righteous goodness above everything else, including the necessities of carnal life and that he would be sure to provide them with all their material needs as well. He would not necessarily let them store up or get ahead, but He would provide them with their daily portion on a daily basis. He does this because it requires that one keep trusting and faithfully following Christ each and every day; even hour by hour. Their Father in heaven would provide; if they would only trust and believe in Him.

It was then that Christ issued His famous challenge of believing-faith toward all would-be disciplined followers. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”  Matt 6:33 Jesus advised those who would be His followers to have two primary pursuits in their spiritual life: God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. But Christ coupled these two challenges of faith together, the kingdom of God and His righteousness, because they are sine qua non, meaning that one cannot exist or occur without the other. He wants His Church to understand that finding the kingdom and having God’s righteousness are indivisible and inseparable. Finding one is contingent on finding the other. It is paramount that the born-again Christian who aspires to the highest faith (that which we call the Philadelphia Faith after the letter the Philadelphia faithful) realize that finding true righteousness is the key that unlocks the door to the blessed realm of God’s kingdom. Christ is the one who bound seeking the kingdom of God together with seeking GOD’S righteousness because no one can attain the kingdom without casting off their own righteousness and putting on the righteousness that is of God. The prophet Micah summarized the process at the close of his prophecies:  “I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.” Micah 7:9

The prophet saw the light and stepped out into it …

The journey starts with being born-again
…… and we soon realize we have born the indignation of the Lord because we have sinned against him. Christ has stood up for us and plead our cause with power because He performed ultimate love when he shed His holy blood on the cross for us. When we accept His appeal and our stay of sentence, He brings us into the light where we can see and live in His righteousness. We no longer have to wrestle with the frustration and guilt of our own ever-failing, impotent ‘righteousness’. We are able and free, free to live a life that pleases God because we can walk in His righteousness by the Spirit. Micah saw this power and grace coming. He saw its promise in and for his own life. “I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me.” He will acquit us so we may turn from our unholy works and our vain trust in Flesh. “…He will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.” We can step out of the night of our soulish life, and step into the light of His Spirit. His Word and the right paths in which to make our way, to walk and even to breath the spiritual breathe of life are now wide open and laid clear before us. Micah had not only sought the righteousness of God, he believed in the righteousness of God, had seen it and made it his dwelling place and was saved.

He was spared the imprisonment of the cares of this world, including having them become a ruling force in his sojourn and his daily struggles of life. So, why then, did Christ not simply tell us to seek righteousness and leave it at that? Every born-again Christian knows that they cannot enter the kingdom of God by virtue of their own righteousness. It has to be a righteousness of faith that trusts only in the righteousness of the life, death and resurrection of Christ. “For with the heart man believes unto righteousness.“ Rom 10:10 

The prophet Isaiah was clear about our own righteousness when he said, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Isa 64:6 We can only enter into the kingdom by putting on the righteousness of Christ, by being covered in His shed blood which gives us forgiveness of sin. But the reason Christ has made a point of noting a difference between righteousness and God’s righteousness is that there are two very different forms of righteousness that can be aspired to and understood in the Christian life: one is God’s righteousness; the other is our own righteousness. It is easy for the immature or carnal Christian to confuse the two and end up sinning the great sin of ‘self-righteousness’. We cannot enter the kingdom by our own righteousness. The early Christians of Galatia, for example, had slipped into a form of self-righteousness by trusting in the works of the law rather than trusting God by faith. God’s righteousness is gained by faith through reliance on and yielding to the Holy Spirit; the other is often sought after by following some form of Christian legalism, trusting in our own personal ability to make right judgments, confiding in our own sense of right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, helpful and harmful. All these are exceeding forms of self-righteousness. Regardless of the brand of self-righteousness we choose, it is fatal to the quest of which our Christian journey ought to be devoted – seeking the kingdom of God with all our heart, mind, body and soul.

The Bride Will Wear Christ’s Righteousness and Will Be Called by Her Husband’s Name.
Job stands as an eternal example for the Christian. He shows us that there are two types of righteousness which a man can seek after – his own or God’s. He shows us the error and misery of relying on our own goodness and righteous judgment. The Biblical emblem of the quintessential and universal man, Job and his delusional self-righteousness are a common affliction of all men. We all acquire a pride that gets us to think that we know. Not just head knowledge which puffs up, but thinking we know what is good, what is best. From this pier of deception, we launch out into our good works and will ultimately disgrace ourselves by excluding the one thing needed for all righteous judgment and goodness to be performed – the grace of God, who, as the prophet Jeremiah declared on a few occasions – is our righteousness. This is what ‘marries’ together worthy saints with Christ the Bridegroom and makes them the bride. Jeremiah first reveals the name of the Messiah – ‘the Lord Our Righteousness’ and identifies him with Jacob, the man christened, Israel. Hosea prophesied that like Jacob/Israel, Jesus would be the ultimate representative of Israel, that one “who has prevailed with God”, when he said, “and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep.”  Hos 12:12 Jacob kept the flocks of Laban so that the patriarchs of Israel might come into being and the seed of the Messiah might be furthered along to its ultimate glory in Christ. Jesus has kept the great flock of the new-born. It is the flock of the separated ones of the commonwealth of Israel, in which someday Jew and Gentile will be joined. Some, the holy ones (holy by living in His righteousness), will be joined to Christ in a most intimate way, and will be eternally, as it were, His wife. He has kept His flock, fed them, they hear His voice and he watches over them as the Great Shepherd and Pastor, with hopes of presenting unto himself, we are told, a ‘separated people’ purified in obedience to the Spirit and in subjection to His righteous will, and not their own self-righteous pride and arrogance.

This is the Bride, prophesied in Isaiah 61-62, if you will, which is glorious and has a end-times work to do in issuing the invitation the wedding supper of the Lamb for anyone who might hear this message that he is our righteousness and repent from any idea of their own goodness. This is the phenomenon of Brideship eluded to in Ephesians 5:27; “That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or WRINKLE, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” The Brideship journey begins with being born-again, the first steps are taken in entering to the understanding and living faith of the fundamentals principles of the doctrines of Christ. The very first step is taken in repenting from our own dead works, which is the Scriptural way of concisely telling us to turn from our own righteousness and be absorbed into the righteousness of God Himself.

God first revealed this powerful name of Messiah, Jehovah-Tsidkenu, during the judgment of Israel in Jeremiah’s time. “In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.”Jer 23:6 The ultimate savior and seed of salvation has been given another name, a name to cap-off the new name of ‘Israel which God had christened Jacob at Bethel, the house of God. Jesus is ultimate Israel, but also ultimate righteousness. Later, as judgment progressed and the sin of the people was revealed more and more, God revealed a second righteous one – THE BRIDE. She is not to be conceived as righteous in her own right, but righteous because she has been made one with Christ, as man and woman are meant to be one flesh, so she is one with Christ. Ephesians tells us that this is the whole point of man and woman being married, to show the ultimate marriage between the Church and Christ. She is now concluded as righteous because she has clothed herself in His righteousness, trusted in His judgment in all things, the way a loving woman might do for a perfectly loving and righteous husband. We ought to be astounded when we realize that Jeremiah 33:16 changes the person who is called Jehovah-Tsidkenu from the first person masculine, who rules over the whole kingdom of Israel, into the first person feminine who lives securely in the heart of God’s kingdom, Jerusalem, that jewel in the crown of God. Notice that Jeremiah’s words change to that effect: “In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” She shall be called the Lord Our Righteousness. It is clearly in the sense that on that day of the prophesied marriage supper of the Lamb she will be introduced to the universe, along with Jesus, as Mr. and Mrs. THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. One and the same. She has taken on his name and character and become like her husband whom she adores with pure love and devotion. What sense does this make unless God is calling her the Bride of Christ who is the same as the LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS because she has joined herself totally to Her husband’s righteousness by subjection, humbly obedient to His will.

If we do not seek His righteousness but think we have some righteousness we can rely upon then we mistakenly think of ourselves as being right and justified in our judgments and our sense of justice. We inherently believe we know how the world should work, that God should act according to our idea of fairness and goodness. We mouth the Scripture that God’s ways are not our ways and that as the heaven is higher than the earth so His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We are still inclined to impose our ways and thoughts, not just on our fellow man, but on God, while we inwardly question His way of running the world, doubting His method for bringing people to salvation, questioning His mercy and judgment. We may wonder how He can let children in Africa die, or how He can permit a tornado in Tennessee to destroy property and lives. When we silently question these things, and much more besides, we are actually saying in our heart that we know better than God, we are declaring, without declaring so, that we are more righteous than He. And after all, is it not stated clearly in the Bible that “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness”? Rom 10:10 If we believe in our heart that God is unrighteous in any of His ways or that we are more righteous, that in certain matters we could do a more fair and just job at running things, then is there any reason for us to believe that we have put on the righteousness of God? If we are truly seeking the kingdom of God we will allow it to invade our mind and inhabit our spirit, control our words, morals and thoughts. We will make room for God’s judgments and His righteousness. Did not Jesus say; “The kingdom of God is within us.” Lk 17:21 We are taught by the Bible that the kingdom of God is not outside in things we can eat and drink and touch and smell, but they reside in the fruits of the Spirit of the living God, which are grown inside of us by obedience to His voice. “The kingdom of God is not in meat and drink, but in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Rom 14:17

Job, too, believed that he was righteous, as righteous as God, and for his folly God mercifully judged Job and saved him from the fate of all self-righteous people: the pit of Hell. How often have men thought, as Job did, that they knew better how to dispense justice and mercy than God Himself? How often do we think we are right and good when we have no notion of what God’s will is concerning a given matter? James tells us that “the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God”. James 1:20 Man by himself, cannot bring about righteousness. The epistle to the Romans schools us that, “There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Rom 3:10-12 Jesus drove home this hard to be believed point by this startling exchange with a young man:

“When he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?
   And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.” Mark 10:17-18

Jesus was not saying He Himself was not good (because He even then counted Himself equal with God), He was emphatically declaring that no other man was inherently good. Jeremiah  17:9 described the raw unrighteousness of every man this way: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?“ The point is: it is not enough for the disciple of Christ to want righteousness or believe in righteousness, disciples must diligently seek HIS righteousness if they hope to stand righteous in the presence of God and attain the glorious Church that is called the Bride. We must trust and believe that, no matter how things look, God’s ways and actions are perfect and righteous altogether.

All true righteousness begins by accepting the fact that we must serve somebody. No man can serve himself and the kingdom of God, any more than he can serve money and God at the same time. True righteousness begins when we make a decision to seek and do God’s will rather than our own. This is why Jesus spoke as He did, saying, “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Matt 12:48-50 Seeking God’s righteousness means, then, that we seek the will of God and not our own. For this we must begin by trusting Him implicitly.

We must lay aside our righteous notions and the way we think the world should operate. We must step down from the judgment seat which we occupy in our own deep-rooted ideas of righteousness. We are not the righteous judge, but God is. The disciple of Christ is freed from the law, free to love, when he has decided to trust in God’s righteousness. Forgetting our sense of right and justice and letting Him show us His true ways through His Word and by the guidance of the Holy Ghost, this, this is the only way to seek His righteousness. This is the only way we can approach Him with confidence and assurance. Then we can “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” Heb 10:22

Maybe take a look at the series of articles on Walking in the Spirit:- Intro to The Path To Walking in the Spirit