Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in the Twenty-first Century

by Marcus J. Borg

And, of course, “kingdom of God” is the most central phrase in all of Jesus’s teaching. All New Testament scholars agree about this. Just to cite one verse, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s justice” (Matt. 6:33). That’s normally translated “righteousness”—“Strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness”—but it’s really important to realize that most often in the Bible the word “righteousness” means “justice.” It doesn’t mean some kind of individual rectitude that “makes a man so damn righteous he’s no earthly good.” I think that’s a line from Will Rogers. In modern English “righteousness” commonly refers to personal virtue of a particularly rigorous kind. In the Bible it almost always means justice. “Strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s justice, and all these things will be given to you as well.”