Sermon on the Mount: what becoming like Jesus looks like

I ended last post with the conclusion that as we become the people Jesus wants us to be, we start to want the things that are important to him and other things become of secondary importance, which is the reason why we don't need to worry about what we eat or drink or wear even when we know that famine and nakedness aren't things that the love of Christ will necessarily protect us from, because they won't separate us from His love, which is the thing we really care about.

I feel like Romans 8 describes HOW we become like Jesus but not really on WHAT we will become, what our characteristics will be. That's why I want to transition to the sermon on the mount. "Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees," says Jesus, "You will never enter the kingdom of Heaven." And then he goes on to expound on the law...what it means to actually not murder, to not commit adultery, etc etc. So how I've interpreted the sermon on the mount, and I think other people have too, is like a description of what a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven looks like. At first I almost said, what it takes to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, but this isn't true. Jesus says that to get into the Kingdom of Heaven your righteousness has to be even greater than the scribes and the pharisees, to keep the whole law etc.. this is where Romans 8 comes in, that in Christ, the Law of the Spirit of life makes us free from the power of sin and death and works in us to make us these citizens that Jesus describes in Matthew 5 and 6.

The question that I want to focus on as I go through this is, "How do we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness?"