The Golden Rule

Sermon Transcript

In the headquarters of the United Nations, there’s a poster of a Bible verse that has been on permanent display since 2002. It used to be common in America to display the Ten Commandments in courthouses, but this has become controversial in more recent decades due to concerns regarding the first amendment of the United States Constitution, which prohibits the establishment of any religion by the government. The United Nations certainly does not have an established religion, so why does it have a Bible verse permanently displayed at its headquarters?

 

Well, the verse, as you may have guessed, is not one of the Ten Commandments. It is, rather, the verse we have just read: Matthew 7:12, more commonly referred to today as the Golden Rule, a title it seems to have picked up around the 1600s. And it hangs in the United Nations headquarters not so much because Jesus said it, but because it is thought to be so similar to things other religious leaders and texts have said throughout the world and human history. In fact, it is not alone on the poster, but is accompanied by 12 other quotes from other religious traditions that are all alleged to be saying essentially the same thing. The point of the poster is to demonstrate some commonality between these 13 religious traditions, ostensibly to also suggest similarity between the various nations of the UN. But as is so often the case with the common, familiarity breeds neglect, if not contempt. “Right yeah the golden rule, we all get that of course.” Do we really? Do we really take the time to consider what we want others to do to us, and then translate that thought into the action of doing it to others? As Christians especially, we must not let these words become assumed and neglected by us simply because they have become so common in our world. In the form we have them here in Matthew 7:12, they are the very words of our Lord, who esteemed them so highly as to say that they were in fact the law and the prophets. So, do to others what you want others to do to you, and today we’ll look at how we can do that: Start with what you want others to do to you, do those things to others, and remember the law and the prophets.

 

Start with what you want others to do to you

 

Our verse begins with the word “so,” which connects it to what came before it, as if Jesus is saying, “So, to summarize what I’ve been saying…” and the section he’s summarizing goes all the way back to Matthew 5:17. The Golden Rule, though often quoted in isolation, is part of what we now commonly refer to as Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”. The section of the sermon that began back in 5:17 began with these words: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Shortly thereafter he said that “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:20). He then went on to teach what is the true fulfillment of the law. While the pharisees may not have willfully taken the life of another, the command not to murder was not merely about that; in giving it, God also intended that we should not be unjustly or excessively angry with another human in our hearts. The righteousness that exceeded that of the pharisees, in that case, looked not just like abstinence from murder, but a peaceful, gentle, merciful heart. While the pharisees may not have had sexual intercourse with another man’s wife, the command not to commit adultery was not merely about that; in giving it, God also intended that we should not look lustfully on anyone to whom we are not married. The righteousness that exceeded that of the pharisees, in that case, looked not just like abstinence from adultery, but a pure, faithful, self-controlled heart.

 

Jesus went on to cover divorce, oaths, how you respond when wronged, how you treat your enemies, giving to the poor, praying, fasting, money, anxiety, and judging others. In each case, he expounds that righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees, a righteousness he says is necessary to enter the kingdom of heaven. He could explore more topics no doubt, but when we come to verse 12 he wraps it up. He basically says, “So, if you really want to get this righteousness at its essence, here it is: Whatever you wish that others would to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets,” the law and the prophets that he came not to abolish, but to fulfill.

 

It should come as no surprise, then, that something like this appears in other religions; the God who gave the law and spoke through the prophets is the same God who made all humans in his image, and in making us in his image, God also inscribed his law on our conscience, such that even though we do our best to suppress it, some features of God’s law have a way of popping up across diverse cultures. Furthermore, as this aspect of God’s law deals with our relationship to one another, it’s of observable value to a society to promote it. Most people intuitively sense that if we all did to others what we want others to do to us, the world would be a better place.

 

That said, there are important differences between Jesus’ actual words in Matthew 7:12 and similar sentiments in other religious traditions, especially those that precede Jesus. To start closest to Jesus’ own tradition, take the words of a Jewish writing written prior to the coming of Christ: “And what you hate, do to no one.” Here’s one from ancient Greece: “Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.” Egypt: “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.” Confucius: “That which you do not desire, do not do to others.” Similar to Matthew 7:12, no doubt, but do you notice the difference in each case? In each of these statements, and as best as I can tell, in every similar statement prior to Jesus, the command is entirely negative: Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want to be done to you. In typical fashion, Jesus doesn’t deny that, but he does take it further. He could have almost put it like this: “You have heard it said, ‘whatever you wish that others would not do to you, do not do to them, but I tell you, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.”

 

So how do you do this? You start with what you want others to do to you. In saying this, Jesus wisely recognizes that we all do want other people to treat us in a certain way, and he does not demonize such desires. It’s natural to want to be loved rather than hated, helped rather than hurt, given to rather than taken from, and so on. Such desires are not necessarily righteous or wicked; they’re just human, like the desire for food. So here Jesus is saying, “Start with those, and whatever you find there, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” The whatever there is intentionally broad. He’s saying, “Anything you can think of that you wish others would do to you, do that to others.”

 

Of course, Jesus it not here thinking of unnatural desires. Because sin perverts our nature, we do sometimes want others to do things to us that are not natural. So some part of us may want others to praise us and give us glory, but that’s a result of sinful pride, not human nature as God created it. So Jesus is not saying here, “If you want others to worship you, you should go worship them.” He’s speaking in the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples, those he is transforming into his own image, and so he speaks here to them assuming their desires for how others treat them are also being remade according to that image. A similar distinction is necessary to keep in mind in the passage just before this one. There, speaking of prayer, he says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” When ripped from its context, that can be twisted to say, “Hey, ask for a billion dollars, and it will be given to you.” But Jesus had already, in this same sermon, taught his disciples what to pray for themselves: daily bread, forgiveness of sins, protection from temptation. He ends in the verse just before this one by saying that our Father in heaven gives good things to those who ask him, not bad things. So here, what we sinfully want others to do to us is not what Jesus has in mind.

 

Nor does Jesus have in mind unfair expectations we may put on others. When he says “Whatever you wish others would do to you, do also to them,” he’s speaking specifically of other humans, not what only God can do. So you may find yourself wanting a certain person to be with you at all times, but that is not a fair expectation of them: Only God is omnipresent, and so only he can be with you at all times. And so, accordingly, you should not feel bound to be present to others at all times. Sometimes I find myself wanting my wife to say the perfect thing in response to a hard situation about which I’m talking to her, but that’s not a fair expectation of her: Only God is omniscient and perfect in wisdom. And so, similarly, you should not feel like you always have to have the perfect thing to say to others. So Jesus is not thinking here of sinful desires or unfair desires. He’s basically saying whatever you naturally, as a created human, wish that other humans would do to you, do also to them.

 

Ok, enough qualification and nuance: Start with what you want others to do to you, and there are two ways to start there. One way is to start with the desire you already feel, and another is when you see someone in a certain situation, to try to imagine yourself in the same situation, and assess what you would desire. The first is the easiest: Start with the desires you already feel. So I’m at home, and I smell a diaper that needs to be changed: What do I want my wife to do for me? I want her to change the diaper. After dinner, I see some leftover food, more of it on the table and floor, and a smattering of dirty dishes. What do I want my wife to do for me? I want her to clean it all up. It’s Saturday, my day off, and what do I want my wife to do for me? I want her to say something like, “Hey, you’ve worked hard all week pastoring and parenting. Why don’t you take a nap this afternoon and read something you’ll enjoy for a bit while I watch the kids?”

 

You’re a member of a church, and what do you want others in that church to do to you? You want someone to invite you over for good food, good conversation, and prayer. You want someone to take the time to listen to you and give you wise counsel. You want someone to meet with you regularly to help you grow to greater maturity in Christ. You want someone to lovingly correct you if you are believing false doctrine or engaging in sinful behavior. You’re an employee in a workplace; what do you want your co-workers to do? You want them to do their part and not slack off, you want them to admit when they made a mistake at work and correct it, you want them to recognize when you made a valuable contribution, you want them to work toward solutions and not just criticize. As I mentioned before, this is the easy part, because we all have these desires, and we can sometimes recognize them when they present themselves to us in the form of bitterness: We wish our spouse or roommate would just do x, or that the members of our church would just do y, and so on.

 

So that’s the easier way to notice what you want others to do to you. The harder way is to put yourself in another’s shoes and to imagine what you would want in that situation. This is harder for one thing because it’s harder to imagine what you’d want in a situation, especially if you haven’t been in it, than it is to notice what you already want, but also because what you want others to do to you in a given situation may actually be different than what the person in the situation wants others to do to them. Hard though it may be, this is an aspect of loving others that we can grow in as we practice it. Consider the example of someone grieving the loss of a loved one. That’s a situation in which we will often feel like we want to do something, but we aren’t sure what we can do. We can’t bring their loved one back to life, so what can we do? Well, put yourself in their shoes, and imagine what might help you. Of course, you can say, “If you need anything let me know. I’m here for you!” but grieving people often struggle to even identify what they need.

 

I remember a time when I was in college and a guy with whom I went to high school died unexpectedly. We weren’t super close, but he was an acquaintance, and I was grieving. So I called some friends to let them know and I asked them if I could just come study organic chemistry at their house. I went, studied, talked for a bit, and just spent hours there that night. We didn’t talk about my friend a lot or even about death, but that night, I just needed to not be alone. So now if I have a friend who is grieving, I try to think about how to prevent them from being alone. That may mean just showing up unannounced with dinner and asking if you can come in. If people don’t want something like that, they can say no, but with grieving people especially, err on the side of trying too hard to move toward them.

 

Let’s say someone says something you really think is wrong. What would you want someone to do to you if they thought you were really wrong about something? First, you’d probably want them to interpret your words in the best possible light, and maybe gently ask a clarifying question before jumping right to the conclusion that you believe something unthinkable. Even if after doing that they still thought you were really wrong, you wouldn’t want them to verbally attack you for it. But at your best, you don’t want them to say nothing either. That deprives you of the opportunity to really know them and of the opportunity to possibly be corrected and arrive closer to the truth. So you want them to lovingly correct you. Someone has wronged you; what should you do? Imagine you’d just done the same thing to someone; what would you naturally want them to do? Forgive you or take revenge upon you?

 

And here is another example of why the imaginary method of starting with what you want others to do to you is harder. Sometimes others may wrong you in ways you have a hard time imagining you’d ever do. The Bible calls that pride. If we can instead acknowledge that the seeds of every sin are present in all of us, if we can, to use Jesus’ words in the verses just before this one, remove the log from our own eye before judging the speck in another’s, then we should be able to also imagine ourselves having done something similarly awful, and to ask how we’d want others to treat us in such a situation. I had to try this recently when serving on a jury here in Philadelphia. I’ve never been charged with a crime in my life, but I was compelled to consider, “If I was this defendant being accused of this crime, how would I want a juror to treat me?” and, “If I was the accuser alleging that I was a victim of this crime, how would I want a juror to treat me?”

 

We could multiply examples, but hopefully by now you’re getting the vibe of just how simple this one verse is, and yet how profoundly practical and wide-ranging its application is. There are countless situations I haven’t touched in this sermon, and there are countless situations you will encounter in which there is no specific passage of scripture that just tells you what to do. What do you do with these countless situations? Start with what you want others to do to you, and then…do those things to others.

 

Do those things to others

 

So after saying, “Whatever you wish that others would to you,” Jesus says, “Do also to them.” He does say do also, so again, he’s not demonizing natural desires or telling you to kill them. God created humans to be happy and never commands us to kill the desire to be happy. But he did create us for more than our individual, private happiness, and so he commands us not so much to kill our desire for happiness as to expand it, so that it includes the happiness of others. He puts this also into it. “You naturally desire others to do certain things to you; so be it…you also do these things to others.” That’s the path forward when you find in you desires for others to do certain things to you; it’s the path out of the bitterness and grumbling that so often come when we sense others aren’t doing those things toward us. It’s cliché because it’s true: You can’t control what others do to you, but you can decide what you will do to them.

 

And, honestly, it’s just a happier way to live. Elsewhere Jesus says it is more blessed, that is, more happy, to give than to receive. You can spend a lot of your time reflecting on what you wish others would do to you, and ways they have failed to do so. A high percentage of such thoughts will probably spring from your sinful desires or unfair expectations of what you want others to do to you, but since the only people with whom you interact are sinners like you, you’ll probably come up with a few genuine examples of ways people have sinned against you. And I’m not thinking here of abusive or oppressive situations; there are times when you may be prone to ignore ways you’ve been sinned against that you do need to face for the sake of justice and your own safety. Here I’m talking more about the garden variety ways others fall short of our often sinful and unrealistic, but sometimes legitimate, expectations. What’s all the time reflecting on those going to do to you but make you more bitter? Do you really want to live like that? And, more to the point of this passage, would you really want someone else to spend significant time reflecting on all the ways they wish you would treat them, and all the ways you’ve failed to do so? Jesus offers us a better way forward. When you find yourself wanting others to treat you in a certain way, go find people you can treat that way.

 

You wish your spouse would change the smelly diaper; you change it. You wish your spouse would clean up after dinner; you clean up after dinner. You wish your spouse would give you a nap and some time for your hobbies; offer your spouse a nap and some time for her hobbies. If both spouses start functioning like that, you get into the good kinds of fights: “Why don’t you take a nap and do something you enjoy? No; you let me do that last Saturday; I want you to do that today. Well, I’m feeling pretty energized today, so why don’t you do it? No; I insist; you must do what you enjoy today.” At that point, it honestly doesn’t matter who does what that day, because now each spouse is doing to the other what they wish the other would do to them. Can you imagine a marriage like that? Can you imagine a church like that? You want someone to invite you over, so you find someone to invite over. You wish people would come when you invite them, so you move your schedule around to come next time someone invites you to something. You wish someone would help you grow to greater maturity in Christ, so you find someone you can help grow to greater maturity in Christ. You want your co-workers to admit when they made a mistake, so you admit when you made a mistake. You begin to imagine what it would be like to be in your co-worker’s shoes as they messed up and dug themselves in a hole with a deadline they can’t hit, so you do what you’d want others to do for you in that situation: You stay an extra few hours at work to help them get it done.

 

I mentioned earlier that it’s harder to imagine what you’d want in someone else’s situation than it is to simply identify what you already want others to do to you. But this is maybe the hardest step in what Jesus says here: Do, especially when you consider that the “them” we are to do these things to is a general one, not just them that do good things to you, but even your enemies. Take the idea and actually go do it. As the apostle John writes in 1 John 3:18, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.” It is clear in scripture that God’s greatest concern for us as humans is what is going on inside us, what the Bible calls “the heart”. We’ve already seen that in reviewing Jesus’ exposition of God’s law: It makes a claim not only on our outward actions, but on what we think, and most fundamentally, what we love. And yet, we mustn’t let the biblical emphasis on the heart produce in us a kind of introspection that never gets from the heart to the actions. Scripture calls us to think certain things, to feel certain things, to love certain things, but all these are meant then to compel us to do certain things, to do to others the things we want them to do to us. It is one of Satan’s devices to get us so inwardly focused that we stop doing much of anything toward others.

 

C.S. Lewis explores this device in his Screwtape Letters, a book in which he takes on the persona of a demon writing to another demon in training. The demon in training is working on tempting a man who has recently become a Christian, and here’s how the more experienced demon counsels him:

“Keep his mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind—or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious.”

 

When it comes to the obvious, does anything seem more obvious than the Golden Rule? And yet how successful has Satan been in aggravating that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious? You smell a diaper; what’s the obvious? Change it. The dishes are dirty; what’s the obvious? Clean them. You messed up; what’s the obvious? Admit it and fix it as best you can. As the obvious occurs to you, do it. Whatever you wish others would to you, do also to them. This, Jesus says, is the law and the prophets. And so, finally, remember the law and the prophets.

 

Remember the law and the prophets

 

For all the times people quote the golden rule, you don’t usually hear, “for this is the law and the prophets” included in the quote. To the popular mind today the golden rule is a platitude that all religions have in common, but aside from the difference between it and other statements like it that I’ve already pointed out, notice here that Jesus didn’t teach the Golden Rule that way. For Jesus, it was the summary of the law and the prophets, which was just a common way in Jesus’ day of referring to the whole Old Testament scriptures, the parts of the Bible written before Jesus came. It was his way of summarizing what the God of the Bible requires of us in the Bible.

 

And in the verses immediately after it, look at what he says: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” I was reflecting with one brother yesterday on how somehow in our world today the word “narrow” has gained an inherently negative connotation; it’s worth noticing in passing that it wasn’t necessarily negative in Jesus’ mind. In these verses, it’s the wide that comes out negative; the narrow way is the way to life. So maybe you are here today and you are not a Christian, and you hear the golden rule and think, “Yes, right. It’s simple; it’s easy. That’s why I do my best to live like that, and I think most people do.” If you can think that, then according to Jesus, you don’t understand the golden rule. That way of thinking makes it sound like it’s easy and many do it, while Jesus says the way that is easy and that many walk in is the way to destruction. This path, the path characterized by the golden rule, is narrow and hard.

 

And, therefore, few do it. In fact, none of us have done it perfectly. We all know it; it’s obvious. Many deny the existence of God; almost no one denies the existence of other people, and across apparently at least 12 different religious traditions, we all seem to sense that we ought to treat them the way we want them to treat us. So why isn’t it our natural setting? Why don’t we just consistently take the time to put ourselves in the situation of others, and do to them what we want them to do to us? We often fail to do this with even our closest friends and relatives, let alone those who have hurt us or threaten us, those we don’t like, those who give us nothing in return. We know we ought to, we have no shortage of people telling us we ought to, and yet we haven’t. What’s that reveal about us? It reveals that something is wrong inside us. As James 4:17 puts it, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” The ancient theologian Augustine described sin as incurvitas in se, curved in on yourself; that’s what’s wrong with us. That’s why though we all know the golden rule, none of us have kept it. And therefore, we are all guilty under the law and the prophets. If this is the law and the prophets, and Jesus says it is, we all fall short. None of us has a righteousness of our own that exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees, nor can we attain it. Curved in on ourselves, we want the wrong things from others, and even when we want appropriate things from others, our sin inclines us to grumble and get bitter for the way we haven’t received it, rather than going and doing to others what we want them to do for us.

 

And so the really incredible thing in the verses that follow is not that many take the way that leads to destruction; the really incredible thing is that there are actually a few, according to Jesus, who find that narrow gate that leads to life! And that is so because Jesus came not merely to teach us the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them himself. He didn’t just consider what he’d want in our situation; he came from heaven and entered our situation by becoming man and suffering the condemnation promised to sinners under the law and the prophets in our place when he died on the cross, though he was the only human who perfectly obeyed them! And because he did, God rewarded him with eternal life when he rose from the dead. He is the narrow gate that leads to life, and all who rest upon him for salvation are declared righteous in God’s sight, because Christ’s righteousness is the righteousness that ultimately exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees, without which no one will enter the kingdom of heaven, and it becomes yours the moment you believe.

 

And then, righteous in God’s sight, the Spirit of Jesus goes to work in you, enabling you to do the very hard work of doing to others what you want them to do to you. You can grow in this, but you cannot grow yourself in this. You must first admit that you have not actually done this, and trust in Christ, who did it for you. And then, by faith in him, with his Spirit at work in you, start with what you want others to do to you. What are the things you’re bitter at others for not doing to you? Put yourself in another’s situation; what would you want others to do to you if you were in that situation? Then take those ideas and find someone, almost anyone will do, and do it to them. Start with the obvious: Your family, the people with whom you live, your church family, your co-workers, your neighbors. And as you do to them what you want others to do to you, little by little, God will actually curve you out into a human who does not fight his own happiness, but expands it, so that it includes others. This is what God is doing now in his church, and when Jesus returns, a world in which everyone treats one another like that is the world those few who found life through him will enjoy forever.