Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Hagerstown, MD
www.mycrossway.org
We now come to a well-known verse that most of us call “The Golden Rule.” If you remember from last week, I told you that we should study and understand The Sermon on the Mount as having continuity. We aren’t looking at a series of randomly collected sayings that Matthew threw in there or Jesus indiscriminately. Every word and theme is intricately connected.
Therefore, our interpretation will be different (and more accurate) if we study the Sermon in this manner. In reality, verse 12 is the key to the passage, and the rest of the chapter relates to this great truth. This is heart of the Gospel, the heart of the Law, and the essence of understanding all other spiritual principles.
Edersheim, the great Hebrew Christian scholar, said, “It is the nearest approach to absolute love of which human nature is capable.”
Bishop Ryle wrote, “This truth settles a hundred different points. It prevents the necessity of laying down endless little rules for our conduct in specific cases.”
Now, there are all kinds of ethical and moral proverbs, but none of them equate to the Golden Rule:
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” (Ghandi)
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” (Aristotle)
“It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice” (Thomas Jefferson)
"Today, you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!" (Dr. Suess)
But none of these come close to the truth that we need to know in order to have the right relationship with God and each other.
I explained last week that understanding our prayer life as we turn to God for help was not based on our selfish motivations but on living for our Lord before all things. We ask, seek, and knock to receive freely from God all we need to live in the Kingdom today victoriously and as we wait for its culmination at the return of Christ with the Church. Since God is our Lord and Heavenly Father, we can be assured that we are under His constant care. So we don’t need to go about selfishly living, but turn our attention and love to the people around us. Nearly all of our decisions involve an aspect of ‘what is best for me.’ If you think about it, selfishness’s the essence behind every crime.
A young defendant was convicted in his court for gunning down another person, execution style. The murderer had a bad record, was no stranger to the system, and only stared in anger as the jury returned his guilty verdict.
On the day of sentencing, the victim’s mother and grandmother addressed the court. When they spoke, neither addressed the jury; both spoke directly to the murderer and forgave him.
“You broke the Golden Rule—loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind. You broke the law——loving your neighbor as yourself. I am your neighbor,” the grandmother said. "You have my address. If you want to write, I’ll write you back. I sat in this trial for two weeks, and I tried to hate you for the last sixteen months. But you know what? I could not hate you. I feel sorry for you because you made a wrong choice.”
The trial judge, Judge Tomei, later wrote: “For the first time since the trial began, the defendant’s eyes lost their laser force and appeared to surrender to a life force that only a mother can generate: nurturing unconditional love. After the grandmother finished, I looked at the defendant. His head was hanging low. There was no more swagger, no more stare. The destructive and evil forces within him collapsed helplessly before this remarkable display of humaneness." (source: www.preachingtoday.com)
The grandmother was right. The Golden Rule can be broken down into two other laws based on love. In Matthew 22, Jesus said, you can summarize the Law of God down to two:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:5)
you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:18)
It all comes down to our relationship with our Heavenly Father and our relationship with each other. In Chapter 6, we look very closely at the relationship with our Heavenly Father. Because of our relationship with our Heavenly Father, we can better understand and live out our relationship with each other.
This is a passage for believers. It is the essence of the Christian faith. If you want to know what the Christian life is like, it is this. After this passage, Jesus gives us an invitation to choose the path we will go: the broad path of destruction or the narrow path of life. There is no fence-sitting.
The Golden Rule is both unique to the Bible, but its essence can be found in other philosophers, including those before the time of Jesus. The difference is that all the others were giving in the negative, and Jesus gave the positive. That may be a subtle difference, but it makes all the difference in the world in a way that only believers can follow. Herein lies the heart of my message.
Rabbi Hillel said, “What is hateful to yourself, do not to someone else.”
The Book of Tobit it says, “What thou thyself hatest, to no man do.”
Confucius said, “Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.”
Socrates said, “Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”
Epictetus said, “What you avoid suffering yourself, don’t inflict on others.”
The Stoics said, “What you do not want to be done to you, do not do to anyone else.”
Ghandi said, “The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall see Truth in fragment and from different angles of vision.”
All of these sound like the Golden Rule, but they are not, and they still do not measure up to the biblical standard, and I’m going to show you why. The whole thing comes down to selfishness and motivation.
Anyone can come up with a principle that says, “I’m not going to deck a guy because I don’t want him to do it me.” That’s simple avoidance. In its negative form, it isn’t even Christian; it’s just self-preservation, like, “Don’t play with fire because you are going to be burned.” You don’t need any faith in God or salvation for that.
The negative ethic is compelled by fear. The Golden Rule says I will treat someone a certain way, not based on their treatment of me, but because this is how I would want to be treated. The ethic of Jesus is compelled by agape love. With that, it is a principle that is monumental in its meaning and reality. The essence of the Christian life, the essence of caring for others, the essence of helping others, the essence of loving others biblically is never rooted in our own fulfillment.
Sinclair Fergusson said, “Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.”
I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. 20 For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. (Philippians 2:19–20)
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3–5)
The Christian life is always other-centered. What that means is that you determine in your own heart what you would want for you if you were in someone's position and then determine to do it for them. It may cost you, and it may be an inconvenience. But, if you know somebody else who is in need, then do it for them in the same way you would normally do for yourself. That is utterly foreign to an unregenerate mind, but it is the heart of the Law of God, so we do it without thinking.
Look at the end of verse 12: “For this is the law and the prophets.” In other words, this is the whole point of all the Scripture. When you read the 10 Commandments: you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not commit adultery, etc. … all of this is an expansion of the two principles that I mentioned earlier: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8)
So, when you love your neighbor as yourself, you have fulfilled the 10 Commandments because you’re not going to kill him, and you’re not going to steal from him, and you’re not going to cheat him, and so forth. You cannot love your neighbor and do these things. You cannot love your neighbor and hold these things in your heart, as we talked about in Chapter 6. If you are even holding anger in your heart against your neighbor, you have already killed him in your heart, and therefore you have no love for your neighbor.
The Golden Rule takes all of this and subsequently puts it into practice. You can have all the religious knowledge and piety in your life. You can parade around like the Pharisees did, but they were still devoid of God in their lives because they continued to look down on people. It isn’t enough to know what the Bible teaches; we must be willing to put those teachings into everyday practice. And God says that if you commit to living this way, he will care for you in all other things.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)
It is impossible to separate the Golden Rule from our relationship with God, and it is impossible to have an honest relationship with God without living out the Golden Rule. When the “Golden Rule” is lived out in our lives, we are showing the love of God to our neighbor. We cannot please our Savior if we are unwilling to love our neighbor.
Where would any of us be if God had responded to us in the same way we responded to Him? What if God would have dealt with us according to what we deserved? Consider the treatment of Jesus prior to the crucifixion. He had every right to have destroyed His accusers. They were not worthy of His love or His sacrifice. He did not render what they deserved. He offered grace instead of wrath. He offered what they needed instead of what they deserved.
?but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)
The same is true in each of our lives. We were not given what we had earned or deserved. Jesus dealt with us in tender mercy and grace. We are also expected to show that same grace to others, even if we feel they don’t deserve it. I think at the heart of our unwillingness to forgive or love others is a deep-rooted sense that we do not think God could really love us. He does, and his Spirit comes in and renews our lives. In doing so, we feel the liberty to go and share that love with others.
The Christian life will cost you everything. There are no fence-sitters. Our lives are no longer our own but dedicated to the cause of Christ and the Gospel instead of our selfish desires.
In March of 1943, Bulgaria, which had aligned with the Nazis, received orders from Berlin that they were to begin implementing the Final Solution. And so the railroad cars were lined up 100’s long, and the Jewish people were to be gathered at the local elementary school and then placed on the trains. They began to cry out to their neighbors and tell them goodbye with tears streaming down their faces.
Orthodox Bishop Curel comes to investigate this thing he had heard about. He cries out, "Children, the Christians of this country will not allow this to happen to you. I will not allow this to happen to you. I will lay my body on these tracks, and they will have to run over my body. This will not happen to you." He and the people of that town began to speak out. Others began to speak out. Several members of Parliament stood up and spoke, but they were relieved of their offices and never served again in politics. But the people refused to let the trains leave.
Months later, on June 7, 1943, the German Ambassador to Bulgaria wrote this back to Berlin: "I am firmly convinced that the Ambassador and the Parliament wish and strive for a radical final solution to the Jewish problem. However, they are hindered by the mentality of the Bulgarian people who lack the ideological enlightenment we have." Instead, they were enlightened by the teachings of Jesus, who said, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And because the Christians of Bulgaria stood up against this while 6 million Jews were killed, of the 49,000 Jews of Bulgaria, all were saved, and not a single one of them was killed by the Nazis. They were people who took seriously the Golden Rule and had the moral courage to stand up for what they believed. (Sermon Central)
