Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Matthew 7:12 (audio not yet available).
Therefore
all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them: for this is the law and the prophets (Matthew 7:12).
This verse contains one of the best-known teachings of the
Lord Jesus Christ, popularly known as the “Golden Rule.” One commentator traced
the first usage of this term to an English philosopher named Charles Gibbon at
the beginning of the seventeenth century (see Alfeyev, The Sermon on the
Mount, 359, n. 1). This same scholar describes the Golden Rule as “one of
the fundamental moral reference points in Christian ethics” (Alfeyev, 362).
Notice at least five things about this teaching:
First, notice the context. The Golden Rule comes
just after Christ’s teaching on petitionary prayer (vv. 7-11). 7:12 begins with
the word “therefore”, which means, in light of what has just been said.
How is it connected to the previous teaching on prayer?
Perhaps Christ especially wanted his disciples to keep this principle in mind
when they were praying for others, even for their enemies (Matt 5:44).
Second, consider the scope of Christ’s command: “Therefore all things…”
What are the kinds of things we should do for others, as we would
have them to do to us? All things.
Third, consider the object of Christ’s command: “Therefore all
things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you….”
The word “men” here in Greek is anthropoi, the basic term
for a fellow human being, someone made in the image of God, whether he be
friend or foe, Jew or Gentile, male or female, believer or pagan. It’s not a
narrow, particular, or exclusive term. It is an expansive, universal, and
inclusive term.
The Golden Rule is thus parallel to Christ’s teaching in the Great
Commandment: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matt 22:39).
Fourth, notice the reciprocal nature of this teaching.
Just as the heart of the horizontal teaching in the Great
Commandment is love your neighbor as yourself, so the positive
reciprocal nature of the Golden Rule is that disciples should treat others, as
they themselves would wish or want to be treated.
Fifth, consider the uniqueness of Christ’s teaching.
Some might tell you that some form of the Golden Rule is taught in
the ethics of other world religions or philosophical traditions. That is not,
in fact, the case. In a few places (from The Analects of Confucius to
the apocryphal Jewish book of Tobit one finds a crude “negative” form of
the Golden Rule that says something like, “Don’t do to others, what you do not
want them to do to you.”), but in no other teacher do you find the positive
version of the rule being given: As you would have other do to you, do to them.
It is that positive element that is crucial. Christ taught not
merely that we avoid doing what is wrong, but that we do what is right.
As followers of Christ, we should strive not only for orthodoxy
but also for orthopraxy. This includes adhering to Christ’s “Golden
Rule.”
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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