The Golden Rule // Matthew 7:12

Introduction

Illustration: In 1971, John Lennon released one of the most popular songs of the 20th century called “Imagine” — You probably know this song or are at least familiar with a more recent rendition of it by a group of celebrities who recorded themselves singing it over Zoom right at the beginning of the COVID lockdowns as a way of encouraging us that we were “all in this together” — them in their mega mansions and me in my 600 sqft apartment over the 7/11 in DC both brought together by song. Thank you, Gal Gadot.

To give them some credit, when John Lennon wrote this song the world was, in a very similar way, filled with a lot of uncertainty and angst for something change. In 1971, the Vietnam War had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and was, at the time, the centerpiece of a very complex geopolitical struggle we know of as the Cold War. As Communism was spreading in the East, fears were mounting in the West leading to decades of hostility, political tension, and economic uncertainty all heightened by the threat of global nuclear conflict. In the US, where John Lennon was then living, the social and political landscape was no less embattled. The decades of global conflict had demoralized particularly the youth of America who were becoming increasingly vocal about their opposition to war and desire for peace. The year 1971 was also just on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement and was also right in the middle of a movement we know of as Second Wave feminism which advocated for equity for women in the home and workplace. At the same time, environmental concerns about pollution and industrialization were beginning to spark conversations about individual and global responsibility.

With all of this happening in the world, it’s easy to understand where a song like “Imagine” comes from — It’s utopian vision of all people “living as one” in a world filled with peace, justice, and equality was a response to looking around and instead seeing a world marked by division, war, borders, death, and greed. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “John Lennon is a radical socialist, naive optimist, anti-religious, post-nationalist, overly romantic, humanist”— and you’d probably be right on at least a few of those fronts… but whether or not you agree with John Lennon’s personal or political philosophy, you you have to admit that there is something uniquely inspiring about imagining a more ideal and perfect world.

I want to invite you to imagine with me for a moment — a world where no child went to bed hungry tonight while those living in excess laid their heads to rest just a few miles away… a world where billionaire CEO’s didn’t take 7-figure bonuses while their employees struggled to pay rent… a world where duplicitous politicians actually looked out for the needs of their constituents rather than trying to line their own pockets… a world where people work hard, respect their neighbors, and take responsiblity for their actions… a world where life inside a mother’s womb was valued and protected rather than dispensed with for convenience… a world where dignity wasn’t earned or achieved but was recognized as having been given by God… a world where the color of one’s skin made their neither a villain nor a second-class citizen… a world where people gave as generously as they consumed… and, yes, a world where people pushed their shopping carts back to the cart corral in the parking lot rather than leaving it for someone else to deal with (you know who you are)…

All of these thing, unfortunately, sound political, but I’m not making a political statement at all. However you think about any one of these issues or what we should or should not do to solve them is beside the point — we can all with reasonable nuance agree that a world that is peaceful, equitable, fair, and just is a world that is good and a world that we want… and yet it feels impossible… why? There are probably many different ways we could think through this, but this seems to me to be a central problem: the reason we can’t make a more ideal world is because everyone is just using whatever power, access, and influence they have to serve their own needs and interests. What else would we expect than for everyone else to be looking out for #1? Corruption? I’ll turn the other way because I have something to gain. Inequity? It hasn’t hit my pocket book yet, so I don’t have an opinion. I think if we start to trace this out, we’ll see that at the root of so much injustice in our world is people acting out of callous self-interest and disregard for others.

But I want to take a moment to challenge the sense of outrage we might feel about all the injustice is the world by suggesting that this isn’t just a problem out there… if we’re being honest, we very well might, given the same opportunity, do the very thing we detest… so, how could things be any better than they are?

Well the good news is that Jesus hasn’t left us to imagine world better than our own… at his coming, Jesus announced the arrival of a better world, God’s Kingdom, breaking into this one. When he taught, healed, forgave, and fed, he showed us what it looks like when Heaven touches earth… and he invites us as his followers to live that way — to belong to God’s Kingdom by living according to the values of Heaven here and now.

In our passage today, Jesus sums up everything he’s been teach in the Sermon on the Mount with an inspiring yet convicting vision of a new way of being in the world — a way not marked by interested egotism but a transformative way of radical love that makes our lives and our world look more like Heaven…

Matthew 7:12 CSB

Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Big Idea: The Golden Rule is both a way and a window — it’s a way of self-sacrificial love and compassion and it is a window into our hearts that reveals where we are cold in our love for God and others.

What I want to do this morning is unpack this way of the Golden Rule with four points of application and then I want to conclude by considering how the Golden Rule is a window into our hearts that reveals our need for God’s grace and where Jesus is calling us to align ourselves with his Kingdom… so how do we live this way of the Golden Rule?

Exegesis // Matthew 7:12

ONE // Do for others what you want for yourself

SotM — Jesus teaches his followers imagine what God’s Kingdom is like and invites them to belong to it by living their lives according to the values of Heaven here and now.

Announcement = “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” (JTB in Matthew 3:2; Jesus in Matthew 4:17) — gospel “good news” is a proclamation of the arrival of God’s Kingdom, breaking into the this world

In the SotM — Jesus expands on this announcement and its implications for our lives by telling us what it means to know God and belong to his Kingdom… naturally some questions arose among this primarily Jewish audience, “What does this mean for the Law of Moses?”

Biblical trajectory — God established a people for himself through Abraham and his lineage; this was a covenant relationship on the basis of his grace. The Law was later given through Moses as a stipulation of the covenant describing how the Jewish people were to relate to God and one another.

Galatians 3:24 “The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith.” — meant to keep God’s people in right relationship with him.

First 4 chapters are drenched with biblical quotations and allusions — Matthew weaves into his narrative how all of these figures we know from the OT were pointing ahead to the One who was to come. We’re introduced to Jesus in the opening words of Matthew’s gospel as son of Abraham (in other words, the seed of a new covenant people of God) and son of David (in other words, the one who fulfilled the promise made to David that one from his lineage would be enthroned forever as King for the people of God)… the connections don’t stop there; Matthew’s implied yet clear and bold assertion is that all of Scripture (which is the self-revelation of God) points to Jesus (who is God incarnate), illuminating his identity. That’s why Matthew tells us that his goal in writing his gospel is to bring together these treasures of old where Christ is revealed in the Old Testament together with the new — which is this fresh revelation of God in Christ.

So if it seems like Matthew is all over the place when it comes to connecting the dots to Jesus’s life and ministry to the Old Testament it’s because Jesus is all over the place in the Old Testament — but the dimension of Jesus’s identity that is important for us this morning comes into clarity right at the beginning of the SotM when like Moses, Jesus ascends the mountain to give a new Law of his Kingdom to his people… this is a provocative idea with massive implications which is why Jesus and Matthew anticipate the question: what does this mean for the law of Moses? Is it going away? Did Jesus just replace it?

Matthew 5:17 “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” — I did not come to do away with the Law, but bring it to its fullness… that’s what the Sermon on the Mount has been all about; Jesus showing us the true meaning of the Law and calling us to an even higher ethical standard than the scribes and Pharisees could have imagined.

Forms an inclusio [bracketing in sections that share a similar meaning] with Matthew 7:12 “Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” — AKA, the Law isn’t going away, in fact I’m going to show you what it’s been about all along but you missed it because of your sin and imperfection (Rom 8:3)

Punctuation to sum it all up: “Whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)

Wisdom literature is a genre of literature focused on practical guidance for living the good life usually in the form of a sage (or wisdom teacher) offering philosophical reflections, answering hard questions, and explaining the right way to live… Common throughout the ancient world and many biblical books fit this category such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes —

Ben Withering is a NT scholar who has asserted that the gospels tradition — especially Matthew — shares a lot of similarity with the wisdom tradition.

Portrayal of Jesus = highlights Jesus as a “sage” giving wise teaching for the way of the good life

Common feature of wisdom tradition are these short, pithy statements that inspire moral imagination (“tease the mind into active thought”) — Witherington suggests that is what Jesus is doing here… Jesus is summarizing everything he has said in the SotM with a short, though-provoking statement designed to make our imaginations search and understand its fuller meaning — hear this: everything God has commanded in his Law and everything which the prophets spoke can be wrapped up into this one command: “whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them”

J.C. Ryle — “It settles a hundred difficult points… It prevents the necessity of laying down endless little rules for our conduct in specific cases.”

Witherington — It offers a “quick test” of the perfection demanded in Matthew 5:48, the love described in Matthew 5:43, and the truth portrayed in Matthew 5:33.

Idea is not completely new to Jesus

Stott — Similar versions of this principle have shown up: Confucius said “do not to others what you would not wish done to yourself”. In the OT apocrypha (Tobit 4:15), it says “Do not do to anyone what you yourself would hate”. This is likewise the source behind the famous Jewish story of two rabbis aroudn 20BC being asked to summarize the whole law while standing on one leg. Rabbi Shammai drove the enquierer away while Rabbi Hillel said “what is hateful to you, do not do to anyone else. This is the whole law; all the rest is commentary” (Talmud, Shabbath 31a + Did 1:2); Children of the 80’s/90’s “Don’t dish it if you can’t take it.”; Southern version “don’t start none, won’t be none” … is Jesus just recycling some moral maxim?

Unique to Jesus — positive versus a negative framing… what you want!

Mounce — “In its negative form, the Golden Rule could be satisfied by doing nothing. The positive form moves us to action on behalf of others.”

Carson observes that “the positive form is thus far more searching than its negative counterpart” — it’s not simply a matter of “if you don’t enjoy being robbed, don’t rob others”, but much more “if you enjoy being loved, love others. If you like to receive things, give to others. If you like to be appreciated, appreciate others.”

Carson — We don’t have permission to withdraw into a world where we offend no one, but accomplish no positive good either; instead, we are compelled to actively seek the good of others which is the heart of love

Self-love at the center might seem strange — surely we can come up with another ethical ideal than

Jesus thinks we can safely assume people will act with self-regard or in self-interest… not even necessarily for some moral reason.

Not that we have the ultimate ideal of human flourishing and goodness in our minds, but it’s a radical idea that invites us out of our own self-interest and toward the interests of others — Edersheim, it is the “nearest approach to absolute love of which human nature is capable.”

Application: What you want, do the same for others — affirmation, acceptance, love, trust, respect… Jesus calls us to a higher standard than just avoiding harm, but to show love and compassion to those around us.

Question: What is it that I want and how can I give that to others?

TWO // Do for others without expecting anything in return

An ideal not a utilitarian principle —

Illustration: When fishing — “When I run my business like Jesus would, things go well for me.”

Really commendable that he desires to live how Jesus calls him to live, but we have to pay attention to motivation because what happens when the way of christlikeness doesn’t lead to success but suffering?

The golden rule doesn’t cease to be good when the all the benefits I perceive start drying up.

Do for others not “in order that they might” do the same for us — the goal isn’t to receive something… Carson says “at stake is no such utilitarian value as ‘honesty pays’ or the like”

Why would I do this? What do I get in return though? Great is your reward in Heaven, and also if a community participates in this, tangible blessing on this side of heaven will be the result.

Application: Elevates our baseline for what it means to love and show compassion to others; not returning measure for measure, but doing what is loving and for their flourishing regardless

THREE // Do for others according to Jesus’s standard

Modeled first and foremost in Jesus — the Golden Rule is only sensible when we look to the grace and love of Jesus that has been shown when we did not earn and did not deserve it.

Can’t have the Golden Rule without Jesus — Whether it’s Immanuel Kant with his moral vision of the categorical imperative or Thomas Jefferson with his humanistic adoption of the golden rule as a social order, extracting Jesus from the from the equation turns a theologically grounded maxim into an anthropologically oriented one

Not start with the man in the mirror > transform the world in my image, but see the benevolence, generous, and grace of God and follow in that principle

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure “Be excellent to each other” — not loses any moral footing divorced from the hope of God’s dominion extending to earth as it is in Heaven

Application: How would Jesus meet this person here?

FOUR // Do for others as an act of obedience to God

Fulfill the Law and prophets — this virtue of love and compassion toward others is connected to our love and faithfulness to God

Deuteronomy 6:5 — Matthew 22:37–39 “He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Neighbor love has always been at the heart of the Law — because it is the heart of the Father

Love God with whole self = christlike love shown to neighbors as it has been shown to us.

Conclusion

The Golden Rule as a Window — a look into our interior lives that reveals the distance between our love and the sacrificial love of Jesus

Golden Rule exposes us — shows how spiritually bankrupt we are; how we often act with callous self-interest above interest for others; and how our coldness in love for others reveals our coldness in our love for God

Golden Rule invites us — Repent and walk in Jesus’s way; God invites us to turn to him with humble, persistent asking, seeking, and knocking that we will become “doers” of the word and not just “hearers”.