By Drew Williams
If the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest summary of the Law and the Prophets that we will ever hear, then the Golden Rule is the glorious summary of the summary. Jesus said, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) The Golden Rule is an intellectual tour de force. In Jesus’ words, we have the greatest ethical maxim ever devised. It is breathtakingly brilliant. The only measure Jesus sets up is ourselves. The Golden Rule takes our own sense of self-preservation and then redeploys it for the good of others.
The truth is that we all are born with certain baggage. We are who we were born as, where we were born, how we were raised. It is too easy to get stuck inside that person, causing us to focus on how we are being treated. When we are asked, “How did your day go?” we often respond based on our answer to the question, “How did people treat us?” The Golden Rule turns that on its head and asks, “How did you treat others?” The Golden Rule invites us to crawl inside another person’s skin and see and experience the world through another’s eyes. The Golden Rule invites us to take a leap of imagination and then take action accordingly. I love the Christian author John Ortberg’s passion on this subject when he says, “You can use the Golden Rule on people you like. You can use it on people you don’t like (and oddly if you do so you will find you start to like them more). You can use the Golden Rule while you drive. You can use the Golden Rule while you are texting. You can use the Golden Rule and not text while you drive!” Martin Luther, the great reformer, said of the Golden Rule, “It was certainly very clever of Christ to state it this way.” It was and remains so clever. So brilliant! So perfect and so clear . . . so why don’t we actually do it?!
The Golden Rule proves the poverty of the argument that says that all you have to do is give people instruction and tell them what to do – that they will understand and put the rule into practice. The Golden Rule has been within the intellectual grasp of humanity for two thousand years – and the last two hundred years we have taken great leaps in science and technology – and still we fail to live by it. Why? In a fallen world, the very principle that should trigger the Golden Rule (“How would I feel if . . .”) overpowers and smothers the operation of the rule. We get stuck on the “I” part. Author Karen Joy Fowler writes, “‘Do unto others’ is an unnatural, inhuman behavior. You can understand why so many churches and churchgoers say it but so few achieve it. It goes against something fundamental in our natures. And this, then, is the human tragedy—that the common humanity we share is fundamentally based on the denial of a common shared humanity.”
Often what looks like the application of the Golden Rule is actually plain old vanity, pride and self interest in disguise! I like to think of myself as a generous driver. Consider those moments on the freeway, when you are travelling slowly and cars are seeking to merge into the lane that you are occupying. In that moment, because I am so generous of heart, I deign to let a vehicle in. “Look children! Pay attention world – let this be a lesson in how to drive considerately! Yes – you – stranded, sweating driver in the blue VW – come enter the freeway through the gracious archway that is my munificence!” But then, suddenly, the red Toyota immediately behind the blue VW attempts to scandalously take advantage of my magnanimous driving and cut in, too. “Not you – wretched interloper!” And, one has to speed up a little bit to teach the bounder some manners! For I am indeed magnanimous (especially when I have an audience) but I am not that magnanimous!
This is a seemingly trivial example, yet it bears out the sad truth that, left to our own devices, we cannot help but at best be covertly self-centered, even when we want to appear “other centered.” This means that we are inclined to become irritated with God, perhaps even not like God very much, because He is someone who wants to come in and mess with our self-centeredness. “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” (Romans 8:7, emphasis mine)
The answer is that we need to start not with the application of the Golden Rule but with God.
The greatest commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) Notice the order. We don’t start with our neighbor. For really important reasons, we start with God.
Our relationship with our neighbor will never be what it should be unless we are right with God. We cannot love our neighbor as ourselves until we get right with God. The good news is that Jesus not only taught a Golden Rule message – He died a golden rule death so that we could be made right with God. “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) To come before God is always to see that truth about ourselves. We are not kings of magnanimity on the freeway or anywhere else in life. When we look to God and see ourselves in relationship to Him, we become conscious of our own fallenness and then discover that, remarkably, we do not get from God what we deserve. We anticipate rejection, but He looks upon us with grace and embraces us in love and mercy. And then, through the Golden Rule, it’s as if Jesus says, “Let me help you look upon others as I have looked and continue to look upon you.” How is that going to happen?
In the Book of Acts, Peter tells us of Jesus, “He went about doing good…” (Acts 10:38) Jesus not only taught a Golden Rule life, He lived a Golden Rule life. If I were a leper, I would long for someone to see my humanity. I would long to be talked to, touched, healed. No rabbi would do that. But Jesus did. If my life had descended to the point of having to prostitute myself, I would dream of being treated with dignity. I would want someone to see through my brokenness and destitution and see the real me. Jesus did that. All the way to Good Friday, Jesus lived a Golden Rule life. If I were the thief on the Cross, I would know that I had no defense, but I would hope that someone might have mercy. Even from His place on the Cross, Jesus did that.
You see, the truth about the Golden Rule life is that it is not a rule so much as it is the living continuation of Jesus’ ministry through us. And yes – Jesus went about doing good, but let’s not miss the fullness of that verse from Acts 10, which begins, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good…” (Acts 10:38, emphasis mine). The Spirit that filled Jesus is the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead. It is the same Holy Spirit that empowers and opens our hearts to live out Jesus’ continuing ministry. In the power of the Spirit we no longer see someone as trying to take some advantage over us; we see someone living in pain and fear, just like we once did. And as Jesus met us first with love, as the Father met us with a mercy that we did not deserve – the same Spirit moves in us to bring the same love and mercy to another.
Through the Spirit, we don’t merely exercise our own imagination to see the interior life of another. We are given, by the Holy Spirit, a sanctified imagination that we might see with God’s heart and then act on it. A simple prayer, “Lord, help me to see this person as you see them and to love them as you love them,” can be both illuminating and mobilizing. I recall being given some “golden” advice as a young pastor on the subject of caring for seemingly difficult or challenging people. I was cautioned, “There is always something you don’t know.” Over the years I have found that by simply recalling that single thought I give the Holy Spirit enough elbow room to cause me to pause and discover within myself God’s love for another person.
The fundamental reason for loving our neighbor is not simply because God commands us to love them, nor is it because they are loved by God and are therefore worthy to be loved by us (although both of these are entirely valid points) – the critical reason is that God has placed in us, has entrusted to us, His own love for them. When we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us in the operation of the Golden Rule, we unlock that deposit of love.
God has demonstrated infinite love and mercy for us in giving us Jesus. He asks us not to close the circuit, not to keep that love for ourselves, but rather to participate in the open circuitry of God’s love. So what would it be like for you to live a Spirit-led Golden Rule week? The operation of the Spirit-filled Golden Rule not only changes the lives of those around us – it transforms us. The more we live it out the more we want to daily inhabit it. The specifics are unique to each of us, but the fruit is the same – joy in the Holy Spirit and the fullness of the life of Jesus in abundance.
Drew Williams is Senior Pastor of Trinity Church. Visit trinitychurch.life
