The Golden Rule

“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

The Golden Rule–we all know it–“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.  Even the person who has no familiarity with Scripture knows this statement.  They may not know from where it originated, but most of them know it to be a true statement whether they practice it or not.  Some folks take it in a negative sense: if we don’t want to be mistreated then don’t mistreat others.  However, it is more correctly meant in a positive sense:  if we want to be blessed then we must be a blessing to others.  If we want friends, we must first be a friend.  If we desire to receive mercy, then we must be merciful, and so on with those positive and encouraging acts of kindness.  We can’t expect others to always be the first to reach out to us.  We must take the first step.

Jesus always took the first step.  He didn’t wait for us to straighten up our lives before He went to the cross.  He took the initiative to save us from ourselves and from the sin which “so easily besets us” (Hebrews 12:1).  Paul wrote,  “…God commended His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  The Apostle John wrote in I John 4:19 that “we love God because He first loved us”.   Thus to be like Christ means to take the initiative in reaching out to others.

It should be the goal of every believer to “glorify our Father which is in Heaven” (Matthew 5:16).  It is awfully tempting to relish in the satisfaction that comes from doing a “good deed” for someone.  We might be tempted to boast about the sacrifice we made in order that someone else could reap the benefit of our giving or doing.  However, we have to remember what Jesus had already told us about not letting our left hand know what our right hand was doing when giving to or doing for others (Matthew 6:3).  Our good deeds, our reaching out to others, should become so natural to us that even we don’t realize that it is anything out of the ordinary.  In other words, kindness should just be a way of life for Christians.

There are going to be some folks who will never reciprocate our kindness, but that’s not why we follow the golden rule.  We treat all people with kindness and respect because that is what Jesus expects of us.  The famous writer, Oswald Chambers, wrote, “The measure of our growth in grace is our attitude toward other people.”  Some folks are just plain difficult to deal with.  Jesus didn’t say that we could only pick those to be kind to who would be kind to us in return (Luke 6:32-33).  He even went as far as telling us to “love our enemies” (Matthew 5:44).  Thus it behooves us to be on alert for occasions in which to go the “extra mile” (Matthew 5:41).  We never know when we might be in the shoes of the one who needs a smile, a kind word, or a helping hand.