The Golden Rule

This is one of the first verses many of us learn. Just as I was taught this truth, I taught my son that we should do to others as we want them to do to us. He was about 8 years old and some of the kids at school were treating him unkindly. We talked about it and I told him about the Golden Rule, treating others like you want them to treat you. And he said, “But, Mom, that doesn’t work!” Of course I followed up with my understanding that the reward comes from pleasing Jesus rather than other people necessarily changing.

I have believed the truth of this verse and tried to live by it for years and years. Yet, for the first time, I think I finally do get it! Oh I believed what I was saying and realize that it is a valuable principle to live by. Regardless, God has shown me that I have consistently, in my secret heart, treated others like I wanted them to treat me because I wanted them to treat me the same way. I have talked it over with God as well as spent time shoveling out sadness and resentment from my heart about it. Yet there that desire lurked.

When God reveals something like this in me, I am humbled as well as grateful to yield to further refining. As we mature enough in our hearts to love as God loves, we are enabled to treat others like we want them to treat us without any personal expectation of reward. That’s what I want in my heart. I cannot do it but He can. He can deliver me—and others—from doing what is right in hopes that humans will reciprocate.

We are to do what is right because it is what God wants and we do want to please Jesus more than anything. This is foundational to Christian living. Jesus said that we are not to do right only to we get a reward. Oh, no, His standard is higher than that of men. When we are wronged or mistreated, when no one will see or know, when He shines forth in the darkness.

We willingly, and eventually, joyfully share the sufferings of Christ, suffering unjustly, being unfairly treated, accused and condemned for who we are and what we do, without any fault or guilt on our part. These sufferings we bear up under in the nature of Christ, Who made the way for us:

“And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God's glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.” Romans 8:17-18 NLT

Has our Lord every demanded we do certain things so that He will love us? Does He withdraw that love when we do not treat Him like He treats us? Does God contemplate how to punish us and get back at us for letting Him down over and over, day after day, year after year, century after century? There’s a song that has this line: “Perfect love makes no demands.” There is no self demand, even self-expectation in love like God loves.

We miss the mark, we even sometimes absolutely refuse to obey Him and yet He never, ever, ever changes His nature of love toward us. Here’s how the writer of Romans said it:

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39 NASB

And this was said at the end of Romans 8 when he had just lamented for all of Romans 7 how impossible it is to make this flesh do what the spirit truly wants to do. Think of it. Let the truth of it wash any guile, any deception of doing what is right in order to have gain from people, or even to earn points with God, out of our hearts. The joy comes from pleasing Him. The Golden Rule does work, but not as a rule, as a nature!

Only God works His nature within us so He can show forth Himself to others. As we are all changed into His image and His likeness, the world around us changes too. Not because we want a reward for living this way but because God is love, and love is the most powerful force in the universe! God’s focus is on our hearts, the only part of the equation we can impact through yielding to Him.

“Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:1;33 NIV

In this passage of scripture, Jesus describes all the ways we are not to do right— for the sake of others to see and commend us for it. If that is the case and we get human praise for it, He says we have our reward. But when we do it before God alone, He will ensure we get what we need from and through Him, as we seek first His kingdom and righteousness. We are to live with Truth operating in our lives, influencing others as they see our godly ways, but this should not be our motivation.

Humans will disappoint us, just as we disappoint others. Instead, we are learning to be joyful in being obedient to His ways, feeling the Father’s pleasure as He alone knows of our good works done in secret. We may never know what impact we have on some lives. No matter, as our joy is in Him and His reward is with Him. There are rewards for the overcomer, as listed so clearly in Revelation. Yes, these rewards are earned, but that is not the same as behaving well so that we get them.

Love fulfills the law, even the rule that says to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the same message as the Golden Rule: what you want for yourself, you come to want for others. We grow until we want for others more than for ourselves, even before we have what we want. God is working an increase in His type of agape love so that we want life for all of creation. We want His life to flow not just to those we know, not even just to humans, but to the flora and fauna of God’s great earth, given as our temporary home.

We no longer want our spirituality to be like an exclusive club, where only the elite are admitted. God cleans out of us any self-righteousness from knowledge or position or education or honor or wealth or any other factor. If you think He does not know how to do this, listen to Paul:

“Because of the surpassing greatness and extraordinary nature of the revelations [which I received from God], for this reason, to keep me from thinking of myself as important, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, to torment and harass me—to keep me from exalting myself!

Concerning this I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might leave me; but He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you [My lovingkindness and My mercy are more than enough—always available—regardless of the situation]; for [My] power is being perfected [and is completed and shows itself most effectively] in [your] weakness.’

Therefore, I will all the more gladly boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ [may completely enfold me and] may dwell in me. So I am well pleased with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, and with difficulties, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak [in human strength], then I am strong [truly able, truly powerful, truly drawing from God’s strength].” 2 Corinthians 12: 7-12 Amplified

There is debate about just what this thorn in the flesh was that God allowed to keep Paul humble. He was severely beaten so may have become crippled, with chronic pain in his body. He was said to have poor eyesight. If not a physical “thorn in the flesh,” we know he had to deal with opposition to his ministry, from the Jews and Christians, to the extent that he was no longer welcome in some of the very churches he had founded and nurtured.

Nonetheless, God could have but did not take whatever it was away. Paul continued to minister a powerful word, obeying the Lord through his time in prison and remaining life. He even listed all of his religious qualifications, which were at the pinnacle of Jewish faith, which Paul came to consider as meaning nothing. He did not exalt in all that he had achieved, but continually humbled himself under God’s sovereign hand, regardless of the abundance of revelation given him by God.

Paul knew the qualities of character that God held in high regard, desiring that the Christ be formed within rather than seeking or retaining honor and esteem among men.

“My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!” Galatians 4:19-20 NIV

He did not want to chastise the Galations who had not progressed in Christ as Paul had hoped. He is an example of this life with God, full of blessings and also a life of unfairness and mistreatment. Paul could have testified to that, but his focus, like others called to suffer with Christ, remained on what God was working out within him and others called by His name. Jesus our Lord had such a life, even pressed to the shedding of blood over what He faced in the future.

Are we better than the Son of God, that we should escape what Father God allowed His only begotten Son? What does He say when others mistreat us, treat us poorly in spite of our mercy and kindness to them?

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1 NIV

The renewing of our mind changes our attitudes, our thoughts, our perspective on what we are going through. What is the pattern of the world where kindness, mercy and forgiveness is extended but not returned? Don’t most of us get weary in well doing and begin to question the benefit, if not the wisdom, of doing so? Some among us begin to think about “how they’d like it if we treated them like they treat us?!” Yet, as faithful servants unto Him, we quickly have our hearts pricked by the spirit to be reminded that is not His way. Even thoughts of revenge are not worthy of those called and chosen for His purposes.

This Golden Rule, this high standard of God’s, fulfills the law and all that the prophets said. It is turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, giving with no thought of return, all in the name, the nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. The ways of our human nature ways cannot stand in this higher way of God. All through the centuries, Christian martyrs have been empowered by the love of God to not return evil for evil, blessing for cursing, showing God’s unmerited favor as we have received it, without earning it, from our Lord.

What then, shall we say of these things:

“Love does no wrong to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans 13:10 NIV