The Everest of Ethics the Golden Rule has been called: "So whatever you would that men should do to you, do so to them" - or "Do as you would be done by."
We need to see it as the climax to the paragraph that began with v. 1: "Judge not that you be not judged." The whole paragraph is about attitudes. We are not to run each other down, we are to weigh each other up, and we are to love each other as we love ourselves - for that, too, is a way the Golden Rule can be expressed.
Curiously, Jesus interrupts all this with a saying about prayer which hardly seems to fit when first you read it. It sounds as though He abruptly changed the subject, and then, just as abruptly, came back to it. But He did not, as we shall see.
This little paragraph does not, of course, say everything there is to be said about prayer. Jesus has already said a good deal about it in this Sermon. He has supplied His disciples with a model (the Lord's Prayer), counselled us to make it a private thing, and warned us that it simply will not be heard or answered while we harbour a grudge against any. Now He says: "Ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you."
Two things are said here that He has not said before: a promise, and a reason to rely on it.
1. We can be quite confident that God will give us what is honestly good for us.
2. Our confidence rests on His character.
The promise must be seen in context. Jesus has said: "Don't run each other down; do weigh each other up." We are not to be censorious, we are to be discriminating. How do you tell the difference, and how do you walk the tight-rope between the two? "Ask," Jesus says, "and it will be given you!"
Verses 7-11 could be left out altogether, reading straight from v. 6 to v. 12, and it would read quite naturally. That tells you that all of what Jesus is saying here belongs together in one bundle. It is the grace (judge not) and the wisdom (make sound judgments) we need that we are to ask and seek and knock for, so that in all our relationships we work in harmony with God for each other's good. That is why Jesus says the Father will give us "good things." (v. 11) We need to pray like this so we can all enjoy the good life together.
And that means praying for what God knows is good for us. Jesus assumes that we will have the sense to realise that. What He says in v. 11 amounts to this: "You parents know you have your children's best interests at heart. You don't mock their needs; you don't give them things that will do them harm or that they can't handle. Evil though you are, you know better than to do that. Well, trust God to know best for you: He is not evil. He'll give you bread, fish and eggs, not wine, women and song. But do trust Him. He's your Father; all true fatherhood began with Him!"
It sounds very much as though Jesus is telling us that prayer is like a blank cheque: we can write it out for as much as we please. And so we can, so long as we write it in Kingdom Currency! The cheque reads, "Pay to the bearer on demand the whole sum," not of his own desire but "of My Heavenly Father's desire." You can only write it in the coinage God honours. Whatever you need that God approves you may truly have.
"For those things," Jesus says, "be always asking, be always seeking, be always knocking." In the Greek, these verbs are all present imperatives, not aorist imperatives. He does not mean, "You ask once, and that's it." He means we are to keep on asking; not, of course, because God is reluctant to respond, but because we are prone to give up. Jesus is saying, "Keep in touch with God and you will keep your touch with one another."
And it is not vain repetition that prompts Him to say it three ways: ask, seek and knock.
We have to ask because we are beggars! We do not have what we need; it has to be given to us. We cannot manufacture it for ourselves; only God can supply the product. We have to ask.
We have to seek because what is offered is precious: it is treasure. We have to be seen to appreciate that. God does not open His box of goodies to those who are not really interested in them anyway. The treasure chests of Heaven do not open to a listless tap: they open only under a rain of eager blows.
We have to knock because we need permission to enter. The One who stands on the other side of the door has to decide for us. We need to realise that. We may indeed come confidently, but we had better come humbly! It is worth remembering that doors bearing a notice "Enter, do not knock" usually lead only to waiting rooms or empty corridors! We are not knocking on doors that lead nowhere; we are knocking on a door that will open into the Most Holy Presence of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. You do not burst in and 'mouth off.' You show respect, or you will be shown out again. You knock.
Now Jesus says we can rely on God to be as good as His word, because that is His nature. He is not the sort of Father who resents his kids, who does not want to be pestered all the time. He is not like the character in the story Jesus told on another occasion who resented the knock on his door in the middle of the night. God welcomes the knocks on His door! He respects you. He will not play games with you. He is not like the pagan gods who were worshipped in the Roman Empire at that time. They had a story that Zeus, for example, once offered Aurora any gift she wanted for Tithomus, her mortal lover. She asked for him to be given immortality; she wanted to enjoy him for ever. But she forgot to ask that he might also be given eternal youth, with the result that he aged until the gift of immortality he had been given became the worst of all curses. God does not do that sort of thing. He deals with us sincerely and honestly. He may not, indeed, give us exactly what we ask for; but what He gives will truly be for our good ... like the answer he gave to St. Augustine's mother. She prayed that God would prevent her son from going to Rome. She knew his passionate nature, and she was afraid that Rome, with all its glamour and depravity, would be the ruin of him. But God did not answer her prayer. Augustine did go to Rome. What is more he did succumb to its temptations! He lived wild there, just as his mother had feared. And then he met Christ! Later he wrote : "What was it, Oh my God, she sought of Thee with many tears? To suffer me not to set sail for Rome. But Thou, in Thy deep counsels, and listening to her real desire, disregarded the thing she asked for, that she might have her real desire, the conversion of my soul." He gives good things. So what He withholds is for our good, also.
Note, in passing, what Jesus here says about our depravity. Theologians sometimes teach 'The Total Depravity of Human Nature.' Whatever they mean by that, pay heed to what the Son of God said about it. He, after all, has the very power of sound judgment in such matters that He commends to us; here is His 'judgment' on human nature. He does indeed assume our depravity: "if you, being evil ..." But He does not assume that our depravity is total. "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children." The image of God in us is defaced, but not obliterated - not according to the Son of God. So ask ... seek ... and knock. And then ...?
Then you will do unto others as you would that they should do to you. That is your Father's good pleasure.
We must not overlook the emphasis Jesus put on this. "This is the Law and the Prophets," He says. The Law and the Prophets are the Oracles of God, no less; they are the sum of all God had said to us down the ages. Jesus means, "That's the whole of it. That's what it's all about."
"In all sorts of ways God spoke of old through His servants the prophets: now in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son," (Heb. 1:2) and this is the Son's word!
Have you ever felt something big building up in you that you wanted to say to your son, say, or your daughter, because it is the biggest, the most important thing in the world to you that you want them to know and understand and receive from you, so that if you died tomorrow, it would not matter because you had given them what mattered? That is how Jesus said this.
All doctrine, all worship, all devotion, all faith and obedience have this one end in view. If revival comes, this will be its product, its consummation. Jesus will hammer this home: "By their fruits men are known." Not by their doctrines, not by their devotions, but by their deeds.
What kind of human being are we becoming in our relations with others - with our son, our daughter, our sister, our brother, our work-mates, our boss, our fellow-church members, our pastor, our neighbour? Because at the end of the day, Jesus will ask, "Did you feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, tend the sick, and visit prisoners?" If not, He will say, as He searches your heart, "I see nothing in you that is of my planting there. I do not know you."
For the making of such men, Jesus gave up His life. Say the Scriptures, "He gave Himself for us." To what end? To do two things: "to free us from sin, that purified thereby, we might be devoted to good deeds." (Titus 2:11-14) He was born, He lived and struggled, and bled and died, and rose again and lives for ever ... to make us good, godly, kindly folk. If the Gospel does not make us warm, kindly, compassionate people it is not the power of God unto anything worth pursuing. "What does the Lord require of you but to justly and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8)
There are two more things to note about this saying of Jesus.
1. Jesus was the very first to say this
positively.
In its negative form, it was common. Shammei and Hillel, for
example, were the two great teachers revered among the Jews in our
Lord's own time: the one was renowned for being stern and unbending,
the other for being warm and gentle. It is told that a Gentile once
offered them both that he would become a proselyte if they could
teach him all he needed to know in the time he could remain standing
on one leg! Shammei dismissed him with a snort of contempt for his
frivolity. But Hillel said, "What is hateful to yourself, do to no
other. That is the whole Law; the rest is commentary. Now go and
study."
But it is negative. "Don't do to others what you don't
want done to you."
Tobit said: "What thou thyself hatest, to no
man do."
Confucius said: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to
others."
Epictetus said: "What you avoid suffering yourself, seek not to
inflict on others."
Examples could be multiplied from all the great human teachers down the ages. They all say, "Do nothing to hurt another." It is negative, and passive.
Jesus said: "Do to others the good that you seek for yourself." It is positive, and active. The counsel of all the world's sages you could satisfactorily follow by doing nothing! But not the counsel of Jesus.
It just doesn't do, in Jesus' book, to say, "I wouldn't hurt a fly." The point is, can you bless a man? "Let us not please ourselves, but each of us rather please his neighbour, for his good, to build him up" is the way Paul said it (Rom. 15:2) And it works. Any Pastor will tell you that when he has striven to minister to another's need while his own has been desperate, he has been ministered unto.
2. The second thing is to ask what the
'therefore' in v. 12 ('so' in the RSV) is there for.
It throws you back on what has gone before. Again, we must not
take this saying out of context. Isolate it and treat it as a general
maxim, and it can be made it mean something very bad. Shall we indeed
do for others as we wish they would do for us ... and compromise
ourselves thereby, easing the path for others to indulge our
frivolous wishes, our foolish desires, our sinful passions? No,
no!
"So ..." Jesus said, "whatever you wish men would do to you, do so to them," meaning, "Whatever you wish men would do to you that has God's approval, do so to them." The blank cheque we are invited to fill in must be written in Kingdom Currency.
As always, when we hear this Sermon on the Mount, we must keep firmly in view Who it is Who speaks. He who speaks is He who said, "My God shall supply all your needs out of my riches in glory!"
He knows and understands us with His Father's mind. He has entered fully into our experience. He has climbed inside our skin so as to know our need. With perfect understanding of us, and with perfect understanding of God and God's purpose for us, He has given Himself to the task of moulding us again to the image God impressed on mankind at the beginning. And when the task is done, we will be a 'man for others.' That is what the Man Christ Jesus was; that is the sort of man God created us to be.
God Himself is 'for others.' He will enrich us so that we may be a part of the wealth He pours out on others. What He summons us to be to others must grow out of our experience of what He is to us. He is a God for others - of whom I am one so that in me He might go on being a God for others.
"So ... whatever you would that men should do to you, do so to them."
What He asks me to show to others is what He shows to me.
He shows me love - though I lift up my heart
against Him.
He has regard for me - though I have lost all claim to it.
He treats me as of great worth - though I am unworthy.
He has paid a huge price for me - though He has gained nothing
through me. Now I am worth something - I am worth what I am worth to
Him.
And so is my brother! When we forget this, we lose our sense of his worth. Then we ask only in what way he is useful to us, and whether he is work-efficient, and what profit can be made out of him. And when I can see no way in which he can be of use to me he is relegated, ignored, passed over unheeded. He does not count.
That is the sickness with which our whole society today is sick. If we do not know we are loved our life loses all meaning and value. As Helmut Thielicke said, "Only those who know their neighbour is the apple of God's eye really respect his human dignity. He who forgets this violates his neighbour, and merely turns him into fair game." (Helmut Thielicke, 'Life Can Begin Again' [James Clarke] p. 172)
Freely we have received; freely therefore let us give.
Whatever you wish that men should do to you, do so to them.
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