The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule is one of the first verses of scripture that most of us learn. Just as I was taught this truth, I taught my son that we should treat others as we want them to treat us. He was about 8 years old when some 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 recently, for the first time, I think I am finally getting 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 spent much time talking these things over with Father God, to asking my best Friend Jesus why others are not generous, thoughtful, kind, and merciful to me when I have been to them. Many times the Lord has had to shovel out sadness and resentment from my heart about why others do not treat me as I treat them. I knew the Golden Rule was supposed to work but deep down the desire to be rewarded by others for my godly behavior lurked.

It is natural and understandable for humans to want to be loved, given to, thought of,and noticed, treated kindly and generously. But as a motivator in a godly heart, it surely falls short of God’s expectations for us.

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

So when you give to the needy, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. Truly I tell you, they already have their full reward.

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.

And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6:1-4 BSB

If we seek a reward for righteousness from others, we have our reward! But if we do what we do as unto the Lord, Father God will reward us in secret with the best there is, the spiritual gifts of His nature, the wealth of His kingdom. As He told me when I was being harshly treated by someone with whom I had continually displayed mercy, “Would you rather have their mercy or Mine?”

So it is that we are humbled many times, learning to be grateful as we yield to further refining. As we mature enough in our hearts to love as God loves, we become enabled to treat others like we want them to treat us without any personal expectation of reward. This is what I truly desire to be established in my heart. This was what I was teaching my son without fully realizing it was yet to be matured in my own life.

God is able to make it so within my very being, fully a fruit of the spirit. I could not do it but He can. He delivers 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. We are to desire to please the Lord more than anything, foundational to Christian living.

Jesus said that we are not to do right only so we get a reward. When we treat others well because they treat us well, we are doing no more than unbelievers. But Oh, His standard for those who love Him is higher than that. When we are wronged or mistreated, when no one will see or know, when He shines forth in the darkness, we are to surrender to Him to do right though He alone knows we have done righteously.

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. We learn to neither commend or exalt ourselves in doing what is right(eous) in His eyes.

When these things are not reciprocated, the sufferings are endured to make way for the nature of Christ to dwell within 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 ever 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.

God is complete in Himself, needing nothing from us. But it sure is wonderful and awesome when we are made to know we have pleased Him! 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. We cannot make ourselves lovable! 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 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 we cannot be separated from His love. God’s focus is on our hearts, the only part of the equation we can impact through surrender to Him.

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

We dedicate ourselves to seeking to do what He puts in our hearts before God alone. He will ensure we get the best reward, what we need from and through Him, as we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. We are to live with Truth operating in our lives, influencing others as they see our godly ways, motivated only by the spirit of Christ. What a calling! What a requirement that only God can fulfill in us!

Humans will disappoint us, just as we disappoint others. Instead, we are learning to be joyful in being obedient to His ways, knowing 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 many spiritual rewards for the overcomer, named 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, even wanting more for others than for self, even before we have what we want. God is working an increase in His type of agape love so that we desire 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

To God be the glory, not to us! With Paul, there has been debate about just what this thorn in the flesh was that God allowed in order 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 after being blinded by the Lord’s appearing. But if not a physical thorn in the flesh, 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.

Regardless, 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. Paul even listed all of his religious qualifications, which were at the pinnacle of Jewish faith, which he 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 to earn or retain honor and esteem among men. He did what he did as unto the Lord, dedicating himself thoroughly to the work of God for which Paul had been apprehended.

“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

Paul’s desire, his purpose was to form the Christ in other believers. He did not enjoy having to chastise the Galatians for failing to progress in Christ as he had hoped. He is an example of this life with God, full of blessings while living 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 for His only begotten Son? What does He say when others mistreat us, treating 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, even our expectations regarding 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 what is right? We may indulge in thoughts of how they’d like it if we treated them like they treat us?!

Yet, as faithful servants unto Him, we quickly have our hearts immediately pricked by the spirit to be reminded this is not His way. Such thoughts of revenge, returning evil for evil, are not worthy of those called and chosen for His purposes and He stops these in their tracks in hearts fully yielded to Him. We may even still wish we could but God will not allow us to do so. We must honor His righteous standard within us regardless of what others do.

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. God’s love makes no demands to give His love and surely God would have the right to do so. The ways of our human nature 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, instead 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