What Jesus Said the Golden Rule Was

Why the World's Favorite Verse Doesn't Need a Cross

On the third floor of a United Nations building in New York, there's a mosaic of a Norman Rockwell painting. Rockwell painted it for a 1961 Saturday Evening Post cover. Faces of every race, creed and color stand shoulder to shoulder under one line. Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You.

There's no chapter and verse on it. That line belongs to everybody. Jesus gave His own version of it on a hillside in Galilee, and Matthew wrote it down like this:

Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)

You can see why the world took it. It's fair, it's simple, and you can say amen to it without believing a thing about God, which isn't the same as keeping it. Two Gospels record it, and each one puts it somewhere the mosaic leaves out, so let's take them one at a time.

Matthew Put a Label on It

Start with the end of Matthew 7:12, the part that didn't make the mosaic. For this is the Law and the Prophets. Jesus tells you it's the law of Moses, boiled down to one line.

Keep that phrase in mind, because you've heard it before in this sermon. Back in Matthew 5:17, before the hard sayings began, Jesus said He didn't come to destroy the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them. Many readers take the two as bookends, with the golden rule closing the body of the sermon as a summary of the Law. (The Sermon Nobody Frames starts at the front bookend.)

So what is Jesus doing here? Handing you a ladder to climb? No. It's the demand of the law of Moses, said as simply as it can be said.

And look who He's saying it to. Here's the verse right before it:

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! (Matthew 7:11)

He calls the crowd evil one breath before He hands them the Law's summary. Hold on to that verse, because we'll come back to it before we're done.

What Luke Put Right After It

Luke sets it on a level place (Luke 6:17), with slightly different wording:

And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise. (Luke 6:31)

There's no Law-and-Prophets tag in Luke. What Luke gives you is the neighborhood. Right before it Jesus says love your enemies, bless those who curse you, offer the other cheek, and let the man who took your cloak have your tunic too (6:27-30). So the "others" in Luke's golden rule are the man who hit you and the man who robbed you. Then comes the verse that changes how it gets used:

But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. (Luke 6:32)

The golden rule usually gets used as fair trade. Be decent and people will be decent back. Jesus says fair trade is what sinners already do. The bar He's raising climbs to verse 36, be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful, so in both Gospels the golden rule lives where the standard is God Himself. (More on those lines in The Two Hardest Things Jesus Ever Said.)

Hillel Said It on One Foot

People said something like it long before Jesus. Confucius did, and so did the book of Tobit. The rabbis later told a story about Hillel, who taught about a generation before Jesus. A Gentile asked to be taught the whole Torah while he stood on one foot. Shammai, the story goes, pushed him away with a builder's measuring stick, which is one way to handle a question. Hillel told him, "That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study." The entire Torah is the same label Jesus put on it.

Paul explains why the whole world nods along. Gentiles who never had Moses still show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness (Romans 2:15). The conscience knows this one before anyone preaches it. But agreeing with a law isn't the same as hearing good news, and Matthew's label tells you which this is. You don't have to be born again to agree with it. You just have to be honest about how you'd like to be treated.

Didn't Paul Tell Christians to Do This?

He did, and that's the strongest pushback on all of this, because Paul was writing to believers on this side of the cross:

For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Galatians 5:14)

He says it again in Romans 13:9-10, so the content isn't retired. But look where Paul puts it. Two verses later he says walk in the Spirit, and a few verses after that he lists love first in the fruit of the Spirit (5:16, 22). The law gets fulfilled when love shows up, and love shows up because the Spirit grows it. Paul's talking to people who are perfectly right with God because of what Jesus did. What changed at the cross isn't the content. It's where the love comes from.

The Father Who Goes First

Now go back to the verse I asked you to hold. Matthew 7:12 opens with Therefore. How far back that word reaches is debated, but the nearest thing it points to is verse 11, a Father who gives good things to children Jesus just called evil. Before Jesus tells you what to do for others, He tells you what God already does for you.

Luke keeps that order. Love your enemies, Jesus says, for He is kind to the unthankful and evil (6:35). If you're honest, you're on that list, and He was kind to you first.

Even there, though, it's still law. The Father's goodness is the bar, and you're told to match it, with your own wants as the ruler. The night before the cross, Jesus changed where the love comes from.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (John 13:34)

He isn't holding up the Father's mercy as a bar to reach. He's pointing at what He'd just done with a towel, and would do on a cross, and telling them to love out of that. Under the law of Moses it was how you love you, you love them. Under the new covenant it's how Jesus loves you, you love them. (More in When Grace Redefined Love.) When you know you're well loved, you start to love well.

Rockwell's crowd is still standing on that third floor, every face turned toward a line every one of them can agree with. When Jesus said it, He said it to people He had just called evil, right after telling them their Father gives good things to children like them. Then He came down off that mountain and walked toward a cross, to love every face on that wall the way none of them could love each other.