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"All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do ye even unto them..."
Mathew 7:12.
This Golden Rule was already in existence in a negative form, before Jesus spoke it. For example in the book of Tobias in the Apocrypha, 'Do that to no man which you hate.' Rabbi Hillel said 'What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbour.' Jesus took it, turned it round, and made it positive: "Whatever you want your neighbour to do unto you, do unto your neighbour." Now the non-Christian way is to do to others as they do unto us. The Christian way is to do to others as we wished they would do to us - which is a very different thing.
It may seem a very low standard, "Love your neighbour as you love yourself." Is self love to be the standard of my love for my neighbour? What a low standard! you may say. But actually it is a very high standard, because we love ourselves a great deal. It is also a very flexible principle, for self advantage can guide us in all our behaviour to others. All we have to do is to use our imagination, put ourselves in the other man,s shoes, and ask ourselves, 'How should I like to be treated in his situation? When you do that, you have your answer as to how to treat him in that situation.
Treat him as you would like to be treated yourself. As Bishop Ryle says, 'It settles a hundred different points' It prevents the necessity of laying down endless little rules for conduct in specific cases. It is a universal principle of such wide application that Jesus could go on to say, 'this is the law and the prophets' That is, whenever anybody directs his conduct towards others according to how he would like others to direct their conduct to him, he has fulfilled all the teaching of the law, and all the teaching of the prophets.
Mathew 7:12.
This Golden Rule was already in existence in a negative form, before Jesus spoke it. For example in the book of Tobias in the Apocrypha, 'Do that to no man which you hate.' Rabbi Hillel said 'What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbour.' Jesus took it, turned it round, and made it positive: "Whatever you want your neighbour to do unto you, do unto your neighbour." Now the non-Christian way is to do to others as they do unto us. The Christian way is to do to others as we wished they would do to us - which is a very different thing.
It may seem a very low standard, "Love your neighbour as you love yourself." Is self love to be the standard of my love for my neighbour? What a low standard! you may say. But actually it is a very high standard, because we love ourselves a great deal. It is also a very flexible principle, for self advantage can guide us in all our behaviour to others. All we have to do is to use our imagination, put ourselves in the other man,s shoes, and ask ourselves, 'How should I like to be treated in his situation? When you do that, you have your answer as to how to treat him in that situation.
Treat him as you would like to be treated yourself. As Bishop Ryle says, 'It settles a hundred different points' It prevents the necessity of laying down endless little rules for conduct in specific cases. It is a universal principle of such wide application that Jesus could go on to say, 'this is the law and the prophets' That is, whenever anybody directs his conduct towards others according to how he would like others to direct their conduct to him, he has fulfilled all the teaching of the law, and all the teaching of the prophets.
