The Golden Rule
Matt. 7:12 – Living in the Kingdom: Sermon on the Mount – Daniel J. Baker – Nov 30, 2025

Introduction

“If you’re able, please stand.” Read Matt. 7:7–12. “Thanks be to God.”

A little pop-quiz:

• Situation #1: You find yourself at the DMV Tuesday morning. The appointment you made in August has finally come. You get there, and it turns out you’re actually 43rd in line. 43^rd! What does the Bible have to say about your situation? How should you act?
• Situation #2: Someone close to you is facing an unplanned pregnancy. The person isn’t a Christian and is contemplating an abortion. What should you do?
• Situation #3: You’re going to Crabtree Mall for some Christmas shopping. At the exit is a man with a sign, “Homeless. Vietnam Veteran. Can you help?” Again, what does the Bible say about the situation? How should you act?

A lot of life is lived in the spaces between really clear situations. It’s really clear that I shouldn’t murder or steal—6^th and 8^th commandments. It’s clear that I should pray to God and go to church—The Lord’s Prayer, Hebrews 10:24–25.

But, when it comes to going to the DMV on Tuesday and finding myself in a tempting situation, or walking with a friend in a crisis, sometimes it feels like the Word of God is a vast library, and I don’t know how to find the book I need. (For those of you who don’t know what a library is...)

This morning we’re talking about the Golden Rule. Jesus’ commandment, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

The Golden Rule offers profound moral guidance that we can use in all kinds of different situations. It’s a familiar verse, but it’s profound in what it opens up to us in living the Christian life.

Why is it called “The Golden Rule”? New Testament scholar R.T. France says the name is “traditionally traced to the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus (AD 222–235), who, though not a Christian, was reputedly so impressed by the comprehensiveness of this maxim of Jesus as a guide to good living that he had it inscribed in gold on the wall of his chamber.”[1]

The verse is found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, a sermon he preached early in his ministry. These three chapters of Matthew (Matt 5–7) describe Living in the Kingdom. “Living in the Kingdom” means living with Christ as your King.

If King Charles of England is your King, you owe him something, but not much. Even in the very few places where you have something like a true king, there’s a lot the king can’t touch.

That’s not true when Jesus is your King. He’s the King of kings, the King over everything, the King over every part of our lives. Living in his kingdom means submitting to his authority even in the deepest thoughts and desires of our hearts.

There’s no part of us where we can say, “That’s not your jurisdiction!” It’s all his jurisdiction.

This morning we’ll see that living in the kingdom includes living by the Golden Rule.

If you’re not a Christian, I hope you come away amazed at the skill of Jesus as a teacher. And maybe a little more understanding of why Christians sometimes involve themselves in the lives of others. Sometimes the Golden Rule compels us.

Our sermon: We want to understand and apply the Golden Rule. To do that we want to see it as (1) Radical, (2) Practical, and (3) Active.

Prayer

I. The Radical Golden Rule

Read Matt. 7:12.

In commentaries and articles on the Golden Rule, there is a lot of discussion on how widespread the Golden Rule idea is.

The Chinese Confucius from around 500 BC is often brought up:

When asked if there is “one expression that can be acted upon until the end of one’s days,” Confucius replies: “There is shu: do not impose on others what you yourself do not want.”
David Jones, “Teaching/Learning Through Confucius”[2]

In around 300 or 200 BC, the Apocryphal book Tobit:

And what you hate, do not do to anyone.
Tobit 4:15

Greco-Roman example:

Do not do to others what angers you when they do it to you.
Isocrates, Ad Nicoclem 61

Among the Jews there’s Rabbi Hillel in around AD 20, when Jesus was about 25 years old, a decade or so before he is baptized and launches into his ministry. Hillel is “challenged by a Gentile to summarize the law in the short time the Gentile could stand on one leg, reportedly responded”[3]:

“What is hateful to you, do not do to anyone else. This is the whole law; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.”
Rabbi Hillel (b. Shabbath 31a).

But here’s the key: You have to interpret these various Golden Rules in light of what the various teachers meant by them.

• Confucius? Confucius applied his rule to friends, not enemies. Jesus teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount to love our enemies, and not just our friends. The Golden Rule applies to all others.
• The Jews? Jews would apply the principle to Jews but not Gentiles. We’ll see that later.
• Greco-Romans? They applied the principle within a very defined caste system. They saw some people as inherently superior to others. But Jesus is teaching a true equality. His teaching is how I treat all “others.”

When you take this into consideration, there’s no teaching like Jesus’. The words might be similar in some ways, but not the meaning.

The Golden Rule as taught by Jesus stands alone as a framework for ethics. It’s radical in how sweeping it is, how positive it is, how universally it’s applied to all others.

Even the fact it is a call to action and not simply a call to inaction puts it in a different category from all the versions quoted.

That’s the first thing, it’s radical.

II. The Practical Golden Rule

Read Matt. 7:12.

Let’s think through how to actually use the Golden Rule.

It’s a way of thinking through how to treat people—not God, but people. If you ever hear a person try to do the Golden Rule toward God, just stop them. You know, someone saying, “If I were God, this is what I would want from my people.” No, it doesn’t work that way.

But it does work as we consider people and how to treat them.

There are two steps. The first is thinking about yourself in a given situation: How would you want to be treated, if you were in a particular.

Now, don’t stop here! The goal is NOT to make you really picky how people should treat you! It’s to make you think about how you should treat others.

Once you think through how you would want to be treated, you then treat the other person this way.

The DMV could be a test case for us.

• You jumped through all the hoops you needed to.
• You went online at 2am and made your appointment in the most remote part of North Carolina possible.
• And then you get there, and you’re number “43” in line.
• When you get up to the desk, you have no idea if you brought all the right forms. You have about a dozen proofs of residency and insurance.
• You get there and the woman is a little impatient with you.
• The Golden Rule helps you.
• You begin to think, If I had been standing behind this desk for four hours and had talked to three hundred unhappy people who resented being there at all...I would appreciate some show of human kindness.
• So, you determine that no matter what, you’re going to show this woman some human kindness.

And likewise, if you’re the woman behind the desk...

• You’re tired and a little testy. It’s been a long day, and your lunch hour is still 30 minutes away.
• The Golden Rule helps you.
• You begin to think, the person I’m talking to has worked really hard to get to my desk and renew their license. He battled the terrible website and woke up before I did to get here early. If I were this person, I’d appreciate someone who was kind and concise. He doesn’t need me to get in a long conversation and slow everything down. But he would appreciate me doing my job with kindness and efficiency. I can at least show him that.

Knowing how to treat people well in a given situation is the point of the Golden Rule.

Jesus says, “this is the Law and the Prophets.” You might not know all the Proverbs and parts of Leviticus and all the passages from Isaiah that relate to you being in line at the DMV. But Jesus says that doing what you would want a person do to you is a way to get at the kind of behavior “the Law and the Prophets” command.

Jesus is reminding us that “the Law and the Prophets” are not some big and scary list of policies and regulations—a list so long you need hire someone with the word “compliance” in their job title to make sure you’re doing the right thing at the right time.

Jesus is telling us that “the Law and the Prophets” show us the way to treat people so others will be blessed and God will be pleased.

Now, he’s not telling us to ignore the commandments in the Bible, as if it’s just obvious how we should treat others. The commandments in the Old and New Testaments will help us figure out what we would want others to do to us.

We need to live out the Golden Rule being informed by “the Law and the Prophets,” all God’s commandments in the Old and New Testament.

For example, the commandments teach us about how to treat our parents and how to raise our children (Exod 20:12; Eph 6:1–4). Not all of us know how to do that. Some of us came from homes where the marriage of the parents and the way children were raised weren’t great.

The Golden Rule can sometimes help us when we’re involved with a person who doesn’t know some of the basics about families and marriage.

• You begin to think, if I were this person and didn’t really get how parents are to be honored and how children are to be raised in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, I’d want someone to help me live according to God’s Word in these areas.
• I’d hope that people wouldn’t just ignore me and allow me to keep doing what the Bible forbids.

Being informed by “the Law and the Prophets” would also connect to something like abortion.

• If you heard someone close to you had an unwanted pregnancy and was considering an abortion, you know from God’s Word that murder is wrong and therefore abortion is wrong.
• With the Golden Rule, you think through it like this: If I were in a bad place and considering an action that was both sinful and would harm to me that would last a lifetime, but I wasn’t thinking right and I was really desperate, I would want someone to rescue me from myself. I would want someone to help me even when it was help I didn’t ask for.

The Golden Rule is radical and it’s practical.

III. The Active Golden Rule

Read Matt. 7:12.

One of the noticeable things about Jesus’ statement of the Golden Rule is the way it’s written in a positive way. It doesn’t just say to NOT do things hurtful to others. It says to DO things you would want others to do to you.

It’s a call to ACT. To get engaged in the lives of others. It’s not only a passive command NOT to do certain things. It’s an ACTIVE command to DO things.

Think of another similar teaching. This is from Luke’s gospel, where Jesus a lawyer asks him a question:

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶ He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” ²⁷ And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸ And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” ²⁹ But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:25–29)

At that point, Jesus teaches the Good Samaritan parable. After teaching that we are to “love...your neighbor as yourself,” he gives a parable to show what it looks like in action.

In the parable a man going from Jerusalem to Jericho is robbed and beaten and left “half dead” (v. 30). A priest and a Levite walk by but cross on the other side of the road (vv. 31–32). Then Jesus tells us about the third man who passed by.

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. ³⁴ He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. (Luke 10:33–34)

Do you see that? He’s really applying the Golden Rule. The Samaritan might easily have thought, what would I want someone to do for me, if I were lying “half dead” (v. 30) on the side of the road? Remember, with this parable Jesus is illustrating what it means to “love your neighbbor as yourself,” which overlaps with the Golden Rule.

With this parable, we also begin to understand why Jesus’ teaching of the Golden Rule is the most radical teaching of it in history.

Unlike Confucius, it’s active love extended even to someone who might be an enemy.

Unlike the Jews, it’s active love extended even to someone who might be a non-Jew.

Unlike the Roman Stoics, it’s active love extended to others you are treating as equals.

There’s another aspect of the Golden Rule when you consider this ACTIVE side of it.

With the Good Samaritan, we can see that it works as a framework for ethics on an individual level—when you see an individual in need. But it’s also helpful at a larger scale.

Earlier I mentioned the example with a person close to you contemplating an abortion. You would get involved because of the seriousness of the situation.

But you might also begin to apply the Golden Rule at a larger level. You begin to think about the fact there’s not just one woman in that desperate place. In a community like ours, with hundreds of thousands of people, there are many contemplating such a life-altering act. So, you might begin to think, if I was one of these moms and dads, I’d want a place where I could go to get good help, good advice.

This could prompt you to volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center or even start one.

The Golden Rule can expand even further. You might begin to think, part of the problem with abortion in America is that it’s so accessible and so legal. If I was someone in this situation, I wouldn’t want it to be so easy to do something that’s so sinful and so harmful.

This could prompt you to get involved with legislation at a state and federal level that made abortion more and more unthinkable.

Living in the Kingdom is not just about “Jesus and me.” My own little private island of religion that doesn’t impact other aspects of my life.

The commandments of God are to impact all my dealings with people. All my interactions with customer service. All the presents I give and receive. All the long lines I might have to face because of the holidays.

In all of these big and small moments, “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 7:12).

Jonathan Pennington:

All of this, like the rest of the Sermon, is casting a vision and inviting disciples into a wide space of living well. It is an invitation to practical wisdom that affects daily living, based on an appeal to our natural and good instincts for what humans all want, true happiness and flourishing.
Jonathan Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing[4]

Conclusion

The Golden Rule is Radical, Practical, and Active.

So, live it!

• Apply this in your marriage.
• Apply this in your parenting.
• All this in the workplace.
• Consider ways God might want you to apply it at even larger levels.

How is this possible? How is it possible to love others in this way? Because of the transformation that happens when we become Christians.

We go from being dead trees with no fruit to a tree that will bear good fruit. Good fruit can take a while, but being a Christians means that the fruit will come.

We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

Prayer and Closing Song

[1] R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Eerdmans), 284.

[2] David Jones’ Teaching/Learning Through Confucius: Navigating Our Way Through the Analects,” Education about Asia 5 no 2 (Fall 2000), accessed at https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/teaching-learning-through-confucius-navigating-our-way-through-the-analects/.

[3] D.A. Carson, The Gospel of Matthew, EBC.

[4] P. 268.