Sermon, Part 15 – The Golden Rule
Alright, here we go! With this section, Jesus wraps up his discourse on the Law and the Prophets, before moving into his final warnings and directives. It is a fairly clear change in topic matter from what immediately preceded, which was on our use of money – we are back to talking about our relationships to other people, which is what he started the main body of the Sermon on (anger, lust, etc.). Jesus says,
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Do not give to dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are 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!
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” [Matthew 7:1-12]
Now this is an incredibly dense section, so we’ll see if I can get through it in one go.
While it may seem that there are numerous disjointed sayings here, such as “don’t throw your pearls before pigs”, they are all connected together by the last statement: “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” This is his conclusion from these statements. They are interpretations applied to specific contexts – different meanings of “others”.
The first one is a general principle we see many places throughout scripture. “Judge not, that you be not judged.” This is most likely looking at divine judgment, as seen in parallel passages. In the Lord’s Prayer, a little while back, we saw that those who did not forgive would not be forgiven by God. In James’ letter, he writes that judgment is given to those give judgment, and mercy to those that give mercy. He adds that “mercy triumphs over judgment.” We should seek to be merciful, rather than condemn.
But this doesn’t say simply, “Judge not.” but adds “that you be not judged.” Jesus is not saying that we should never judge, but that if we want to avoid judgment, we should withhold our judgment. But judgment does not always mean ‘condemning’, but also means ‘discerning’, which is something that we should definitely be engaged in. And that is the subject matter of his example.
How are we to help anyone if we give a blind eye to what state they’re in? His example shows the common behavior of judging others – we look at people’s faults to feel better about our own, even when are problems are so much greater than theirs. Judgmental behavior is the entire reason, as a friend of mine pointed out, that Reality TV exists. We watch it to judge them, and in so doing feel better about ourselves. But when we judge ourselves, we justify our behaviors – we know the reasons why we do them, the environment factors that shaped us, and our own weaknesses, and give ourselves that grace. But when do we do that to others? And are we not most put off by people with the same problems that we ourselves have?
Jesus demonstrates that we should not avoid helping others – even if that may be painful or uncomfortable, or deal with sin. (Blindness – or problems with the eyes such as specks and logs – are often seen as the causes of sin, because they do not allow the person to see things how they really are. The origin of the word “sin” is an archery term, meant to “miss the mark”, and if you couldn’t see, you’d nearly always miss.) However, we must first deal with our own sin.
The reason is that ignoring our sin makes us less able to help others out of theirs. In order to take a spec out of someones eye without gouging their eyes out, you must be able to see well, and having a major obstruction in yours makes it a painful process, to say the least.
Another thought is that we are to take our sin much more seriously than the sins of others. Since we don’t know their background or why they might be in these sins, we should give them plenty of grace. But if we consider them better than ourselves, we can avoid being a hypocrite, and we will no longer have to worry about judgment. If we judge ourselves more harshly than we judge others, then it is no matter to be judged according to how we judge them. That’s no problem, once we have taken the scalpel to ourselves.
Now let’s recast this in light of “what you want others to do to you, do also to them”. We don’t want others to judge our faults harshly, and we certainly don’t want them poking our eyes trying to remove sawdust when they can’t see. But Jesus assumes here that we would like people to help us out of our disasters, and let us know when there are things in our eyes (or in our teeth). We don’t want to be badgered by hypocrites.
The next statement is one of the more difficult: “Do not give to dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” What sort of people does Jesus have in view here, and what is meant by holy things and pearls? We’ll start with what the crowds may have initially thought, to what he probably means by it.
Now to the Jewish people, dogs and pigs were unclean animals, which meant that they couldn’t eat them, sacrifice them, and in general tried to stay away from them. When Antiochus IV sacrificed a pig in the Jewish temple, it resulted in a tremendous revolt by the people (The Maccabean Revolt). The holy things would likely represent things of the Temple, while pearls could be synonymous. They were likely familiar with the proverb quoted by Peter, “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.” [2 Peter 2:22]
As Gentiles were also considered “unclean” by the Jewish people, and there were laws preventing them from fully entering the Temple to worship, “dogs” and “pigs” were often used to refer to the Gentile people (most often the Romans). Elsewhere, Jesus playfully uses the term “dogs” to refer to a Gentile woman and her child (whom he then heals, because of the faith of the mother’s response). However, we see that Jesus starts breaking down these “unclean” barriers, and commands his Disciples to go into all the world making disciples (which is predominantly Gentile). And we see the Temple ceasing to function soon afterward as well, which he also predicted later in Matthew’s gospel.
Earlier in the Sermon he spoke of putting our treasure in the kingdom of God. And Jesus uses “pearl” later in a parable as a comparison to the kingdom of heaven. But if he commands his disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” [Matthew 28:19] then he certainly can’t mean withholding the kingdom of heaven from the Gentiles. As Paul later writes, one of the greatest mysteries of the gospel was that he came to reconcile the Jews and the Gentiles. What then can he mean?
Peter’s letter might be helpful on this count; before he quotes the proverb, he says, “For if, after they [false prophets] have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”
In other words, for those who have been given the pearl and the holy things – the good news about the kingdom, and the knowledge of Jesus – and have returned to their previous state, having rejected “the way of righteousness”, then don’t continue to give it to them. Don’t try to force it down their throat. Dogs cannot appreciate holy things, nor can pigs eat pearls. They will only get angry, reject you, and possibly attack you. Jesus later instructs the disciples, on sending them out, “if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.” [Matthew 10:14] He would have them move on and preach to someone else.
But even if we no loner give them pearls or holy things, that does NOT mean that we cease to love them. We are called to love others. We should not stop our interactions with them. God does not cease loving, or sending rain on the Earth, but when people reject him, then he lets them go their way – he doesn’t force himself on them or force their wills to believe in him.
If we take it as an application of “do onto others”, then it may refer to less enormous things than the rejection of the kingdom, since it may well apply to us. Connecting it with the previous example of helping others out of sin, we may interpret it this way: for those that don’t want help and continuously refuse it, leave them be. They want to be there, and if you try to help they will definitely resist. When you don’t want help, it is taken as a personal offense when someone gives it to you. And that connects us to what follows: “Ask and you shall receive”.
Perhaps the section on pigs is dealing with the contrapositive of “Ask” – that it deals specifically with those who don’t ask. It would imply that in order for someone to be ready to receive pearls and holy things, they must be willing to ask for them. Do we receive forgiveness if we do not ask for it?
Now the following section on asking, seeking, and knocking can possibly be referring to a human principle, or it can be in reference to our relationship to God. The parallel passage in Luke helps a lot in determining what is actually going on here:
“Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” And he said to them, “When you pray, say”
“Father, hallowed be our name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you the, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” [Luke 11:1-13]
So in this passage, which occurs later in Jesus’ ministry, contains some interesting changes from the Sermon on the Mount. Firstly, he directly connects “The Lord’s Prayer” with this section on ask, seek, knock. And he adds an interlude on asking a friend for bread. From this perspective, the lesson on asking, seeking, and knocking is one of perseverance. You keep on doing it, and you’ll get results. But this is merely the human element of it. Again he brings up the human element with fathers giving gifts to their children. He isn’t flattering, calling them ‘evil’, though he does describe their ability to still give good gifts. Both of these are contrasted with the workings of the Father.
The Father doesn’t need to be asked twice (“do not pray like the Gentiles … for they think they will be heard for their numerous words”) – it is not the persistence of our prayers that finally turn him around. And if our fathers on earth will not give us bad things when we ask for good (in general), then the heavenly Father will certainly give us good things when we ask for them. The common strand between them is that asking, seeking, and knocking do occur. We ask the Father for gifts. Our children ask us for gifts.
Putting this in the framework of “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them”, we see the assumption that as parents, we desire our children to ask us for good things; we enjoy giving them good things (and hope that they don’t ask for evil things), even though we ourselves are fallen creatures and don’t know how best to parent, we want them to ask us for good things. And the application of this desire is to do so to our heavenly Father – we are to ask Him for good things. And in Luke, Jesus specifies what the greatest of God’s gifts is – the Holy Spirit. He will certainly give the Spirit to those who ask.
The Law and the Prophets is this ‘Golden Rule’: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” It should form the basis of all our relationships – both towards other people, and toward God. Thus, it is equivalent to both “Love God will all your heart, mind, soul, and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”. Jesus synthesizes both of them in this simple statement. So to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, this is the path to take. But as section after section makes completely clear, we have already failed in upholding this – we are already lost. But he gives this statement earlier: “I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them.” We have already failed the Law – the crowds came to him because we was merciful and loving and he healed and encouraged them, even in their failings. He further comforted them by saying that He would fulfill the Law and the Prophets.
But what does this mean to the rest of us, who have already failed? Jesus has yet to say how this was to happen. Now that he has concluded his discourse on Law and Prophets, he will move into what all of this means for us.
