Gracious God,
we have heeded the Golden Rule some many times.
We think we’ve got it already.
But the truth is, we barely live it.
Not with strangers and enemies.
Sometimes, not even with ourselves.
So today, we do not need another rule.
We need resurrection.
We need your mercy, patience, and grace.
Open our hearts.
Teach us again.
Make us into people who walk the narrow way;
not but our efforts but by your grace.
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
This week, David French wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times that’s stuck with me. He asked, “What happened to the kindness? What happened to the compassion?”[i]
He was talking about the evangelical church. Not the caricatures, but the real people. The ones who once built hospitals, served the poor, went on mission trips, and invited neighbors into their homes. He describes how much of that witness has been eroded. Not just by politics, but by cruelty. Outrage. Conspiracy. Contempt. Especially toward those outside the faith.
French writes: “When you possess a burning sense of certainty in your moral vision, intolerance is always a temptation.”[ii]
And it’s easy to look at the evangelical church and point a finger of contempt or accusation. But French could just as easily be talking to mainline denominations, like The United Methodist Church.
He ends the article with a simple, familiar command:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The Golden Rule.
We know it. We teach it to kids. We nod our heads when we hear it. But do we live it?
That’s where Jesus brings us today in Matthew 7:12. And not as a footnote—but as the summary of the law and the prophets. All of it—Moses, the commandments, the prophets crying out for justice and mercy—Jesus says it boils down to this:
“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.”
Simple to say. Much harder to live.
What if God really treated us the way we treat others?
What if God kept score the way we do?
What if God only forgave the people who said sorry first?
What if God only helped those who had already helped themselves?
What if God only showed up when we were already sitting in the pews saying the “right things?”
We’d be in trouble.
Let’s face it, most of the time we live the Golden Rule halfway.
“I’ll be kind…if they are kind to me.”
“I’ll forgive…if they apologize first.”
“I’ll help…after I’ve first taken care of myself.”
We love the Golden Rule, in theory. We teach it to our kids. We crochet Jesus’ words onto decorative pillows and wall hangings. But in practice? It is harder than it looks. Harder than we would ever like to admit. And, when Jesus drops it right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount (right after warning us not to judge and just before telling us the road is narrow) He is not handing us a bumper sticker. He is handing us a mirror.
It sounds simple, clean, and reasonable. But Jesus is never interested in what seems reasonable. He is interested in resurrection and the resurrection has never been reasonable.
Stanley Hauerwas wrote:
“Not to judge is to be schooled by the humility of the Son.”[iii]
The Golden Rule is not a clever moral strategy to make our lives easier. It is an invitation to be humbled. To be made more into the likeness of the Son. To new life. To a way of living that is only possible if we are willing to lose the game of comparison, scorekeeping, and self-protection.
The Golden Rule invites us to inventory our own feelings. To ask ourselves, “How would I want to be treated in this situation?” but the problem arises when we realize that all too often we do not treat ourselves with grace. Most of us are carrying shame or guilt around, still quietly punishing ourselves for the things God has already forgiven.
The harshest judgements are not always aimed outward. Sometimes, they are turned inward.
Jesus does not give us this rule to crush us. He gives us the Golden Rule to free us. To help us see just how much we need to break the cycle of judgment, someone to love us not as we are but as we were meant to be.
Rev. Fleming Rutledge once wrote:
“The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.”
That’s the problem with how we live the Golden Rule. We still want to sit in God’s seat. We still want to decide whose worthy, who’s guilty, who deserves love, and who doesn’t. That’s why our love, when we try to muster it on our own, is always limited, conditional, and measured.
But God does the opposite. In Christ, God takes our place. Not because we’ve earned it. Not because we’ve gotten the rule right. But because mercy is stronger than judgment. Because salvation doesn’t begin with us getting it together. Salvation begins with God giving himself.
Will Willimon says that judgment is “the consequence of being loved by a God who gives a damn.”
God cares, sees, and judges. But not in the way we do.
Because if God really did follow the Golden Rule the way we interpret it (if God only gave what was earned, only offered mercy when we deserved it) we would all be left outside the pearly gates.
But that is not grace. That is not the gospel.
The gospel is not fairness. It is mercy.
It is not “treat others how they treat you.”
It is Jesus on the cross saying, “Father, forgive them.”[iv]
At the cross, God does the exact opposite of what we expect. Jesus does not return violence with violence; sin with wrath. He returns the worst we have to offer with love. That is to say, with grace.
And at the table we will gather at in just a few minutes, at His feast of grace, we are not treated as we treat others. We are treated as Christ has treated us. As sinners who are forgiven. As children of God who are loved.
Our love is calculated and conditional. We protect ourselves from getting hurt. We are only willing to go so far.
God’s love is cruciform; cross-shaped. It breaks down every condition we insist upon applying and every boundary we try to build.
Christ’s resurrection does not just promise life after death. It gives us a new way to live here and now. A freedom to love not because people deserve it, but because we have already been loved.
The rule is not “do this so God will love you.” It is “God already loves you. Now go and live like it.”
This is what David French is really asking: not “Can we be nicer?” but “Can we be more like Jesus?” Can we stop weaponizing our faith and start living it? Can we treat others, especially the ones we disagree with, with the same mercy we ourselves are desperate for?
The answer is, not without grace.
But because of grace? Yes. Yes, because of grace.
[i] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/opinion/chip-joanna-gaines-evangelical-christianity.html
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Hauerwas, Stanley. Matthew. Brazos (2015). Page 86.
[iv] Luke 23:24
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