Start Loving Each Other
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 4 March 2012
Matthew 7:7-12, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 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! 12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
Verse 12 is the key verse, and the first part of verse 12 is the key word to us. "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” The rest of the passage comments and relates to that great truth. Some have called this the Mount Everest of ethics. Unquestionably, it is the supreme standard for all human relationships. We know it expressed in terms of the Golden Rule, "Do to others whatever you wish them do to you."
Edersheim, the great Hebrew Christian scholar, said of this statement, "It is the nearest to absolute love of which human nature is capable of." And Bishop Ryle wrote, "This truth settles a hundred different points. It prevents the necessity of laying down endless little rules for our conduct in specific cases."
I believe there are a lot of ethical things the world can do, and every once in a while and now and then they might even hit on this one. But the fullness of all that this ethic really means is only possible to a believer, not to an unbeliever.
We have been learning that the Christian perspective is that we are a kingdom and God is our king. God is a reigning, ruling, sovereign king, and we are His subjects. But that is not the only metaphor. Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount also says that we are a family. The kingdom concept deals with rule, and the family concept deals with relationship.
In fact, in Ephesians, it tells us that we are the household of God. Repeatedly John says, "We are children of God." Matthew has already informed us very clearly by the words of Jesus that God is our Father, who is in heaven. And there is a relationship of a father to his children, and that has some very important ramifications.
Now, Jesus said in Matthew 22, "The first and great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the second is, to love your "neighbor as yourself." Jesus said you can sum up all Biblical revelation, you can sum up all divine data, and you can reduce it to the reality of two things: relationship with the Father and relationship with brothers and sisters. And you can't have the second unless you have the first. Unless rightly related to God, it is impossible to fulfill this love standard in verse 12.
Now, this is consistent with the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 6, you have the first part, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength." In Leviticus 19:18, you have the second part, "Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." So God's law is for a right relationship to Him as a Father and a right relationship to others as brothers in the faith.
This particular section, verses 1 to 12, is the climax of the main theme of the whole sermon which is to present the standard for living in the kingdom of God. He started out with the standards related to self, the standard related to the world, related to the Word, related to morality, related to religion and related to money and possessions. And now we come to the standard related to human relationships.
The Pharisees were wrong about self, about the world, about the law of God. They were wrong about morality, about religion and about money and possession. And they were definitely wrong about human relationships. They were self-righteous, egotistical, proud, bigots, who set themselves up in an elevated position and looked down their noses at everybody else. They had violated the basic standard of human relationships.
And the whole point is that Jesus is making an effort to drive them to the desperation of saying, "We are unqualified to be in God's kingdom." And when they see that, only then they begin to respond in a right way. In other words, they have to hear the bad news before they are pushed in the direction of the good news.
And it is after this passage, in verse 13, that He gives them His invitation. He says, "Now, I've shown you where you are. You can keep going down the broad way that leads to destruction, if you want. Or, you can enter in at the narrow gate." And that is the invitation that follows the main theme of the message.
Now, the whole concept of verses 1-12 can be reduced to one statement: "Love your neighbor as yourself. That is the law and the prophets." Now, loving somebody has two sides, a negative and a positive. Loving somebody means you don't do some things to them and you do do other things to them, right? That's why verses 1 to 6 is the negative and verses 7 to 12 is the positive.
If you are to love your neighbor as yourself, if you are to love the way God wants you to love, if love is to rule our lives and love is to guide all of our human interaction, then we must realize that love does not criticize, judge, condemn and damn people who don't quite come up to our standard.
But love is just more than not doing something. Love is not only not doing some things, it is doing some other things and that's why we have the balance in verses 7 through 12. And we're going to study that this evening.
Let's look at the principle, first, in verse 12, "So whatever," not just some, not just a few, not almost, "you wish others would do to you, do also to them." And the key is that we are to act as we would have them act. This doesn't necessarily mean they did, or they will. In fact, we may know they won't. But that doesn't change what we should do.
Love doesn't judge, and love doesn't criticize. And love also reaches out and does to others what it would wish to be done to itself, even though it may know that it never will be done. This rule was established by Jesus. I mean, human religions and human philosophies and human attitudes have come up with a negative concept along this line, but they never were able to turn the corner to the positive.
A negative kind of Golden Rule appears in almost all systems of ethics. For example, the famous Hebrew rabbi Hillel had this negative principle. He said, "What is hateful to yourself, do not to someone else." In other words, don't do something to somebody that you wouldn't want done to you. It's a "don't" principle.
Now, you can go to Confucius teachings, "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." Every one so far is a "don't do" thing. Among the Greeks Epictetus said, "What you avoid suffering yourself, don't inflict on others." The Stoics said, "What you do not want to be done to you, do not do to anyone else."
Now, the whole world knows what not to do, they just don't know how to do it. And left alone as a negative, it's really a weak principle. Why? Because it is basically only a revelation of how selfish man is. Man is utterly, totally dominated by self. And because of that, he only can come up with a principle like this, “Don't do this to somebody, because if you do, they might do it to you.”
But the positive aspect is impossible. To want in your own heart the very most and do that for somebody else is beyond the ability of an unregenerate man. It just isn't going to happen. Why? Because, apart from God, the Bible says in 2 Timothy 3:2, "For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy."
Now, humanity, under those definitions, has a real problem. They love themselves and they hate people who do good. That kind of a person is not going to go around doing good to others. It may happen inadvertently, but it'll never be a pattern of life. It will never be a conscious, purely motivated, free giving pattern of life. Like Titus 3:3 says, "Men are hateful, hating one another."
And the world in its ethics can restrain itself from doing certain things because of fear, but will not find the power to do other things of a goodness nature because it doesn't have the love of God in its heart. That demands the knowledge of Christ.
So if you look carefully at the principle, then, it is a principle that is monumental in its meaning and reality. And men are unable to follow it, because men are lovers of their own selves. But we as Christians certainly should not be characterized by that. We should be able to go beyond that with the power of the Holy Spirit, and start sacrificing ourselves for others.
It has to come when the indwelling Spirit is planted within us, and what is the first fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22? Love. If the life of God pulses in the soul of a man or a woman, if the love of God abides in us, it is planted in our hearts. John 13:34 says, if the fruit of the Spirit is love, if it's there, “A new commandment I give to you, to love one another as I have loved you."
Mankind untouched by God doesn't know the meaning of self-sacrifice in that manner. That just doesn't happen, because man is self-seeking. It may appear on the surface to be self-sacrificing, but ultimately, down deep, there's a self-seeking goal, even in martyrdom for a cause. The goal may be to gain the respect of your peers, to gain a reputation, to make a name for yourself in society, to have a martyr's complex, to go down in history or whatever.
Now, having established the principle, Jesus gives us three reasons to obey it. Number one, the purpose of God demands it. Look at the end of verse 12, "For this is the law and the prophets." I mean, this is the whole point of all the Scripture.
The Ten Commandments is an expansion of these two principles. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. Therefore, you will not have any other gods before Him, you will not take His name in vain. And you will not desecrate the Sabbath Day. Second is love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore, you will not kill, you will not covet, you will not lie, you will not steal or commit adultery and provide false witness.
But it all goes back to those some basics. When I know you have a need, I will do for you what I would want done to myself. And, in fact, if it comes to that and I have to choose, I'll choose to do it for you and sacrifice my own self. If I know I need a new suit and I know you need a new suit, then I'll get you a new suit, because I know that's what I would do for me. And I'll go without. That's the essence of the principle.
Look with me for a moment at Romans 13: 8, "Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” You see, when you love your neighbor as yourself, you have fulfilled all the law, because you're not going to kill him, you're not going to steal from him, you're not going to cheat him, and so forth. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." Romans 13:10.
You see, it's the purpose of God that demands it. This whole thing is useless unless we are obedient to that. So the purpose of God would lead us to the word "obedient." Why should we live like this? Out of obedience because it says, “To obey is better than sacrifice.”
Second reason, the promise of God demands it. And you'll notice the "So" in verse 12, so let's back up to verses 7 to 11, which lead us into the principle. The illustration comes first in this case, in order that it might be a bridge from the first six verses.
It says in verses 7 and 8 that whatever we ask and seek and knock for, we're going to receive. Now, listen. Here's the heart of the matter -- we can feel free to give to others and to sacrifice for others and to love others because we can be confident that, in giving up all we have to someone else, we have an ultimate and eternal resource to replenish our own needs, right?
The promise of God to me that what I ask for and seek for and knock for will be given to me frees me up to give anything and everything I have to the one that has the need. Do you see? I can do unto others what I would do for myself without fear of having nothing left, because all I have to do is turn to my loving Father, who gives me bread for every day and takes care of me in every way, and I shall never do without that which I need. Now, is that a far cry from the way we live? You'd better believe it. We still are so selfish and possessive.
And in dealing with spiritual issues, we are thrown to the Word of God to learn the principle, and we sort of go along for a while with that principle, and we run out of gas, and we have to throw ourselves on His wisdom, don't we? And that's what keeps the relationship hot, see? And so He gives us enough truth so that we're responsible, and enough mystery so that we're dependent.
Now, some people think verse 7 is a blank check that just needs to be filled. I hear people say, "Well, the Bible says, 'Ask,' verse 8, 'for everyone that asks receives and everyone that seeks finds and to him that knocks it shall be opened.'" And they just block that little verse out, "All you've got to do is ask." Now, wait a minute, there are some other conditions.
Number one, this is only good if you're a child of God. Otherwise, you have no relationship to Him, right? He's not bound. Secondly, you must be living in obedience, or, as Peter says, "Your prayers will be hindered." 1 John 3:22 says, "Whatever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments and are doing the things that are pleasing in His sight."
Number three, you cannot have a totally selfish motive in asking. If you ask to receive for only yourself, forget it. What do you mean? James 4:3, "You ask and you receive not, because you ask amiss, to consume it upon your own lusts." All you want is only to fulfill your own desire.
There's one more thing I would like to point out in verses 7 and 8, and that is that there are three obligations, “Keep on asking. Keep on seeking. Keep on knocking.” They talk about perseverance and constancy. So that even though we know everything comes from the Lord, that does not mean that we are not actively and aggressively involved in its fulfillment.
Why does God want us to persevere? Because the more we're involved in the process, the greater the relationship becomes. You see? The deeper, the richer, the more meaningful my communion becomes with Him. God wants me to have a vital relationship with Him. And He does things that throw me into that relationship in a wholesale fashion. And so I not only do it out of obedience, but secondly, I do it out of gratitude.
And, finally, there's a third reason. And Jesus gives us a marvelous illustration, verses 9-10, "Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?” A father will not purposely deceive his son. He will not purposely destroy his son, either.
Well, verse 11 says, "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!” And the idea here is that God is the Father, who gives to all what they need, knowing full well that they could never give back to Him anything, in kind or measure.
So the problem is this. Basically, we are evil. And even when we become Christians, we still have sin in us, don't we? And the fight for selfishness stil dominates our lives. So we need to be broken in our hearts, that we might be unselfish toward others. So let us turn to the source of everything good, God our Father, Amen?