The golden rule

Saturday 5 June 2021

The golden rule

What you want men to do for you, do the same for them too. Luke 6:31

"Don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you." We all know this expression of popular wisdom. You could call it the Money Rule. However, do we know that it arose from an injunction that Jesus addressed to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount ? But while the popular expression is in the negative form, do not do evil..., the exhortation of Jesus quoted in the above verse is positive and advocates doing good... It presupposes an active will. to show kindness towards his neighbor. This is what we can call the Golden Rule.

A historian from the beginning of the 4th century reports that the Emperor Severus Alexander, who died in 235, had this word of Jesus engraved in golden letters in the marble of his room to have it constantly before his eyes.

Jesus asks his disciples not only to love those who love us or are sympathetic to us. The love he talks about is not just a good feeling. It is a love that actively cares about the good of the other even though he or she may be hostile or unpleasant to us. This love is a reflection of the love that God shows us when by nature we are so far from him. It is in him alone that we can find the strength of such love. Are these words of Jesus engraved in our hearts ?

Bernard Grebille

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Proposed reading : Gospel according to Luke, chapter 6, verses 27 to 36.

Source (Live Today)