Out of this fountain of steadfast love, God sends Jesus Christ: chesed, packaged with teeth and tendons, fingernails and funny bones, hair and hamstrings. Human Jesus personifies love in action, silencing tendencies to shame or shun while amplifying opportunities to show compassion. The Golden Rule, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you (Mt 7:12),” found on the lips of Jesus (Mt 7:12, Lk 6:31), as a “summary of the law and the prophets, . . . functions as a concise abridgment of Jesus’ message. . . .”1
The Golden Rule: not a Jesus original.
Did you know though, that The Golden Rule appears in many world religions including Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism?2 In fact, it’s present in the Hebrew Scriptures in Leviticus 19:18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” Joel Kaminsky, Professor of Religion at Smith College in Massachusetts, says that many of his students “are astonished to learn that Jesus did not invent the idea that one should love one’s neighbor as oneself.” He continues,
When informed that this expression first occurs in the [Hebrew Bible], many contemporary readers assume it must come from the prophetic material. How could those rather narrow-minded priests so concerned with cultic details have authored this notion, let alone enshrined it in the center of their corpus?3
But “Love your neighbor” is one of many commandments found in Leviticus 19. Among others are a curse on the one who eats leftovers on the third day (vs 7-8), a free pass for a man to have an affair with his slave woman—as long as he hands over a ram to the priest after the fact (vs 22-23), and a warning against bad haircuts (vs 27)–a most useful caution, in my opinion. And right there, in the middle of these outdated—or at least mundane—directions, we find this little command to love one’s neighbors. Why didn’t it fade into obscurity with the rest of the rules listed around it? Because of Jesus.
In the Gospels & Letters
Leviticus vs. the Gospels
See, while we have no record of Jesus’ hair care routine, we do have his answer when asked, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus, according to Matthew, responds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” He did not stop there though. He continued, saying, “a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Mt 22:37-39). In Matthew, the question comes from a Pharisee. In Mark 12:28-34, we find a similar report, only this time a scribe poses the question:
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (NRSVUE)
Luke vs. the Letters
Luke has a lot to say about this topic. Remember the Good Samaritan parable? In Luke, an “expert in the law” asks about the greatest commandment. Jesus answers and then further explains the point by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. More on that later.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, though, are not the only ones who see the value in Leviticus 19:18. The apostle Paul and the writer of James both base teaching upon this one directive. In Galatians 5:14, Paul says “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” while James 2:8 says, “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Notably, neither Paul nor James comments on time constraints for eating leftovers; neither do they dismiss adulterous behavior with the delivery of a morning-after sheep.
The Golden Rule vs. the Silver Rule
In the teaching of Jesus, the Golden Rule is stated in its positive form (treat others as you wish to be treated); in other religions or philosophies it is sometimes presented in its negative form (do not treat others in ways you wish not to be treated). Still, the Golden Rule of Jesus, while like ancient maxims or sayings, is unique; other variations have more in common with the negative presentation of the Golden Rule, sometimes known as the Silver Rule.4 John Topel explains:
The actions mandated by Jesus’ Golden Rule are not merely more extensive than those mandated by the Silver Rule, but they enter into the limitlessness of human desire that is oriented towards the infinite love of God. … In short, the Golden Rule opens human moral obligation to the deepest human thirst for God’s self-giving love toward [God’s] creatures, far beyond the kinds of actions that can be mandated by an natural or positive law, or even by the divinely revealed Mosaic Law. It embodies the most radical altruism.5
The fullness of chesed is made manifest in Jesus; in the Golden Rule, Jesus commands humanity to put chesed to work in the world. Most importantly, as Topel says above, the goal of the Golden Rule is to “build a human community where the love of God is present and active.” 6
The Golden Samaritan
In the Gospel of Luke Jesus provides greater context for the Golden Rule in the parable of the Good Samaritan found in Lk 10:25-37. An expert on biblical law asks Jesus how to access eternal life. Jesus answers with a question saying, “What does the law say?” In his answer, the lawyer combines the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 saying, “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” (Luke 10:27). Jesus essentially responds, “Right. Do that.”
The lawyer, human that he is, says something like, “So, um, by ‘neighbor’. . .um. . . exactly who do you mean.” I love this line. The lawyer, concerned he might love the wrong person, asks for clarification. Isn’t that so human of him? Oh, and please note that scripture does not report that Jesus, frustrated beyond words, just walks away. Neither does it say that he started screaming at the lawyer for being so incredibly clueless. And, as far as we know, he also did not text the Holy Spirit an eye-rolling emoji.
I’ll dive into Jesus’ actual response in the next post.
Notes
- Emerson Powery, n.d. “The Golden Rule,” New Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary, Edited by Katherine D. Sackenfeld, N.P. Ministry Matters. accessed April 20, 2020, http://www-ministrymatters-com.ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/library/#/nidb/30f37441feab60038fbc8992e0482dda/golden-rule-the.html.
- Zahra Rakhshani, “The Golden Rule and its Consequences: A Practical and Effective Solution for World Peace,” Journal of History, Culture and Art Research (2017):468-471.
- Joel Kaminsky,”Loving One’s (Israelite) Neighbor: Election and Commandment in Leviticus 19,” Interpretation 62 (2008):123.
- Jan Tullberg, “The Golden Rule of Benevolence versus the Silver Rule of Reciprocity,” Journal of Religion and Business Ethics 3, no. 1 (2015): N.P. http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/docview/179831687.
- John Topel, “The Tarnished Golden Rule (Luke 6:31): The Inescapable Radicalness of Christian Ethics,” Theological Studies (1998): 479-480.
- Ibid., 480.
