Matthew 7:12-14
Introduction
Have you ever noticed how many platitudes we have in English? Platitudes are those little phrases that we use that are meant be catchy and pithy, something that should stick in your mind, and encourage you to think and act a certain way. We have a lot of them! And yet, BECAUSE they are short and catchy and pithy, we can begin to get annoyed with them. Think about some of these:
“You can be anything if you just apply yourself.”
“Money can’t buy happiness.”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you strong.”
“Good things come to those who wait.”
“Forgive and forget.”
“YOLO (You Only Live Once)”
Part of the why we get annoyed with some platitudes or clichés is that they conflict with one another. I mean, which is it:
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“Such is life” or “C’est la vie”
Are we throwing our hands up in the air and claiming life is a mystery (something that the writer of Ecclesiastes wonders about often), or do we truly believe EVERYTHING happens for a reason (as other parts of Scripture say)? Or what about:
“Be careful what you wish for”
“Follow your passions”
So should I have a dream, a desire, a wish and go for it, or should I be hesitant and worry about how that passion will play out? Which is it?
Another problem is we just don’t believe many platitudes:
“Cheaters never prosper.”
We may believe that is true in the eternal perspective—but I’m guessing a fair amount of people here today are not so sure if cheaters don’t prosper quite often in a sinful world. Or how about:
“The customer is always right.”
Anyone who has worked sales or any service role probably has an opinion about that.
And then the sheer volume of platitudes makes it seem like they are just throwaway statements.
This morning we come to a platitude of sorts that comes straight from Jesus. This one is often called “The Golden Rule,” and most of you know it well:
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12, ESV)
Or the way we often hear it summarized is:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
We all know this passage, but do we really? I think Matthew 7:12 for many people is like many of the platitudes we were looking at just a minute ago. We might believe it is true, but we don’t really think deeply about it. Perhaps we aren’t totally sure of the point, or why it would make a huge difference. You might think it is self-evident and quickly move on from it. We think we know it, but do we really?
If we are honest, I would guess that if you have pulled out this phrase and used it in your life it was likely to make someone else think about how YOU weren’t begin treated well or as a parent trying to get your children to behave appropriately. We don’t think usually stop and think about this saying and its call on OUR life and our actions. Rather, we think about how everyone else needs to think about it so that you and I have a good experience. It’s that classic “Ooh, this sermon would be really good for [so-and-so]. They should really hear it.” We think that about Jesus’s statement here.
Our passage this morning has two sections. In this first part, the Golden Rule, Jesus is summarizing what he has already told us in the Sermon on the Mount up to this point. In summarizing his sermon, Jesus cares deeply that we would live out everything he has shared with us. He wants us to live our life rightly not just with God himself but also in very real ways with others around us. Jesus’s summary of the Old Testament laws and our New Covenant status as kingdom citizens has a tangible outworking beyond our relationship with God. We are going to see that Jesus’s summary is simple and yet incredibly profound:
Summary: Love Others
But he is also using this summary to prepare our hearts for the conclusion of the Sermon, the section right after these verses in Matthew 7:15–27. In his conclusion, Jesus wants us to see that we have a choice to make, and it is a binary choice. Choice A or choice B. A choice that he wants us to think about both for ourselves but also a choice to thinking about how we will need to present this same choice to others. Jesus is going to implore us in the conclusion to:
Conclusion: Make a Choice
These are the two ideas we will look at today. You may not think those sound very exciting, but I tell you there may not be two more important ideas in all our lives.
The Golden Rule
Let’s start with the Golden Rule. First, have you ever wondered why it is called that? I think most people assume it is because it is such a valuable saying. In that sense it is “gold,” and something we should value. But one scholar notes that in the early 200s, Emperor Alexander Severus is said to have had this verse inscribed on his wall in the palace and the wall was plated gold. Hence this became known as The Golden Rule (1.) Regardless of how the name came about, clearly it is an important saying because of where it is in the Sermon on the Mount (right before the conclusion) and because we can tell it is trying to summarize and give us an overview-type statement.
When we look at the passage itself, we see Jesus is trying to connect this statement to what has come before it. He says:
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
(Matthew 7:12, ESV)
We have to wonder then what does that “so” connect with (it’s the same word that we usually translate as “therefore” so we should ask ‘What’s the therefore there for’). And there is a lot of debate here.
First, might it connect with what just came before when Jesus exhorted us to ask, seek, and knock and trust we will receive, find, and have doors open? That is usually the right place to start when you have connecting words. That could be. That would mean an outcome of our process of asking, seeking, knocking—usually through prayer—should also encourage us to think about others through that process somehow.
Others argue that this connects back up with Matthew 7:1 and Jesus’s statement:
Judge not, that you be not judged.
(Matthew 7:1 ESV)
If that is correct, that would make this passage in Matthe 7:12 the positive outcome of what we should do for others. If negatively we shouldn’t judge them, positively we should want to see the same good done to them that we want for ourselves.
Still others say this links all the way back up to Matthew 5:17–20. Thats my leaning as well. I think the language used in both those sections is purposefully connected by Jesus to create what is called an “inclusio,” a way of surrounding a section or writing or a speech with similar words and language to let us know it is a unit that is meant to be thought of together. If Matthew 5:17-20 and Matthew 7:12 bookend this section and both summarize this entire section, then that would mean all the sections are connected in many ways. That would mean The Golden Rule would then be a connected to all the other ideas in this section. So, I get to believe the other options are true as well. It’s a win-win-win view, and I like those!
Look at Matthew 5:17–20 to see why I think this:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew 5:17–20 ESV)
Jesus starts using the language of the “the law and prophets” back in Matthew 5:17 and then Jesus then picks up that same phrase, “the law and prophets” here in our verse. In our context of the Sermon on the Mount, these phrases are helping us to see that everything between Matthew 5:17 and 7:11 are Jesus’s summary of the Law and Prophet and how it should be understood and applied for God’s kingdom people—you and I—under the New Covenant. They are each helping to explain the larger character and purposes of God.
But here’s the really interesting part—there are only three places where this phrase “the law and the prophets” show up in Matthew’s gospel, and they are all at crucial places and say very similar things! We’ve already looked at two:
Matthew 5:17–18 Jesus Came to Fulfill Scripture
Matthew 7:12 The Heart of the Scriptures
Matthew 22:40 Loving God and Loving Neighbor as the Foundation of Scripture
We know we don’t have all of what Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount, and we know it was likely teachings he used often in other places. But one of the main things Matthew wants us to see and remember is that Jesus himself came to embody and show us the truth of what the Law and Prophets had been speaking about, and Jesus tells us that Loving God and Loving Others is what sums up Scripture, with Loving Others—our passage today—being one of our main applications and how to live this out in our lives.
When we look back at the Sermon on the Mount we can see how this fits together as a good summary of what Jesus has said. Throughout Matthew chapter five Jesus is largely concerned about how the now visible kingdom of God fulfills the law and prophets. He starts with the Beatitudes and how WE—you and I—have been changed because of his gift of salvation to us through faith alone. Jesus shows how it is through our understanding of our sin, our repentance, and our being given HIS [Jesus’s] righteousness and HIS very Spirit that we are able to live rightly before God now.
Jesus then helps us connect different topics that we might find if we through the Old Testament to this new Kingdom reality that we have through faith in Jesus and his righteousness given to us. Specifically, he talks about:
Anger
Lust
Divorce
Oaths
Retaliation
Love Your Enemies
In each of these he shows both how these ideas are the same as it was before this New Covenant, but also how it is substantially different in Jesus.
However, Jesus also knows that this righteousness of the kingdom may be used hypocritically by some and for their own purposes. In essence, prostituted for their own use. So, in chapter six Jesus teaches us more about how this will look in our life to ensure we know the true nature of rightly walking out his commands in our life. In chapter six Jesus tells us about:
Giving to the Needy
Praying Rightly
Fasting
Laying up treasure in heaven
Anxious
Ways we can see how having Jesus’s righteousness and being his kingdom people has a call on our life and HOW we act.
And in chapter seven Jesus continues to deal with any possible misconceptions we may have. Up to this point Jesus has largely been teaching in absolutes, but in chapter seven he begins to bring in more nuance and balance and teaches he us about:
Danger of being judgmental
Danger of not being persistent in our pursuit of God
From the Beatitudes to last week’s verses on asking, seeking and knocking, we can see how Jesus wants us to see God, look at ourselves, be changed and transformed by his righteousness and love for us through the cross, and then look outward to how that effects those around us. Jesus is constantly focusing us first and foremost back to God and his love for us while also pushing us to see the practical application of knowing ourselves and knowing God will be to look outward and care for others.
Here in Matthew 7:12 Jesus is capping off this whole section from 5:17–7:12 and finishing the project of making sure that after we look upward in our desire to walk rightly with God that we also look outward.
Upward then Outward
The Golden Rule is an important summary of the Sermon on the Mount and not just a nice saying. This is an incredibly pivotal statement of Scripture. There may be some debate about exactly how this summary connects with what came previously, but there is not any debate on how this connects to ME and YOU. Listen to a representative sample of what most scholars say about this verse:
The Golden Rule is “The essence of the Law and Prophets’ in terms of elucidating its true meaning.” (Osbourn, Matthew, 262)
“The point is that verse 12 is the summation of the essence of the character of God required of His people in the Old Testament.” (Quarles, Sermon, 306)
“Such behavior sums up the Law and the Prophets. In other words, such behavior conforms to the requirements of the Kingdom of God.” (Carson, Sermon, 112)
“The Golden Rule captures the moral and spiritual intention that undergirds the whole of the Old Testament, especially as it relates to how God’s image bearers treat one another.” (Akin, Sermon, 146)
Those are all huge statements about the importance of this verse. “The essence.” “Summation of the character of God.” “Summing up the Law and Prophets.” “The moral and spiritual intention that undergirds all the Old Testament.” This passage is not a simple throw-away platitude but rather a succinct glimpse into the very character of God!
But no one says this quite like Charles Spurgeon!
This [Matthew 7:12] is the sum of the Decalogue, Pentateuch, and the whole sacred Word. Oh, that all men acted on it, and then there would be no slavery, no war, no sweating, no striking, no lying, no robbing; but all would be justice and love! What a kingdom is this which has such a law! This is The Christian Code. This is the condensation of all that is right and generous. We adore the King out of whose mouth and heart such a law could flow. This one rule is a proof of the divinity of our holy religion. The universal practice of it by all who call themselves Christians would carry conviction to Jew, Turk, and infidel, with greater speed and certainty than all the apologies and arguments which the wit or piety of men could produce. Lord, teach it to me! Write it on the fleshly tablets of my renewed heart! Write it out in full in my life!
(Spurgeon, Exposition, 43)
Main Street, this Golden Rule is helping to reveal to us one of the three main summaries of Scripture that we strive to remember and be emblematic of here in our body:
Love God
Love Others
Make Disciples of Jesus
Specifically, this is calling us to Love Others. But not only that one. The entire context of this passage and how it engages with Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount reminds us of the other two statements as well—Love God and Make Disciples of Jesus—and reinforces their necessity.
Friends, we will spend the rest of our lives trying to unpack this idea—this Golden Rule—and it will effect everything in our lives. We should want to stop often and mine this passage, this idea, that we might better grasp God’s will for our life that OUR life might reflect his glory in every way he is asking of us here.
This morning, as a start to mining this “gold,” I want to also give us four steps to consider each time you look at this passage in the future. A grid to think about every time you come back to the Golden Rule to help you see the breadth of its beauty and the depths of God’s character revealed here:
Step 1: Always Start with Jesus
Step 2: Know Yourself
Step 3: Love Others Radically (i.e. Do What Jesus Says, How He Says)
Step 4: Rejoice, Because This Is What God Wants!
Step 1: Always Start with Jesus
Look again with me at this Golden Rule as we seek to pull it apart more:
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
(Matthew 7:12, ESV)
When we come to this Golden Rule, this summary of the Sermon on the Mount, we note the path that we just looked at a minute ago. Jesus started with himself in this Sermon and a reminder of who WE ARE now IN God through Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, reign and power today. The Beatitudes and our identity that Jesus shares about in chapter five ground all that he teaches us after that. And those statements are all grounded in who Jesus is and what he has done for us.
We cannot forget, Main Street, that the second commandment FLOWS from the first. We can never Love Others rightly without first Loving God. Jesus doesn’t bring us this summary and this command to care for others rightly out of nowhere. It comes amidst his Sermon that is rightly orienting us to God and his character first.
You might think this is self-evident and not worth bringing up. “Of course,” you would say, “I will always start with Jesus and God. That is what Christians do.” Yet we often don’t. We often think about loving others without ever considering our love of God. It is our love of God and more specifically knowing his love FOR US that DEFINES what our love should look like. Paul says this in Romans 12:
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection.
(Romans 12:9–10 ESV)
Asking us to make sure our love for one another is genuine implies there is a way for it to be disingenuous. That there is a way for us to love improperly and unhelpfully. Paul implies here that love that doesn’t know good and evil—God’s character that defines good and the opposite of his character which is evil—is not genuine love. Our love must be grounded in our knowing of God’s love for us. Then we can love one another with brotherly/sisterly affection—something that sounds quite similar to Jesus’s call to love others as we would want to be loved. We will truly be kingdom people ONLY if our knowledge of God and our right disposition towards him informs and motivates our care for others.
Step 2: Know Yourself
The surprise in this process is the second step. We would expect that after God tells us about himself and his love for us, and then shows us how that will change us as we live in faith in Jesus, that he would tell us something like, “Now that you have thought about yourself stop thinking about you and think of others now. But that isn’t what he does. He frames this passage around knowing ourselves:
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
(Matthew 7:12, ESV)
This is true for how we know ourselves in every small and large way. Our preferences, desires, our likes and dislikes. And it extends to the great spiritual holes that we all have in our heart that can only be filled by our God and Savior. It is a practical call and a spiritual call!
How amazing is it that this passage forces us to look backwards because of that little “so,” and in doing so we have to remember God’s love for us and our love for God. All the ways he is laying claim to our identity and providing us a new identity in Jesus Christ. We stop there and are called to think about the beauty of what Jesus bought and gave to us in faith. We are then to think of the very practical ways that God is asking us to live and walk as his Kingdom people, and how he has promised to help us in all those ways. When we think about others, there is a not a part of our life that we shouldn’t think about first and then think about how others similarly have feelings, needs, and desires in these areas. There is a flow and purposefulness to this process and it takes us deep within our own thoughts, desires, and needs.
We might worry that looking at ourselves will cause us to be prideful and self-serving. But if we start where Jesus starts and if we follow him and his path, there is NO chance this process of looking at ourselves will result in pride or egotism for us. We find in our Saviors eyes that we are poor in spirit, we are to be meek, we are to mourn our separation from God. When God has us look at ourselves, he seems to have no problem having us despair OF our sin but not despair IN our sinfulness. In other words, God has given us hope in faith in Jesus Christ that he has dealt with our sinfulness on the cross, but we should completely lose any hope that our sin and sinful ways could ever save us or help us.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus shows us our sin again and again with crushing realism. He wants us to despair OF sin itself. He wants us to see that our sin offers us no ultimate hope, no ultimate joy, and no ultimate pleasure. He wants us to see that:
Sin will not satisfy.
Ultimate satisfaction is only found in our Savior.
We find in looking at ourselves that we need an identity that comes from OUTSIDE of us. An identity that was created, crafted, through the cross and then GIVEN to us! We need to be utterly changed and given an identity secured in our Savior himself.
This is how knowing ourselves will only lead us to knowing and loving God more. And the more we see and know our need and our Saviors gracious mercy to give us himself, the more we can begin to ponder what our friends, family, and neighbors may need as well. Starting with ourselves—as long as we use Jesus as our guide like he has been in the Sermon on the Mount—will only help us to Love Others as we see our situation better and the mercy and grace we have been given.
Step 3: Love Others Radically (i.e. Do What Jesus Says, How He Says)
Which leads us to step 3, Loving Others Radically, or doing what Jesus says here, how he says it. Note here HOW Jesus tells us to Love Others. Once we have started with ourslves and know our desires and wants from the view of Jesus, both the day-to-day to the spiritual needs and wants, now we are to:
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
(Matthew 7:12, ESV)
At first it may seem like a simple statement. “Do also to them.” But Jesus tells us to do our care for others in a very specific way. This statement is written as a positive, not a negative. You may wonder why that is important, but parents and adults, you intrinsically know the power of positive statements.
If you tell a child, “Don’t play your video game,” and later come to their room and see them on their phone, you will learn the power of positive statements. Because you used a negative statement (“Don’t play your video game”), this child will look at you in your frustration and *so lovingly* say, “But you said don’t play a video game—this is an app on my phone.” Now, had you said, “Be sure to stay in your room for the next hour and read a book, write in your journal, or play a board game,” you would have bound that child with a positive statement in powerful ways.
Positive statements do that. They are much more binding and are often more encompassing than a negative statement. There is a famous Jewish example that is very similar to the Golden Rule, but it is a negative statement. Hillel (of the different groups of Pharisees that we have talked about before), used to say this:
“Do not do to others what is hateful to you.”
That may sound very similar to:
“Love your neighbor as yourself”
But there are profound differences. “Do not do to others what is hateful,” only binds me to care about avoiding problems, and only problems I don’t like. “Love your neighbor as yourself” may sound simplistic, but it is nothing less than transformational in how we are to rightly demonstrate the glory of the God we come to know in Scripture.
The positive has much more of a requirement on our life.
If you enjoy being loved, love others. If you like to receive things, give to others. If you like being appreciated, appreciate others. The positive form is thus far more searching than its negative counterpart. Here there is no permission to withdraw into a world where I offend no one, but accomplish no positive good, either. What would you like done to you? What would you really like? Then, do that to others. Duplicate both the quality of these things, and their quantity—“in everything.”
Carson, D. A.. Jesus's Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World: A Study of Matthew 5-10 (p. 148). (Function). Kindle Edition.
We begin to see now just how broad and all-encompassing this summary statement—this Golden Rule—really is.
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
(Matthew 7:12, ESV)
Whatever. Anything. Everything! This effects how we interact with others in every single sphere of life. Politics, policies, and rules. Fees, documentation, and processes. Feelings, ideas, and desires. From personal business to government affairs to our interpersonal relationships, there is nothing in our life that we shouldn’t have to consider and THEN, rightly consider how others might feel about that same area.
“Would I want to be made fun of because of the way I look? Would I want to be shunned by others? Would I want to be talked down to as an inferior? Would I want to never be invited over for dinner? Would I want to never be considered for a job I’m qualified for? Would I approve if people didn’t want to be my neighbor? Would I approve if no one would consider me for a home loan though my credit is good? Would I approve if I was never considered for a promotion at work though I am qualified for it?” (Piper, “Spring”)
Would I want to be thought of poorly because of my politics? Would I want to be singled out in my sin more than others are singled out in their sins—in the church or in the world? Would I want to be treated different because of my gender?
Would I want others to share with me their faith if they really believed it? Would I want to never be told about the beauty others believe they have found in knowing God? Would I want others to never share with me about God if they were convinced I was going to hell?
There is not a sphere of our life that hasn’t been effected by Jesus, and there is not a sphere of life where our desires and wants shouldn’t influence the ways we live as Kingdom people with those around us.
Jesus Sets Us Up!
And this is where we realize Jesus has set us up! We should expect that. Jesus is the God-man, sinless, and he knows the hearts of men. He knows what we may be hesitant to do if he doesn’t help us see it clearly—more clearly than we may even like or feel comfortable with. In summarizing the Sermon on the Mount as a call to Love Others in every way we want to be loved, he is making sure we never leave it just at the practical areas of likes, desires, and interactions with one another. We must see and know the Spiritual component to this request to Love Others.
Look at what Jesus says in Matthew 7:13–14:
Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
I am going to use some of the section in my conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount in three weeks, so I’m not going to say everything about this today. But what I want us to notice, even in this first example of Jesus’s conclusion, is that he will not let us think there are multiple paths and options before us all. There is option A and option B. Two choices. It is binary—1 or 0.
Jesus is going to give us two other examples of this choice in the following verses. Over the next two weeks Rich and Jack are both going to expound more on the choices we have before us. Rich will share about listening to false prophets or listening to God’s very Word and Prophet—Jesus. His section also talks about two tress—one that bears fruit and another that doesn’t, an image of the choice we need to make. Jack will talk about Jesus’s example of two different groups of people—both who say the same thing to Jesus, but get very different answers from Jesus.
We will see two choices again and again, but look at our verse today and see how those twos jump off the page.
Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
Two gates (narrow & wide)
Two paths (hard & easy)
Two destinations (life & destruction)
Two groups (few & many)
There are two gates, one narrow and one wide. There are two paths, one hard and one easy. There are two destinations, one that leads to life and one that leads to destruction. There are two groups, a group with many and a group with few.
We really have to make a choice, and it is ultimately binary: Will we follow Jesus or won’t we. And if you understand that choice for yourself, you will, by necessity, know you need to take that choice out to others. What else could you do after Jesus has spent so much time loving us in what he has shared in the Sermon on the Mount, in his word in general. How could we not love others by sharing with them this choice?
As scary as that sounds to most everyone, it is a necessary part of Loving Others. You were setup, but not by me, rather by Jesus. By getting you to realize the immensity of his call on your life and the Joy and Honor of getting to consider and think of others, you now can’t deny that everyone you know should get a chance to make this choice as well. And God likely would like you to be a part of that.
Penn Jillette of the magic duo of Penn & Teller is an avowed Atheist, but he gets the Golden Rule and its outcome in needing to share this choice with others. Listen to what he has said:
“I’ve always said that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward—and atheists who think people shouldn’t proselytize and who say just leave me along and keep your religion to yourself—how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
I mean, if I believed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.”
Penn Jillette, YouTube Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owZc3Xq8obk
The Golden Rule rightly grounds our understanding of how important this choice is. It was life-changing for me and you, and it is THE thing our family, friends, and neighbors need to know. That may sound hard to do, but don’t despair. Do you remember our fourth step? I didn’t forget it…I just put it off:
Step 4: Rejoice, Because This Is What God Wants!
God wants you and I to:
Love God
Love Others
Make Disciples of Jesus
And in our verses today he wants us to remember the importance of Loving Others and how it is a summary of the law and prophets and our privilege to care for one another in every way we would want to be cared for now that we are God’s kingdom people. It would be beautiful if we did this well. This is no mere platitude—this is God’s very joy and character that we are looking at this morning.
Let me bring you back to Charles Spurgeon as we end because it is so good!
This is the sum of the Decalogue, Pentateuch, and the whole sacred Word. Oh, that all men acted on it, and then there would be no slavery, no war, no sweating, no striking, no lying, no robbing; but all would be justice and love! What a kingdom is this which has such a law! This is The Christian Code. This is the condensation of all that is right and generous. We adore the King out of whose mouth and heart such a law could flow. This one rule is a proof of the divinity of our holy religion. The universal practice of it by all who call themselves Christians would carry conviction to Jew, Turk, and infidel, with greater speed and certainty than all the apologies and arguments which the wit or piety of men could produce. Lord, teach it to me! Write it on the fleshly tablets of my renewed heart! Write it out in full in my life!
(Spurgeon, Exposition, 43)
Pray
(1 Charles Quarles, Sermon on the Mount, 306, quoted in Akin, Daniel L.; Exalting Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Christ–Centered Exposition Commentary), 144-145, Kindle Edition.)
