“Treat others the same way you want them to treat you.” — Luke 6:31 (HCSB)
Jesus lays out a string of instructions in this passage that go against pretty much every natural instinct we have. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. Give to everyone who asks, and don’t expect anything back. Jesus is describing a way of life that runs completely opposite to how the world operates, and he’s not being subtle about it.
It all ends in what is called the Golden Rule, treat others the way you want to be treated. That phrase has been repeated so many times it almost loses its weight. It sounds simple. It might be something you’d expect to see cross-stitched on a pillow.
Sit with it for a minute and it gets uncomfortable fast. It’s easy to be kind to people who are kind to you. That’s not really following the rule, that’s just basic reciprocity. I want my enemies to treat me well even if I’m treating them poorly. I want grace extended to me even when I haven’t earned it. The hard part is extending that same grace outward, especially to people who have actually wronged me.
This passage exposes something in me that I’d rather not look at directly. I want to be the kind of person who loves radically, who gives without keeping score, who prays genuinely for people who have hurt me. But everything in my natural instinct fights against that. I am selfish. I default to protecting myself and my own interests, even when I’m trying to look like I’m not. That gap between who I want to be and how I actually operate day to day is real, and this passage puts a spotlight directly on it.
Here’s something I noticed about myself recently. When I talk to someone who clearly only cares about their own opinions and can’t seem to consider anyone else’s perspective, it bothers me. It feels immature, almost childish. But then I do the exact same thing, just in a quieter way. I listen, I nod, I try to look sympathetic, and the whole time there’s a part of me that’s still circling back to my own thoughts and my own concerns. That’s not the radical love Jesus is describing. That’s a performance of it.
So, the prayer is for transformation, not effort. I can’t manufacture this kind of love through sheer willpower. It has to come from actually putting on the mind of Christ, asking him to change what I want, not just what I do. I want to genuinely get inside other people’s heads, to care about what they’re carrying, and to love people the way God has loved me without keeping score and without expecting it back.