Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 7:12

"All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them: for this is the law and the prophets." — Matthew 7:12 (ASV)

Therefore ... whatsoever — The sequence of thought here may require some explanation. God gives His good things in answer to our prayers, as long as what we wish for is truly for our good. It is humanity’s highest blessedness to be like God—to “be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect”—and therefore, in this respect also, we must strive to resemble Him.

This foundation gives a new character to a principle that had otherwise already become one of the familiar sayings of both Jewish and pagan ethics. Perhaps the most interesting Jewish example is the well-known story of the Gentile inquirer who went to the great scribe Shammai and asked to be taught the whole law in a few brief words while he stood on one foot. The rabbi turned away in anger. The inquirer then went to Hillel and made the same request. The sage turned and said, “Whatever you would not want others to do to you, do not do to them. All our law is summed up in that.” And so the Gentile became a proselyte.

A similar negative rule is quoted by Gibbon (in his Decline and Fall, chapter 54, note 2) from Isocrates, not without a sneer, as if it anticipated the teaching of Christ. The nearest approach to our Lord’s rule, however, is found in a saying attributed to Aristotle, who, when asked how we should act toward our friends, replied, “As we would want them to act toward us.” All these examples, however—though we may welcome them as instances of the testimonium animæ naturaliter Christianæ (as Tertullian calls it, the “testimony of a soul that is naturally Christian”)—still lack the completeness of our Lord’s precept. Even more, they fall short of it regarding the foundation on which the precept rests and the power given to perform it.

Yet even here, there is necessarily an implicit limitation. We cannot fulfill everyone’s desires, nor should we wish for them to fulfill ours, for those desires may be foolish and frivolous or may involve the indulgence of lust or passion. The rule is only safe when our own will has first been purified, so that we wish from others only what is truly good. A reciprocal exchange of evil or foolishness is obviously completely contrary to the mind of Christ.