When did the Golden Rule become silver? Matthew 7:12

The Golden Rule.

I would venture to say that there are more people in the world who could quote at least some form of this rule than there are who could not. As I was reading Barclay's commentary on this passage, he pointed out that the negative form of the rule is stated in countless places throughout many different religions, cultures, government figures. The negative form of course says basically that if there is something you would rather someone not do to you...then don't do it to them! Pretty simple and pretty basic to human existence. That rule is what governs every law on the books. Don't steal, you don't want to be stolen from. Don't abuse; you don't want to be abused. Don't slander; you don't want to be slandered about.

Here's the problem: too many times we, as followers of Christ, attempt to make the "Golden Rule" of Christ something less...we are content to live by what I will call the "silver rule" of not doing others harm. But living that way does nothing but make us sterile and basically moral people. It does not give us purpose; it does not fill us with passion; and it does not inspire the world to look for the God they have been missing!

What if we have taken what some call the climax of the sermon on the mount- the Golden Rule- and we have stripped it of its power? Could that be why we focus on teaching our children what not to do more than we focus on what to do? Could that be why we spend so much time in front of the television and our teenagers spend so much time in front of their game systems? Could it be that Christianity has become just another voice calling for people to do nothing to others that you wouldn't want done to you, when our message is supposed to be "Do unto the others what you would have them do to you!?"

Christianity is a religion of action, not of restrictions!

I love this paragraph in Barclay's commentary. Read it slowly and let the end of it especially sink in.

"It is perfectly possible for a man of the world to observe the negative form of this golden rule. He could without very serious difficulty so discipline his life that he would not do to other what he did not wish them to do to him; but the only man who can even begin to satisfy the positive form of the rule is the man who has the love of Christ within his heart. He will try to forgive as he would wish to be forgiven, to help as he would wish to be helped, to praise as he would wish to be praised, to understand as he would wish to be understood. He will never seek to avoid doing things; he will always look for things to do. Clearly this will make life much more complicated; clearly he will have much less time to spend on his own desires and his own activities, for time and time again he will have to stop what he is doing to help someone else. It will be a principle which will dominate his life at home, in the factory, in the bus, in the office, in the street, in the train, at his games, everywhere. He can never do it until self withers and dies within his heart. To obey this commandment a man must become a new man with a new centre to his life; and if the world was composed of people who sought to obey this rule, it would be a new world."

May we strive to live up to the Golden Rule and never be satisfied to simply follow its "silver" form.