If those who condemn others are condemned (7:1-5), God clearly operates on a principle of reciprocity; we must do good to people in advance of their doing good to us, trusting God to reward us later. The principle in this context is that as we give, it will be given to us by God in the day of judgment. If God is the example of giving (vv. 7-11), we should give whatever people need (5:42). How we treat others (7:12) reveals our character (vv. 16-20) and hence reveals our eternal destiny (vv. 13-14, 21-23). At least since a sermon of John Wesley in 1750 this has been called the "Golden Rule" (Guy 1959); over a millennium earlier, a Christian Roman emperor allegedly engraved the saying on his wall in gold (France 1985:145).

This rule was a widespread principle of ancient ethics. The positive form of the rule appears as early as Homer and recurs in Herodotus, Isocrates and Seneca. The negative form ("And what you hate, do not do to anyone") appears in Tobit 4:15, Philo (Hypothetica 7.6) and elsewhere; one Jewish work straddles both forms (Ep. Arist. 207). Although some commentators have tried to disparage the negative form by contrast with the positive, both forms mean essentially the same thing; both biblical law (Lev 19:18) and Paul (Rom 13:10) define the positive commandment of love by means of negative commandments (E. Sanders 1992:258-59).

The principle appears in cultures totally isolated from the ancient Mediterranean; it appears, for example, in Confucian teaching from sixth-century B.C. China (see Jochim 1986:125). That others would discover this same principle should not surprise us, because one of the most natural foundations for ethics is for a person to extrapolate from one's own worth to that of others, hence to value others as oneself (compare, for example, Sirach 31:15). Thus every person is morally responsible to recognize how one ought to treat every other person. When we treat others (such as waitresses, store clerks or children) the way people of higher status treated people of lower status in Jesus' day, we invite God's judgment against us. No one so insensitive as to demean another human being on account of social station warrants God's mercy (Mt 5:7; 6:14-15; 7:1-5).

One who observes this basic principle will fulfill all the basic principles of the law the way God intended them (compare 5:21-48; 22:37-39). Later Jewish tradition declares that the sage Hillel, who taught before Jesus did, had already seen this rule as a good summary of the law. As the story goes, a Gentile approached both Hillel and his rival sage, promising each that he would convert to Judaism if the sage could teach him the law concisely. Hillel declared, "Whatever you do not want someone to do to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Law; the rest of it is just explanation" (b.Sabbat 31a; compare ARN 25, 53B).

This is the law of love, the principle by which Jesus epitomizes the entire humanward aspect of God's law (22:39-40; compare Jn 13:34-35), a principle Jesus' earliest followers never forgot (Rom 13:8-10; Gal 5:14; 6:2; Jas 2:8). What is distinctive about the principle as it appears in Matthew is its relation to the day of judgment (Mt 7:1-2, 13-14).