As this quiet kingdom expansion takes place, He guides us along the way with His words. The constitution of His Kingdom was uttered in a famous sermon from a mountainside once as He shattered every cultural norm and offered a radically different social order. He challenged us to give up our right to revenge in order to forgive, to love our enemies instead of hating them, to keep our vows, to guard our minds and not just our bodies, and to take care of those who cannot help themselves.
And He summed up His sermon with a proposition: “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” Matthew 7:12 NLT
Those of us who are attached to rules don’t like summaries like this. We want a list. With a list we can vindicate ourselves and do some comparison of our moral stature against that of others. But Jesus went there anyway. He tore up our checklist and replaced it with a principle that challenges us in every moment, in every situation, and in every cultural atmosphere to love and to act lovingly.
He gave a golden rule for revolutionaries and He’s still inviting anyone and everyone who will to lay down our typical fighting mechanisms in exchange for love.
