41 Start Loving (7:7-12)
Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened. Or what man is there among you, when his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he shall ask for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (7:7-12)
Here is the conclusion of the main theme of the Sermon on the Mount, which is to give the standards for kingdom living. Jesus has given the standards related to self, to morality, to religion, and to money and possessions. Here He concludes giving the standards related to human relationships begun in verses 1-6.
This passage forms the positive side of Jesus’ summation of the principles that lead to right human relations. To love others in the way God wants us to love first of all requires that we do not self-righteously and carelessly criticize and unmercifully condemn others. If that attitude is present, it has to be removed. Not to be unjustly critical of a person is not the same as loving them, but it is absolutely necessary before true love can exist. Yet love is much more than something negative; it is immeasurably more than simply not wishing evil on others or doing them any wrong. The mere absence of hatred and ill will does not constitute love.
The positive side of love is the active side, the productive side, the side that is the true measure and test of love. It is not seen in what we refrain from doing but in what we do. (The Greek verb forms in the descriptions of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 all emphasize action.) The key expression of that principle is in verse 12, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, to which verses 1-11 point as advance commentary and illustration. That verse, often referred to as the golden rule, has also been called the Mt. Everest of ethics (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, 2 vols. [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975], 1:272). The famous Bible scholar Alfred Edersheim said it was the closest approach to absolute love of which human nature was capable, and Bishop J. C. Ryle wrote, “[This truth] settles a hundred different points,. . . it prevents the necessity of laying down endless little rules for our conduct in specific cases” (Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. Matthew [London: James Clarke, 1965], p. 66).
Jesus gives three reasons for obeying the command to love others as ourselves: God’s promise to His children demands it, His pattern for His children demands it, and His purpose for His children demands it.
GOD’S PROMISE TO HIS CHILDREN DEMANDS IT
Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened. (7:7-8)
Here is one of the Lord’s greatest and most comprehensive promises to those who belong to Him, to those who are His children and citizens of His kingdom. In light of this great promise we can feel free to fully love others and totally sacrifice for others, because our heavenly Father sets the example in His generosity to us and promises that we have access to His eternal and unlimited treasure to meet our own needs as well as theirs. We can do for others what we would want done for ourselves (see v. 12) without fear of depleting the divine resources and having nothing left.
Verses 7-11 make a perfect bridge between the negative teaching about a critical spirit and the positive teaching of the golden rule (v. 12). Even when we have been cleansed of our own sin—had the “log” removed from our eye—we need divine wisdom to know how to help a brother remove the “speck” from his eye (v. 5). And without God’s help we cannot be sure of who are “dogs” or “swine”—who are the false prophets and apostates to whom we should not offer the holy and precious things of God’s Word (v. 6). These considerations drive us to call on the Lord.
Of the many things for which we should ask, seek, and knock, God’s wisdom is among our greatest needs. We cannot be discerning and discriminating without divine counsel from our heavenly Father; and the primary means for achieving such wisdom is petitioning prayer. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5).
God gives us many principles in His Word, but He does not give specific methods or rules for every conceivable situation. For one thing, situations keep changing and vary greatly from age to age and person to person. To give specific rules for every circumstance would require a giant library of volumes. But even more important than that is God’s desire that we rely on Him directly. He wants us to be in His Word, and without being in His Word we cannot pray wisely or rightly.
But even beyond our being in His Word, He wants us to be in fellowship with Him as our Father. Along with His perfect and infallible Word, we need His Spirit to interpret and illumine, to encourage and to strengthen. He does not want us to have all the answers in our hip pocket. The Bible is a limitless store of divine truth, which a lifetime of the most faithful and diligent study will not exhaust. But apart from God Himself we cannot even start to fathom its depths or mine its riches. In His Word God gives enough truth for us to be responsible, but enough mystery for us to be dependent. He gives us His Word not only to direct our lives but to draw our lives to Him.
Here Jesus says, in effect, “If you want wisdom to know how to help a sinning brother and how to discern falsehood and apostasy, go to your heavenly Father. Ask, seek, and knock at the doors of heaven, and you will receive, find, and have the door opened.”
Contrary to some popular interpretations, verses 7-8 are not a blank check for just anyone to present to God. First of all, the promise is valid only for believers. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount Jesus’ promises are addressed only to believers. A large mass of unbelievers, including some scribes and Pharisees, no doubt were in the multitude on the side of the mountain that day. In this sermon, however, Jesus always speaks of scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, false prophets, insincere followers, and all other unbelievers in the third person—as if none of them were the direct target of His words. On other occasions (as in Matt. 23) the Lord addresses such persons directly; but during this message all of His references to them are indirect. He gives this sermon to His disciples (5:1-2), with the crowd listening in.
Everyone refers to those who belong to the heavenly Father. Those who are not God’s children cannot come to Him as their Father. The two overriding relationships focused on in the book of Matthew are those of God’s kingdom and God’s family. The kingdom concept deals with rule, and the family concept deals with relationship. In the Sermon on the Mount the primary focus is on God’s family, and we see repeated references to God as heavenly Father (v. 11; cf. 5:16, 45, 48; 6:4, 8-9, 26, 32) and to fellow believers as brothers (5:22-24; 7:3-5).
The two greatest realities of Christian truth are that God is our Father and Christians are our brothers. Believers are the family of God. Paul speaks of the church as the “household of the faith” (Gal. 6:10) and as “God’s household” (Eph. 2:19). John repeatedly speaks of God as our Father (l John 1:2-3; 2:1,13; 3:1; 4:14; etc.) and of believers as His children (l John 3:10; 5:2) and as each other’s brothers (l John 2:9-11; 3:10-12; 4:20; etc.).
Second, the one who claims this promise must be living in obedience to his Father. “Whatever we ask we receive from Him,” John says, “because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight” (l John 3:22).
Third, our motive in asking must be right. “You ask and do not receive,” explains James, “because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:3). God does not obligate Himself to answer selfish, carnal requests from His children.
Finally, we must be submissive to His will. If we are trying to serve both God and mammon (Matt. 6:24), we cannot claim this promise. “For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:7-8). As John makes clear, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (l John 5:14). To have confidence in answered prayer on any other basis is to have a false and presumptuous confidence that the Lord makes no promise to honor.
Another possible qualification is perseverance, suggested by the present imperative tenses of ask, seek, and knock. The idea is that of continuance and constancy: “Keep on asking; keep on seeking; keep on knocking.” We also see a progression of intensity in the three verbs, from simple asking to the more aggressive seeking to the still more aggressive knocking. Yet none of the figures is complicated or obscure. The youngest child knows what it is to ask, seek, and knock.
The progression in intensity also suggests that our sincere requests to the Lord are not to be passive. Whatever of His will we know to do we should be doing. If we are asking the Lord to help us find a job, we should be looking for a job ourselves while we await His guidance and provision. If we are out of food, we should be trying to earn money to buy it if we can. If we want help in confronting a brother about a sin, we should be trying to find out all we can about him and his situation and all we can about what God’s Word says on the subject involved. It is not faith but presumption to ask the Lord to provide more when we are not faithfully using what He has already given.
GOD’S PATTERN FOR HIS CHILDREN DEMANDS IT
Or what man is there among you, when his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he shall ask for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (7:9-11)
These verses continue to point to and illustrate the golden rule of verse 12. We are also to love others as we love ourselves because that is a part of God’s life pattern for His children and kingdom citizens. “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Eph. 5:1-2).
If we claim to be God’s children, God’s nature should be reflected in our lives, imperfect as they still are. Jesus here proceeds to show us something of what our heavenly Father’s love is like. First, He gives several illustrations from human family relationships by asking two rhetorical questions.
What man… among you, that is to say, what loving father, when his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone? The obvious answer is no man, no loving father. The crudest of fathers would hardly deceive his own son by giving him a stone to eat that looked like bread. Even if the son discovered the deception before breaking a tooth, his heart would be broken by his father’s cruelty.
Or, Jesus continues, if the son shall ask for a fish, the father will not give him a snake, will he? The idea is not that the snake would be alive and poisonous, and therefore of physical danger to the son. The suggestion is of a snake that is cooked to look like ordinary meat and would, unlike the stone, meet the son’s physical need. But because they were among the unclean animals (Lev. 11:12), snakes were not to be eaten by Jews. A loving Jewish father would not deceive and defile his son into dishonoring the Word of God by tricking him into eating ceremonially unclean food. Our Lord is simply showing that it is not natural for a father to ignore either the physical or the spiritual needs of his son.
In the Luke account Jesus gives the added and more dramatic illustration of a scorpion being substituted for an egg (11:12). Certain Near East scorpions were quite large and resembled a bird’s egg when they curled up to sleep. In this instance, the deceit could cause great physical danger to the son, even an agonizing death.
If you then, being evil—as sinful human fathers—know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! Here is one of the many specific scriptural teachings of man’s fallen, evil nature. Jesus is not speaking of specific fathers who are especially cruel and wicked, but of human fathers in general, all of whom are sinful by nature.
Those who do not know the true God have no divine source to whom they can turn with assurance or trust. Most pagan gods are but larger than life images of the men who made and worship them. Greek mythology tells of Aurora, the goddess of dawn, who fell in love with Tithonus, a mortal youth. When Zeus, the king of gods, promised to grant her any gift she chose for her lover, she asked that Tithonus might live forever. But she had forgotten to ask that he also remain forever young. Therefore when Zeus granted the request, Tithonus was doomed to an eternity of perpetual aging (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite [5.218-38]). Such are the capricious ways of the gods men make.
But not so with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As in the previous chapter, Jesus uses the phrase much more to describe God’s love for His children (cf. 6:30). Our divine, loving, merciful, gracious Father who is in heaven has no limit on His treasure and no bounds to the goodness He is willing to bestow on His children who ask Him. The most naturally selfless relationship among human beings is that of parents with their children. We are more likely to sacrifice for our children, even to the point of giving up our lives, than for any other persons in the world. Yet the greatest human parental love cannot compare with God’s.
There is no limit to what our heavenly Father will give to us when we ask in obedience and according to His will. Again we get additional truth from the parallel passage in Luke, which tells us, “How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (11:13).
The truth Jesus proclaims here is that, if imperfect and sinful human fathers so willingly and freely give their children the basics of life, God will infinitely outdo them in measure and in benefit. That is why the children of God are “blessed . . . with every spiritual blessing” (Eph. 1:3) offered by “the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us (vv. 7-8). If we want God to treat us with loving generosity as His children, we should so treat others, because we are those who bear His likeness.
GOD’S PURPOSE FOR HIS CHILDREN DEMANDS IT
Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (7:12)
The implication of verses 7-11 is made explicit in verse 12. The perfect love of the heavenly Father is most reflected in His children when they treat others as they themselves wish to be treated.
There is no capacity within an unbeliever to love in the way that Jesus commands here. Unbelievers can do many ethical things, and every once in a while they might even approach the level of this highest of ethical standards. But they cannot sustain such selflessness, because they do not have the divine resource necessary for regular, habitual living on that plane.
However you want people to treat you sums up the sermon to this point, and so treat them is a summary of the Law and the Prophets. It is also a paraphrase of the second great commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39; cf. Lev. 19:18). The golden rule instructs us as to how we are to love other people, “especially,” as Paul points out, “those of the household of the faith” (Gal. 6:10). And “he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8; cf. v. 10; Gal. 5:14).
How we treat others is not to be determined by how we expect them to treat us or by how we think they should treat us, but by how we want them to treat us. Herein is the heart of the principle, an aspect of the general truth that is not found in similar expressions in other religions and philosophies.
For many years the basic instrument of music was the harpsichord. As its keys are depressed, a given string is plucked to create the desired note, much as a guitar string is plucked with a pick. But the tone made in that way is not pure, and the mechanism is relatively slow and limiting. Sometime during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, during Beethoven’s lifetime, an unknown musician modified the harpsichord so that the keys activated hammers that struck, rather than plucked, the strings. With that minor change, a major improvement was made that would henceforth radically enhance the entire musical world, giving a grandeur and breadth never before known.
That is the sort of revolutionary change Jesus gives in the golden rule. Every other form of this basic principle had been given in purely negative terms, and is found in the literature of almost every major religion and philosophical system. The Jewish rabbi Hillel said, “What is hateful to yourself do not to someone else.” The book of Tobit in the Apocrypha teaches, “What thou thyself hatest, to no man do.” The Jewish scholars in Alexandria who translated the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) advised in a certain piece of correspondence, “As you wish that no evil befall you, but to be a partaker of all good things, so you should act on the same principle toward your subjects and offenders.” Confucius taught, “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” An ancient Greek king named Nicocles wrote, “Do not do to others the things which make you angry when you experience them at the hands of other people.” The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “What you avoid suffering yourself, do not afflict on others.” The Stoics promoted the principle, “What you do not want to be done to you, do not do to anyone else.” In every case the emphasis is negative. The principle is an important part of right human relations, but it falls short—far short—of God’s perfect standard.
Those expressions go only as far as sinful man can go, and are essentially expressions not of love but of self-interest. The motivation is basically selfish—refraining from harming others in order that they will not harm us. Those negative forms of the rule are not golden, because they are primarily utilitarian and motivated by fear and self-preservation. As Scripture repeatedly tells us of fallen mankind, “There is none who does good, there is not even one” (Rom. 3:12; cf. Ps. 14:3); “each of us has turned to his own way” (Isa. 53:6).
Man’s basic problem is preoccupation with self. He is innately beset with narcissism, a condition named after the Greek mythological character Narcissus, who spent his life admiring his reflection in a pool of water. In the final analysis, every sin results from preoccupation with self. We sin because we are totally selfish, totally devoted to ourselves, rather than to God and to others. Unregenerate man can never come up to the standard of selfless love—the love that loves others as oneself and that treats others in the same way that one wants to be treated.
Only Jesus gives the fullness of the truth, which encompasses both the positive and the negative. And only Jesus can give the power to live by that full truth. The dynamic for living this supreme ethic must come from outside our fallen nature. It can come only from the indwelling Holy Spirit, whose first fruit is love (Gal. 5:22). In Jesus Christ, “the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Only Christ’s own Spirit can empower us to love each other as He loves us (John 13:34). We can only love in a divine way because God Himself has first loved us divinely (1 John 4:19).
Selfless love does not serve in order to prevent its own harm or to insure its own welfare. It serves for the sake of the one being served, and serves in the way it likes being served—whether it ever receives such service or not. That level of love is the divine level, and can be achieved only by divine help. Only God’s children can have right relations with others, because they possess the motivation and the resource to refrain from self-righteously condemning others and to love in an utterly selfless way.