Do So to Them

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 305, Do So to Them.

"And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them." Luke 6:31.

This line is so familiar it risks becoming wallpaper — a pretty plaque on the wall, a quote we recite without feeling its weight. But notice where it sits: right in the middle of Luke's Sermon on the Plain, surrounded by some of the hardest instructions Jesus ever gave. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Don't judge. This isn't a stray bit of etiquette advice dropped between softer teachings. It's part of a radical call to live differently from the world around you.

Notice the structure of the sentence too. Jesus doesn't tell you to figure out what the other person deserves, to calculate whether they've earned your kindness. He tells you to start from a much simpler place: what you yourself would want. As you wish that others would do to you. Your own desire — to be heard, to be forgiven, to be treated with patience — becomes the measuring stick for how you treat everyone else.

And look at the verb: do so to them. Not "return the favor once you've been treated well." Not "do good after the other person does good first." This is initiative. You go first. You don't wait to be treated with respect before you extend it — you are the first move, not the delayed reaction.

That's exactly what makes this rule so much harder to live than to quote. Nearly everyone has heard this line, inside church or out. It's become a calendar cliché. But reciting it from memory in an easy conversation is very different from applying it the instant someone ignores you, mistreats you, or lets you down. It's easy to be the Golden Rule when nothing is at stake. The real test comes when you want to repay in the same coin you received.

And there's a deeper reason behind all of this. A few verses later, in that same sermon, Jesus says God is kind even to the ungrateful and the evil — that He sends the sun on the just and the unjust alike. The Golden Rule isn't abstract ethics invented to keep society running smoothly. It's an invitation to act the way the Father Himself acts. God didn't wait for you to earn His love before loving you first. And now He calls you to do the same for the people around you.

So I want to ask you: is there someone in your life — maybe at home, maybe at work — you tend to treat with less patience than you'd want to receive? Someone you judge faster than you'd want to be judged?

Today, choose that person. Just one. And treat them exactly the way you would want to be treated — not because they've earned it, but because that's how God treated you first.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.