Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve considered Jesus’ instruction to love our neighbors and our enemies. This kind of love deviates sharply from the world around us—and frankly from our natural inclinations. Even for believers, it is difficult to implement in every area of our lives.

We are deeply convicted by Jesus’ words because we know our tendency toward self-serving “love.” Often we do good to those who do good to us (Luke 6:33) and give to those from whom we expect something in return (Luke 6:34). We occasionally fancy ourselves big-hearted philanthropists because we are kind to the people we like, but Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount flattens that misconception. That isn’t Christian love—it is natural and fleshly. As Jesus says, “Even sinners do the same” (Luke 6:33). True Christian love reaches beyond those who like us to those who have nothing to offer us, and even to those who are our enemies.

The Lord told us not only to love our enemies, but also how to enact that kind of love. We know it as the Golden Rule: “Treat others the same way you want them to treat you” (Luke 6:31; cf. Matthew 7:12). This guiding principle is meant to define all our interactions with friends and enemies alike.

Ironically, many of us have commandeered these profound words as a reprimand for others rather than imbibing them as a standard for ourselves. In fact, they are so well known as a chiding rebuke that they begin to feel worn out and burdensome. It is a strange thing that we have turned the statement “Treat others the same way you want them to treat you” into “Treat me the way I want to be treated.” That certainly isn’t what Jesus intended—and it flies in the face of the very love He prescribed. Rather, His statement teaches us how we ought to love others; it is not a measuring stick for how they love us.

On the other hand, perhaps some think of the Golden Rule as a quaint saying or a wise word. But that is also a misjudgment. Jesus afforded this principle remarkable significance when He said, “This is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). In other words, if we could truly put this into practice, we would fulfil the whole of God’s moral law. We would seek the objective good (as defined by God’s Word) of all those in our path.

The apostle Paul picked up the same idea when he wrote to the Galatians, “The whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). And again in Romans 13:9 he says that every command “is summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Love, therefore, ought to be the controlling principle in all of the believer’s relationships. It is the defining feature of his ethic, the governor of his behavior.

In his sermon “The Content of Kingdom Love,” John MacArthur said it this way: “This then, in the teaching of Jesus, becomes the distinguishing characteristic of kingdom people. This is how we manifest the . . . new birth . . . by an unnatural, supernatural love.”

Are you characterized by that God-given love? To hear more about the kind of love Jesus calls believers to, listen to “The Content of Kingdom Love.”