If there’s anything we know about God, we know that He does things quite differently than we do. It’s been said that God operates an upside down kingdom. I’d beg to differ. I think God’s kingdom is actually the right-side up kingdom and we people are the ones who do things upside down from what He does. For example, when we hear God say to love your enemies, or to turn the other cheek, it sounds foreign, backwards and totally off to us, but it’s in fact the way God has said to love people and God is never wrong or off about anything.
We see and deal with this in our lives when it comes to what’s known as “The Golden Rule.” The Golden Rule is Matthew 7:12 NLT and it says, “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.” We tend to have a problem with this Golden Rule when it comes to showing love to someone who hasn’t done it for us. Usually, our thinking is, “I will only treat a person right if they treat me right.” We can’t think that way as that’s backwards to what the rule is saying and totally misses the meaning of the total word of God.
The rule never said that the other person has to have it all together before we can do right by them. In fact, we didn’t have it all together, but “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Father God and Jesus did not hold back on showing love, goodness, kindness, and mercy even though we were showing disobedience, dishonor, hate, disregard, and sin towards them. Neither should we.
For whatever situation you are facing today, however you would want to be treated is how you ought to treat the people in the situation. Yeah, they might not deserve it. Neither did we nor do we now, but God has given it anyway. Stop waiting for people to change or do you right first. Grace and mercy was not just for God to give away and it stop there. If we received grace and mercy, we should be giving grace and mercy away too.
Today, let’s decide to come back to Jesus, to repent of pride and disobedience. Let’s agree with what God says and do it. That gift of grace and mercy you give away may be the thing that leads the other person to see Jesus and maybe decide to change and even choose to give Jesus their lives. In order for them to live their best life though, we must first start living our life like it’s “golden.” Follow the rule.
