The Most Important Thing I Ever Learned about Successful Living

I now tell you the most important thing I ever learned about successful living. I am excited about this opportunity to share—with God’s help—this message with you.

Please relax and enjoy my story of discovery. I speak of what is called “The Golden Rule.” You may already understand and live by this message. If you haven’t discovered it yet, this may be one of the most important days in your life. 

Come with me to make a discovery that changed my life. It may change your life! Let me read to you what Professor William Barclay says about it because now I think he nails what I have come to believe. Here is what he said:

“This is probably the most universally famous thing that Jesus ever said. This is something that had never been said before. It is a new teaching. A new view of life and of life’s obligations.”

Then Barclay quotes all those ancient philosophers: the Chinese, the Romans, the Greeks, the Jews, all the people who quote the rule of “doing no harm.” Professor Barclay then explains that this rule in its negative form is in fact the basis of ethical teaching. But, he continues,

No one but Jesus has ever put it in a positive form. Many voices have said, “Do not do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you,” but no voice ever said, “do to others what you would want them to do unto you.”

There is a world of difference between not doing something harmful to somebody and actively doing good for them. 

Professor Barclay sums it up this way:

“To obey this commandment, a man must become a new man, with a new center to his life, and if the world was composed of people who sought to obey this rule, it would be a new world.”

That’s the position I take. It’s that big. Yes, it is life changing. World changing.

My story of discovery began at the 22nd chapter of Matthew, verse 36. Come with me!

“Teacher, what is the Great Commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the First and Great Commandment. The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor, as you do yourself. On these two commandments, hang all of the law and the prophets.” 

The “law” he is talking about, of course, originated when God Himself was dealing with the nation of Israel and establishing His approved worship.