Golden Rule

The rule of reciprocity — that one's treatment of the neighbor is to be calibrated by what one would have done to oneself — runs as a single thread from the Levitical holiness code through the wisdom literature into the preaching of Jesus and the apostolic summations of the law. The shape of the command is consistent: the agent's own wish, his own self-honor, and his own list of distastes are the measure that he must extend outward.

Love Your Fellow Man as Yourself

The foundational formulation is planted in the Holiness Code, immediately behind a prohibition on private vengeance: "You will not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people; but you will love your fellow man as yourself: I am Yahweh" (Lev 19:18). The command pairs the negative — no settled grudge, no retaliatory act — with the positive imperative to love the neighbor on the same terms as the self, and the whole is grounded in the divine self-identification I am Yahweh. The measure is set inside the agent: his own self-regard becomes the gauge for his treatment of the people around him.

Do to Others as You Would Have Them Do to You

Jesus states the rule in positive form: "And as you⁺ would that men should do to you⁺, do⁺ to them likewise" (Luke 6:31). The plural-you mark shows that the command is delivered to a hearing community, not to an isolated moralist; each disciple is to do what he himself would wish. The rule is not a calculation of what others have done — it operates upstream of any provocation. It asks what the agent would want and binds him to extend that treatment outward, regardless of how he has been treated in fact.

The Table and the Distaste-List

The sage of Sirach grounds the same rule in the rough specificity of a shared meal: "Honor your neighbor as yourself, And think over whatever may be distasteful to you" (Sir 31:14). The honor-as-yourself imperative matches the Levitical measure — the neighbor is honored on the scale of the agent's own self-honor. The second clause adds a deliberative probe: before acting, recall what one would not wish done to oneself, and refuse to extend that. The setting is the table — the greedy snatch, the discourteous reach, the slighting word are the conduct one would resent receiving and must therefore decline to inflict.

The Whole Law Summed Up

Paul, twice, treats the neighbor-love command as the summation of the whole law. To the Romans: "For this, You will not commit adultery, You will not kill, You will not steal, You will not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, namely, You will love your fellow man as yourself" (Rom 13:9). To the Galatians, more compactly still: "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, [even] in this: You will love your fellow man as yourself" (Gal 5:14). The particular prohibitions of the Decalogue do not stand as a flat list of unrelated rules; they are gathered up under a single positive word, which is the Levitical neighbor-command quoted verbatim. Loving the neighbor as oneself is not one obligation alongside the others — it is the shape that obedience to all of them takes.