Luke 6:31 – Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Luke 6:31 is a striking illustration of the design and aim of Luke’s gospel. It shows that Jesus was not a mere man but was the Son of God, born in a special way by grace, and that He had all His own to bring in His person all the promises which He had made to Israel.
He was to take up the old law and to make it the basis of all His teachings. In this sense it was especially fitting that Luke should let us see, in the light of this great moral groundwork, how God, in bringing in His Messiah, made Himself ready to fulfill all His promises, and how He had a high esteem for His chosen nation.
In this case the Gentile centurion was led to respect the Jews in a place which he had long held to them. He showed a feeling of gratitude for their fidelity to the laws of their nation; he did not scorn them for their low estate, but manifested a real love and esteem for them, which they had remembered and held close; yea, so far from showing the usual Gentile self-complacency, he manifested an actual faith and reverence for their God.
This is the first of two incidents in the Gospel, which show the opposition to the Lord’s work rapidly coming out into the open. The other is in verse 16, where the disciples plucked the ears of corn on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees made a complaint against them. The Pharisees said that this was not a sin; but Jesus told them that the Sabbath was made for man and not for man for the Sabbath. The disciples, however, did not know this, and were therefore guilty of a crime.
