Moreover, not only does the Holy Spirit constantly urge us to obey the Golden Rule; it is also true that God will continue to do this with us even though we may grow tired of the process and want to settle for less.
C. S. Lewis gives an excellent illustration of this principle in Mere Christianity. He writes,
When I was a child I often had a toothache, and I knew that if I went to my mother she would give me something which would deaden the pain for that night and let me get to sleep. But I did not go to my mother—at least, not till the pain became very bad. And the reason I did not go was this. I did not doubt she would give me the aspirin; but I knew she would do something else. I knew she would take me to the dentist next morning. I could not get what I wanted out of her without getting something more, which I did not want. I wanted immediate relief from pain; but I could not get it without having my teeth set permanently right. And I knew those dentists; I knew they started fiddling about with all sorts of other teeth which had not yet begun to ache. They would not let sleeping dogs lie; if you gave them an inch they took an ell.
Now, if I may put it that way, our Lord is like the dentists. If you give Him an inch, He will take an ell…that is why He warned people to “count the cost” before becoming Christians. “Make no mistake,” He says, “If you let Me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see the job through…I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect—until my Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with Me.”1
What Lewis, the great twentieth-century apologist, says in that quotation about God’s intention to “see the job through” is absolutely right. It is an expression of Philippians 1:6, “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” God will not quit. Hence, the Golden Rule (as well as all of the Sermon on the Mount) is as much a statement of where God is taking the Christian as it is a standard by which the goodness of the natural man is judged. What will it be? Will you flail away at that or some other standard, and be judged by it? Or will you surrender to Christ, letting God enter your life and remake you into His image? If you let Him, He will turn you into the kind of being who really will think first of others and will reflect back to God, like a pure mirror, some of His own limitless glory, power, love, and goodness. The process may be painful at times, but it will be certain. And you will not miss the goal.
1C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 157-158.
