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Matthew 7:1-12

We are going to look at one of the most misunderstood and greatest words ever spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ. Overview. In this Sermon on the Mount, our Lord has touched on all the areas of a believer’s life. Jesus began with our perspective on self in the Beatitudes. How a Christian ought to be in Matthew 5:1-12.

Jesus moved on to our perspective on the world as a salt and light, Matthew 5:13-16. Jesus further spoke on our perspectives on the Word of God as immutable and unchanging, Matthew 5:17-20. Jesus preached on our perspective on the moral law or holiness that we are to have an inward commitment as well as an

external one. He spoke on 6 things which how the change needs to be internal in Matthew 5:21-48. Jesus spoke on our religious activity, giving, praying, and fasting. How not to be like the Pharisees on acting. Matthew 6:1-18.

Jesus then spoke our perspective on money, possessions, material goods and the kingdom. Matthew 6:19-34. Now Jesus deals with our relations with other people. ✓ Jesus spoke about our relations to ourselves, ✓ Jesus spoke about our relations to His Word, ✓ Jesus spoke about our relationship to God, ✓ Jesus spoke about our relations to the world, ✓ Jesus spoke about our relations to our relations to religious activity, ✓ Jesus spoke about our relations on our relations to the morality of the time and what God wants, ✓ Jesus is going to speak about our relationship to humans, right relationships.

There are things happening while Jesus delivers this wonderful discourse. The perspective here is given in contrast to the view of the scribes and the Pharisees.

• They were very involved in wrongful human relationships.
• The Lord sets it right here.

Contrasting Himself with them, He is unmasking the inadequacy of human religion, and reaffirming the fact that true religion comes only from God.

Matthew 7:1-12 Jesus deals with the human relationship. ➢ Matthew 7:1-6 Negative. ➢ Matthew 7:7-12 Positive.

• Matthew 7:1-6, What not to do.
• Matthew 7:7-12 What to do.

Today we will look at what to do.

Matthew 7:7-12, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. ⁹ Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? ¹¹ If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask

Him! ¹² Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. V 12, first part is the key. Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. Rest of the passage comments and relates to that great truth.

This truth is called the Mount Everest of ethics. Unquestionably, it is the supreme standard for all human relationships. We know it from childhood as expressed in terms of the Golden rule. “This truth settles a hundred different points. It prevents the necessity of laying down endless little rules for our conduct in specific cases.” Bishop Ryle This ethic really means is only possible to a believer because there is no capacity within the life of an unbeliever to function in this manner.

Matthew gospel gives us the Christian perspective that we are in a kingdom and God is our king.

God is a reigning, ruling, sovereign king, and we are the subjects of His kingdom. Matthew also points out the fact that we are also a family. ✓ The kingdom concept deals with rule, and ✓ The family concept deals with relationship.

On the Sermon on the Mount, we are dealing with relationship. We are dealing with relationships to people. Christian counterculture is not an individual value system and lifestyle, it is a community affair. It involves relationships We are a family.

Ephesians 2:19, Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, John in his gospel and in his epistles repeatedly say that we are children of God. Matthew has already informed us very clearly by the words of Jesus that God is our Father.

Matthew 6:9, In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.

We see not only the kingdom concept in Matthew, but within the rule and the reign and the kingdom, there is a relationship of a father to his children, and that has some very important ramifications. The two greatest realities in Christian truth are these: ➢ God is our Father, and ➢ Christians are our brothers.

This is the essential truth of Christianity.

Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and great commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Jesus said you can sum up all biblical revelation, you can sum up all divine data, and you can boil it down to the reality of two

things

✓ Relationship with the Father, and ✓ Relationship with brothers and sisters. We are a family.

God is our Father. Christians are our brothers and sisters. We have already seen how Jesus delineated the fatherhood of God and gave to it new dimensions of comprehension and understanding, and how it was always His favourite term for the Lord God.

We are coming to the second element of that great summation of all the law: the love of one another. The second great element. You can’t have the second element unless you have the first. Unless rightly related to God, it is impossible to fulfil this ethical standard in verse 12, utterly impossible.

This is consistent with the Old Testament. The summation of the law of God in the Old Testament is clear.

Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! ⁵ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

Leviticus 19:18, You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.

So, repeatedly, Old Testament and New Testament, God’s law is for a right relationship to Him as a Father and a right relationship to others as brothers in the faith. Those are the salient features of Christian truth. Our Lord is instructing us here as to how we are to love our neighbour, how we are to love each other.

V 12, “for this is the law and the prophets.” The whole law as it relates to mankind living in this world can be summed up by, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Or, another way to say it, “whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them.”

We are to love one another. Since God is our loving, caring Father, when that vertical relationship is right, the horizontal follows in its wake.

Matthew 7:1-12, is the climax of the main theme of the whole sermon. Jesus gives us a manifesto of living in His kingdom that is totally comprehensive. It deals with animate and inanimate objects.

It deals with people in the family, such as here, and people outside the family, such as earlier, in the salt and light passage. It deals with how we treat other people and perceive them: not criticizing, judging, and condemning.

It deals with how we treat us: self-examining, humility.

Matthew 7:1-12, we could take all biblical data relative to human relationships and boil it back to these twelve verses in summary fashion.

This is the marvel of the mind of Christ. He alone could so simplify the vast area of human relationships. The Lord is contrasting His standard with the standard of the day, which was basically the standard of the scribes and the Pharisees.

• They were wrong about self.
• They were wrong about the world.
• They were wrong about the law of God.
• They were wrong about morality.
• They were wrong about religion.
• They were wrong about money.
• They were wrong about possession.
• They were definitely wrong about human relationships.

They were self-righteous, egotistical, proud, bigots, who set themselves up in some elevated position and looked down their noses at everybody else. They were damning, condemning, and hypercritical to everybody around them.

They had violated the basic standard of human relationships, which the Lord reiterates right here. Jesus is making the effort to drive them to the desperation of saying, “We are unqualified to be in God’s kingdom.” When they reach that point, then they begin to respond in a right way.

It is after this passage, in verse 13, that He gives them the invitation.

Matthew 7:13, Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Invitation to enter through the narrow gate follows the main theme of the message.

The whole concept of Matthew 7:1-12, can be summed up in one statement: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” That is the law and the prophets.

Loving somebody has two sides

• Negative and
• Positive.

Loving somebody means you don’t do some things to them, and you do, do other things to them! That is why verses 1 to 6 is the negative and verses 7 to 12 is the positive. If you are to love your neighbour as yourself, if you are to love the way God wants you to love, if love is to rule our lives and love is to guide all our human interaction, then we must realize that love does not

• criticize,
• judge,
• condemn, and
• attack people

who don’t quite come up to our standard? We learnt it last week. But love is just more than not doing something. If somebody comes to you and says, “Do you love me?”

“I never did anything bad to you?” That doesn’t mean you love them. The absence of something doesn’t consummate love. Love is not only not doing some things, but also doing some other things. We have the balance in verses 7-12.

V 12, Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. We are to do as we would have them do. It doesn’t necessarily mean they did, or they will. In fact, we may know they won’t. But that doesn’t change what we should do.

Love doesn’t judge, Love doesn’t criticize, Love also reaches out, Love does to others what it would wish to be done to itself. Now this truth is really limited to the Bible. This rule was established by Jesus.

Human religions and human philosophies and human attitudes have come up with a negative concept along this line, but they never were able to turn the corner to the positive. If you study philosophy, various teachings, you will note that there is a negative kind of Golden Rule that appears in almost all systems of ethics.

The famous Hebrew rabbi, Hillel, had this negative principle. He said, “What is hateful to yourself, do not to someone else.” “Don’t do something to somebody that you wouldn’t want done to you.” The “don’t” principle. It’s a withholding or a refraining from doing it.

Confucius taught, “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” “ Nikoklis the Greek king: “Do not do to others the things which make you angry when you experience them at the hands of other people.” Epictetus, “What you avoid suffering yourself, don’t inflict on others.”

The Stoics, “What you do not want to be done to you, do not do to anyone else.” Now the whole world knows how to do not do, they just don’t know how to do! We can all withhold what is evil. We can find it in all kinds of systems of theology and religion and ethics. Basically, a revelation of the selfishness of man.

Do you want to know how to define man at his basic root? Selfish. Man is utterly, totally, hopelessly dominated by self! Because of that, he can come up with a principle like this: “Don’t do this to somebody, because if you do, they might do it to you.”

When you get mad at a person and you say to yourself, “I would like to take that guy.” You are not restrained out of love, in most cases. You are restrained because you have a nose too. You would pick a fight with anybody smaller than you.

We all have that kind of a tendency to be self-seeking, and so this becomes sort of a utilitarian, humanistic, self-serving negative principle. We don’t do certain things out of fear.

It’s the protection of self and the fear of retaliation. Selfishness and self-preservation. It knows nothing of selfless love. Selfless love is able to do, and to do, and to do what it wishes were done to it, even though it knows it never will be that way.

But the positive aspect is utterly impossible. To assume in your own heart what you would want the very most and do that for somebody else is beyond the purview of an unregenerate man.

2 Timothy 3:2-4, For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, ³ unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

When we put humanity under those definitions then we have got a real problem. They love themselves and they hate people who do good. Will this kind of a person is going to go around doing good to others? No. We may stumble on a good deed and do something. It may happen inadvertently. But it’ll never be a pattern of life.

Titus 3:3, For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. Men are hateful, hating one another.

Why? Because they are selfish. The negative ethic is compelled by fear. The positive ethic is compelled by love. Fear is common to man because he’s dominated by self- preservation. Love comes only from God. Why do you drive your car always carefully and under speed limit?

You don’t want to get sued for crashing into somebody. You don’t want to get caught by police. You drive out of fear! You avoid doing certain things. It is quite different than giving a ride in your car to someone who has a need to get somewhere.

That’s love.

Completely different than fear. The world in its ethics can restrain itself from doing certain things because of fear but will not find the power to do other things of a goodness nature, because it doesn’t have the love of God shed abroad in its heart. That demands the knowledge of Christ.

Men are unable because men are lovers of their own selves. But we as Christians certainly should not be characterized by that. We ought to get off the dime on self-preservation and start throwing ourselves away for the behalf of others.

Philippians 2:19-22, But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, that I also may be encouraged when I know your state. 20 For I have no one like-minded, who will sincerely care for your state. ²¹ For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus. ²² But you know his proven character, that as a son with his father he served with me in the gospel. Only Christ can change the basic nature.

This nature must come when the indwelling Spirit is planted within us. The fruit of the Spirit is love.

Man utterly, selfishly, hopelessly trapped in his sin, cannot express this marvellous ethic. But we as Christians better.

Romans 5:5, Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of

God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. If the fruit of the Spirit is love, if it’s there, and the command is there to “love one another as I have loved you,” and that’s repeated from one end of the Scripture to the other as a reality that should be existing in our lives, then we had better respond to that.

You determine in your own heart what you would want for you and do it for someone else. You have some needs. If you know somebody else that needs them too, then do it for them, not you. Do unto them what you would normally do for you.

That is utterly foreign to an unregenerate mind. They don’t know the meaning of self-sacrifice in that manner. It may appear on the surface to be self-sacrificing, but ultimately deep down there’s a self-seeking goal.

The goal may be to gain the affection of your peers, to gain a reputation, to make a name for yourself in society, to go down in history, etc, Free total selfless sacrificial giving for the sake of someone else what you would want for yourself is unknown in the world.

Everyone seeks his own.

Romans 3:10, As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; Jesus gives three reasons to obey and keep it.

1. The purpose of God

The purpose of God demands it. V 12, “For this is the law and the prophets.” This is the whole point of all the Scripture. This is the sum of the Old Testament. All the Ten Commandments is an expansion of two principles: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.

• you will not have any other gods before Him,
• you will not take His name in vain, and
• you will not desecrate the Sabbath day.

Second is love your neighbour as yourself.

• you will not kill,
• you will not covet,
• you will not lie,
• you will not steal, and
• you will not commit adultery.

All that does is expand that. The rest of the Bible comments on those things and expands those things.

James 2:8, If you really fulfil the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” you do well;

The same thing you would do for you, do for them. Identical!

Romans 13:8, Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.

When you love your neighbour as yourself, you have fulfilled all the law, because you are not going to kill him, steal, and cheat him.

Romans 13:9-10, For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not

covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” ¹⁰ Love does no harm to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.

Is the Bible so complex? So many verses.

How can we ever contain it? love is the fulfilment of the law That governs all human relations. Love has two parts. If you love your neighbour as yourself, there are some things you don’t do. You don’t condemn and criticize.

The negative side verses 1 to 6. You do what you would wish done to you. That’s the positive side verses 7 to 12. This is the whole reason for the whole revelation. This whole thing is wasted unless we are obedient to that.

So, the purpose of God would lead us to the word “obedient.”

Why should we live like this? Out of obedience.

1 Samuel 15:22, So Samuel said: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. 2. The promise of God.

The promise of demands it. V 12, “therefore” Back up to verses 7 to 11, which lead us into the principle. The illustration comes first in this case, in order that it might be a bridge from the first six verses. V 7- 8, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

• Ask,
• Seek, and
• Knock.

Here is the heart of the matter. We can feel free to give to others, We can feel free to do for others,

We are free to sacrifice for others, and We are free to love others, B12-14ecause we can be confident that in giving up all we have to someone else, we have an ultimate and eternal resource to replenish our own needs. The promise of God to me that what I ask for, seek for, and knock for will be given to me frees me up to bestow anything and everything I have on the one that has the need.

I can do to others what I would do for myself without fear of having nothing left, because all I must do is turn to my loving Father, who gives me bread for every day, and takes care of me in every way. This is that a far cry from the way we live.

We are so selfish and possessive. Look at this passage specifically. People have been confused about the order of this chapter, and they think a lot of these things are just kind of little titbits thrown in and they don’t have any connection.

A masterful presentation. The negative principle of human relations in V 1-5, Don’t judge.

Don’t criticize. Don’t be a gossiping, backbiting critic. The danger of that is that in not wanting to criticize, we may become gullible and vulnerable. Does that mean we are not supposed to reprove and rebuke a brother in sin?

No. Does it mean we are not supposed to discriminate and discern false prophets, false teachers, and apostates? No. V 5, Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Even though we are not to judge, we are to see clearly to cast a splinter out of our brother’s eye. We must go to fellow believers and see the sin in their life, and confront it, and do all we can to see them restored. We have to be careful we don’t throw holy things to dogs, and we don’t throw pearls to swine.

If we don’t judge and we don’t criticize, how are we going to know who the hogs and dogs are?

How are we also going to know about the sin in our brother’s eye? We have got to be discriminating.

Who is able to discriminate?

Who is able to judge?

Who is able to discern? Who is able to know when you have got somebody that you don’t want to throw your pearls to? Who is able to discern when you have someone there that you don’t want to give a holy thing to, because you know they will tramp it under their feet?

Who is it that’s able to see sin in a believer’s life, and lovingly go and restore that believer? It’s God! God alone who has that kind of discernment. The only place you are going to have to go for that information is down on your knees.

James 1:5, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

What God wants is a relationship!

Hence God gives us enough truth so that we are responsible, and enough mystery so that we are dependent. In dealing with spiritual issues the Word of God is the place we get the principle. If we had all the answers in the hip pocket, the relationship would suffer.

We have to ask, seek, and knock, and He reveals to us. The bridge is that the Spirit of God would have us see there. It helps us know how to get that splinter out of a brother’s eye, and how to be careful about giving holy things to dogs, and casting pearls before swine.

How can we be free to give to others? By knowing that God will give back to us what we need. Some people think verse 7 is a blank check. Here is my blank check, Lord. It’s all signed and delivered. Now unload on the bank of heaven there and get it on down to me.

V 7- 8, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

There are some other conditions!

• a) Child of God.

This is only good if you are a child of God. Otherwise, you have no relationship to Him, and God is not bound.

• b) Obedient child of God

1 John 3:22, And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.

When you are not obeying you are not receiving either.

• c) selfless motive.

You must have selfless motive in asking. If you ask to receive for yourself, forget it.

James 4:3, You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. All you want is to fulfil your own desire.

• d) Submission to the will of God.

1 John 5:14-15, Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.

These are three present imperatives

➢ keep on asking, ➢ keep on seeking, ➢ keep on knocking. They talk about a perseverance and a constancy. And they also have another little thought in them.

• Ask is very simple. A child does that. There’s no involvement in it, there’s no participation in it. You just ask.
• Seek is stronger than an asking. There’s a participation in it. At least you are moving your eyes.
• Knock, you are banging away. There’s a greater participation.

Even though we know everything comes from the Lord, that does not assume that we are not actively, aggressively, perseveringly involved in its fulfilment.

I don’t just sit at my office and say, “Lord, I want to preach a great sermon Sunday. Please, I ask you, give me a great sermon.” No, what I do is I ask the Lord all week for that, and then I seek that by going through the Word of God and reading and reading.

Why?

Why does God want us to persevere? Not because we have to bang away to get God to act but because the more, we are involved in the process, the greater the relationship becomes. The deeper, the richer, the more meaningful my communion with Him. Because God doesn’t want me to carry a hip pocket formula book, He wants me to have a vital relationship with Him, and He does the kind of things that throw me into that relationship in a wholesale fashion.

Why am I willing to do that? Because I know that whatever I may give away of myself, and whatever good things I may do to others, I know God will replenish my own supply. So, I do it not only because of the purpose of God to be obedient to the law and the prophets, but I do it because it is basically to fulfil the promise of God, that He will meet my needs.

I do it out of gratitude! 3. The pattern of God.

Ephesians 5:1, Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. Walk as God walks. Conduct your life the way God does. If I go around the world saying I’m a child of God, then there ought to be something of me that manifests something of Him. People say my younger son look likes me exactly. Not only do they look like us and they are like us. If I claim to be a child of God, there ought to be some resemblance of Him. V 9-10, Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? Bread, it looked like the same exact as those little limestones that you find on the shoreline of Israel. A father could deceive his child. Would a loving father give him a little rock?

The answer is, “Of course not.” A fish was a clean animal, according to ceremonial law, and a fish could be eaten. God said that was all right. But an eel and a snake were unclean animals, they could not be eaten.

Leviticus 11:12, Whatever in the water does not have fins or scales—that shall be an abomination to you. Would a father purposely make his son violate the law of God? No. He is not going to give him an unclean animal. Some people think that that means a snake that would bite him. No.

The assumption is that it’s cooked. Cooked snakes don’t bite. The idea is the uncleanness of it. A father will not purposely deceive his son. He will not purposely defile his son. And, finally, he won’t purposely destroy his son, either.

Luke 11:12, Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? Scorpions when they tuck their legs and their claws underneath and sleep, they look exactly like an egg from the top.

If the son asks his father for an egg, is his father going to give that which not only deceives him and defiles him, but destroys him? No father would do that. V 11, “If ye then, being evil,” There is one of the greatest statements made from the beginning to the end of the Bible on the fallen nature of man.

Even when he does good things to his children, he does not override the basic evil nature. You are evil when you even give a good gift to your child, like

• bread,
• fish, and
• egg.

Basic substance. But if you, with an evil, vile, fallen, corrupt, and sinful nature, do that much out of a sense of parental love. V 11, If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

How much more?

Luke 11:13, If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” If evil, unregenerate, sinful fathers give their kids the basics of life, don’t you think God will do that?

God is the absolute giving Father, who gives to all what they need, knowing full well they could never give back to Him anything in kind or measure. If that is the way He is, then the way we as His children should be toward others.

His purpose demands it. It’s the whole reason for the law. His promise frees us up to do it, because He will replenish everything that we do for others. His pattern is this way to us. How can we say we are His children and do less for others?

V 12, Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. God isn’t like other deities. The Greeks had their stories about their gods who answered men’s prayers.

Aurora was the goddess of the dawn. She fell in love with Tithonus. Tithonus was a mortal youth. Zeus, who was the king of the gods, offered her any gift that she might choose for her mortal lover. She asked Zeus for a gift to give this mortal lover. Very naturally, she chose that Tithonus should live forever. In other words, she wanted immortality for him so they could stay together forever.

But she had forgotten to ask that Tithonus might remain forever young. According to the mythology, Tithonus grew old forever, without ever being able to die. The Greeks saw gods that played tricks and brought curses. Our God is not so, not so.

We ask, He gives, He gives what is best and never deceives. He is our pattern, and with that pattern we are to give to others out of love. But the problem is this: basically, we are evil. Even when we become Christians, we still have sin in us.

The fight for selfishness dominates our lives. We need to be broken in our hearts, that we might be unselfish toward others.

The Golden Rule The last instruction given here is commonly identified as the Golden Rule. Jesus tells me that I should treat other people the way that I want to be treated myself. All too often I focus on how I am not treated the way I would like to be.

But rather than be put out by that, I should take it as an opportunity to learn how I should be treating others. If I don’t like it being done to me, then I should not do it to others. On the other hand, if I like the way I am being treated, it should tell me how I should be treating others.