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Everyday Saints Devotional 43

by David Joynt on February 13, 2022

Everyday Saints Devotional 43

LUKE 6:31 | 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Negative and positive commands are different in their character. Prohibitions proscribe limited and specific behaviors, which we must avoid. If the golden rule were put negatively it would be
rendered, “Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done to you!” We could easily generate from this one negative injunction a list of things to resist doing. We don’t like to be lied to or stolen from or attacked. So we have the corresponding rules; don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t attack someone.

But the positive form of the Golden Rule is much more open ended and unlimited and creative. We love to be helped, blessed,
encouraged, empowered, enabled. There are many ways to do each of these positive things.

Are you creative in the way you relate to others?

Tags: creative, others, relate

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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