Although the "Golden Rule" sounds to me like a friend's advice not to eat at a certain Chinese Restaurant, in truth the Rule is probably Jesus' best known teaching from the four gospels in your New Testament. "Do to others as you would have them do to you."
I confess I like this more nuanced interpretation of the Greek from Donald Hagner, a scholar on the gospel of Matthew: "Therefore everything you would like others to do to you, you yourselves do to them." That version brings out a sense of going first, of stepping up, leaning in to relationships first instead of always leaning out and waiting for others to take a chance. Any time a teacher looks at the group you are in and uses a reflexive pronoun, pay attention. "You yourselves!"
In other words, if you want love, then love. If you want respect, then respect. If you want healing from a past wrong, then get busy following Jesus and liberally work his healing balm into the wounds of the world around you. I hear this subtext of the Golden Rule as Jesus saying this disciples, "If you want to follow me, then love others first and you will learn to let go of the need for them to love you back as a second." Perhaps the fruit of Jesus-Golden-Rule living is, perhaps, not the sacrifice of letting go of things we want for ourselves ... but the freedom not to need them so much in the first place.
