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Mat_7:12. At this point Jesus takes a retrospective glance at all that He has been saying since Mat_5:17,—beginning with Moses and the prophets,—concerning our duty to our neighbour, but introducing, indeed, many other instructions and exhortations. But putting out of view such matters as are foreign to His discourse, He now recapitulates all that has been said on the duties we owe to our neighbour, so that οὖν points back to Mat_5:17. The correctness of this view is evident from the following: οὗτος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ νόμος , etc., from which it further appears that οὖν does not merely refer back to Mat_5:1-5 (Kuinoel, Neander, Baumgarten-Crusius). As Luther well observes: “With those words He concludes the instructions contained in those three chapters, and gathers them all into one little bundle.” Fritzsche is somewhat illogical when he says that οὖν generalizes the conclusion from οἴδατε δόματα … τέκνοις ὑμῶν , which proposition, however, was a mere lemma. Ewald thinks that Mat_7:12 is here in its wrong place, that its original position was somewhere before ἀγαπᾶτε , Mat_5:44, and might still be repeated after Mat_5:48; according to Bleek and Holtzmann, founding on Luk_6:31, its original position was after Mat_5:42. But it is precisely its significant position as a concluding sentence, along with its reference to the law and the prophets, that Luke has taken away from it. Comp. Weiss. On θέλειν ἵνα , see note on Luk_6:31.
οὕτω ] not for ταῦτα , as if the matter were merged in the manner (de Wette), but in such a manner, in this way, corresponding, that is, to this your θέλειν .
The truth of this Christian maxim lies in this, that the words ὅσα ἂν θέλητε , etc., as spoken by Jesus, and, on the ground of His fulfilment of the law ( οὖν ), which presupposes faith in Him, can only mean a willing of a truly moral kind, and not that of a self-seeking nature, such as the desire for flattery.
οὗτος , etc.] for this is the sum of moral duty, and so on.
For parallels from profane writers, see Wetstein; Bab. Schabb. f. 31. 1 : “Quod tibi ipsi odiosum est, proximo ne facias; nam haec est tota lex.” But being all of a negative character, like Tob_4:15, they are essentially different from the present passage. For coincidences of a more meagre kind from Greek writers, see Spiess, Logos Spermat. p. 24.