Matthew 7:10

Jesus gives three commands, and each comes with its own promise: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” To ask, aitéō, is the ordinary word for making a request, the kind a person in need brings to someone able to help, and so asking owns our dependence on the one we ask. To seek, zētéō, is to look for something with effort, to search and enquire, and in prayer it means pursuing God’s will, his truth and his presence. To knock, kroúō, is to rap on a door, the act of someone who stands at the threshold and wants to be let in.

The three build on one another. Asking is a request, seeking adds an earnest search, and knocking pictures someone at a closed door who keeps on until it opens. All three commands are present imperatives in Greek, a tense that speaks of ongoing action, so the sense is “keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking”. Jesus is describing a steady habit of coming to God, and he teaches the same thing in the parable of the widow who kept coming back to the judge until she was heard (Luke 18:1–8).

Each promise is as sure as its command. “It shall be given” and “it shall be opened” are passive, which points to God as the one who gives and opens, and “ye shall find” assures the seeker that the search will end in discovery. The God who tells us to ask has already said that he will answer. Jeremiah heard the same promise long before: “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). Paul tells believers to make their requests known to God in everything by prayer (Philippians 4:6), and Luke records Jesus giving these very words in his own teaching on prayer (Luke 11:9–10).

The picture of knocking was familiar to Jesus’s hearers. A house was secured by its door, and to knock was to ask for entry and to expect a welcome from the one inside. Luke’s parable of the friend who comes at midnight, when the door is already shut, shows the same scene, and the friend gets what he asks for because he persists (Luke 11:5–8).

Verse 8 gives the reason for the commands. It opens with gár, “for”, the word that introduces the reason for what precedes, and the reason is a promise for all: “For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” The commands of verse 7 now become statements of what always happens. Asking (aitéō) is met by receiving (lambánō), seeking (zētéō) by finding (heurískō), and knocking (kroúō) by opening (anoígō). The verbs for asking, seeking and knocking are present participles here, “the one who keeps on asking”, and they describe the settled habit of a person who prays. “It shall be opened” is passive again, because the opening is done by the one inside.

“Every one”, pâs, makes the promise as wide as it can be. It belongs to every person who comes to God in this way, as wide as the kingdom’s invitation, which Jesus later sends out to all nations (Matthew 28:19–20).

To show why we can ask with confidence, Jesus turns to something every listener knew: “Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?” The “Or”, ḗ, leads into an illustration of what he has just said. “Of you” is ek hymōn, “from among you”, so the question is put to each listener, who could answer it from his own life as a father or a son. The word eán, “if”, sets up the case: a son asks his father for bread.

Bread, ártos, was the staple food of Galilee and Judaea, the most basic food of every day, and to give bread to a hungry son was the plainest act of a father’s love and duty. A stone, líthos, is simply a stone, useless as food and even harmful. The verb for give here is epidídōmi, to hand over or deliver, the act of putting something into the son’s hand. The question carries its own answer, and every listener would give it at once.

The second case makes the point sharper: “Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?” The Greek joins it to the first with kai ean, “and if”, so the two cases stand side by side. Fish, ichthýs, was a common and wholesome food, especially around the Sea of Galilee, where fishing was a main trade. A serpent, óphis, is a snake, and in most of its New Testament uses, as here, the word means the animal itself. Jesus’s hearers knew snakes as dangerous and often deadly, and they also connected them with evil and deception, going back to the serpent in Eden (Genesis 3:1). A stone gives a hungry son nothing to eat, and a serpent would harm him.

Jesus asks these as questions so that his hearers reach the conclusion themselves. Even the most ordinary father gives his hungry child what he needs and protects him from harm. Luke records the same comparison (Luke 11:11–13), and in both Gospels it leads straight to the argument of verse 11, which moves from the father at home to the Father in heaven.

Verse 11 draws the conclusion: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” The “if”, ei, states something everyone knows to be true, that parents give their children good things. From there Jesus argues from the lesser to the greater, a way of reasoning often called a fortiori. “How much more” is pósos mâllon: pósos asks how much, and mâllon means more, to a greater degree. If sinful parents give good gifts, then the Father, who is perfectly good, wise and loving, will surely give good things to those who ask him. The whole verse is a question, and it leaves the hearer to say for himself how generous God is.

The same verb, dídōmi, “to give”, is used for both givers, the parents and the Father, so the comparison is direct. The word for good, agathós, means good in every sense, what is beneficial, wholesome and right, and it describes both the “good gifts” of parents and the “good things” of God. When God gives good things, they are good in the fullest way, in line with his will and truly good for the one who receives them. The verb “ask” at the end is aitéō, the word of verse 7, so the verse ties back to the command it supports.

Scripture speaks of God’s giving this way again and again. “No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11). “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17). Paul assures the Philippians that God will supply all their need (Philippians 4:19). God was known as Father in Israel’s faith before Jesus spoke these words, and here Jesus shows him as a Father close at hand and supremely generous, one we can come to with the confidence of beloved children.

Verse 12 begins a new paragraph in the KJV, and it opens with “Therefore”: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” The Greek oûn is a particle of consequence, marking what follows as drawn from what came before. Because the Father is good to us and gives good things to those who ask, his children are to show the same goodness to others. The rule flows out of the promise. This verse also gathers up the sermon’s teaching on how we treat people, including the warning about judging in Matthew 7:1–5, and puts it into one rule we can act on.

The word “would” is thélō, to wish, desire or choose. Jesus asks us to start from what we ourselves want from others, the kindness, fairness, respect and help we hope for, and to make that the measure of how we act toward them. “All things whatsoever” reaches every part of life, so that every dealing with another person comes under this rule. “Do ye even so to them” is a command to act, and to act first. We are to begin the kindness and fairness ourselves, without waiting for others to show it to us.

This is the Golden Rule, and Jesus gives it great weight: “for this is the law and the prophets.” The law, nómos, is the law God gave through Moses, the commandments and statutes given to Israel, and “the law and the prophets” was the common way of naming the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus says that all their teaching about how we treat one another comes to this. Earlier in the same sermon he said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17), and here he shows the heart of what he came to fulfil.

The rule stands on the command of Leviticus, “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18), which Jesus later names as the second great commandment, next to love for God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30–31). Paul says the same: “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:8–10), and “all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Galatians 5:14). The Golden Rule belongs to the greater righteousness Jesus asks of his disciples in this sermon, a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees because it comes from a heart shaped by God’s own character.

Everything in this passage meets in Jesus. He is the door: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (John 10:9). He is also the only way to the one we ask: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). When we knock, it is through him that the door to the Father opens. At his death the veil of the temple was torn in two (Matthew 27:51), and Hebrews speaks of the new and living way into the holiest that he opened for us through his flesh (Hebrews 10:19–20). He promised that whatever we ask in his name he will do (John 14:13–14), and through faith in him we become children of God and heirs of the promise (Galatians 3:26–29). The “your Father” of verse 11 is ours in Christ.

Jesus lived this way himself. He sought the will of the Father who sent him (John 5:30) and prayed with great earnestness in Gethsemane (Luke 22:41–44). He was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24), and he still stands at the door and knocks, offering fellowship to any who will open (Revelation 3:20).

He is also the Father’s best gift. A son asks his father for bread, and Jesus calls himself the bread of life (John 6:35), who satisfies our deepest hunger. He offers living water (John 4:10). “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). Jesus trusted the Father’s provision to the end, laying down his life of his own accord (John 10:18), and through him the Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask.

Christ lived out the Golden Rule perfectly. He showed compassion to the lowly, healed the sick and forgave sinners, even those who scorned him, and on the cross he did for us what we could never do for ourselves: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). So the rule comes to believers with his own words, “love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34–35), and with the love the Holy Spirit grows in us as his fruit (Galatians 5:22–23).

This passage gives you every reason to pray boldly and to keep on praying. Bring your needs, your questions and your deepest longings to God, and expect him to answer as a good Father, whose answers are always good even when they differ from what you asked. When you ask, you own your dependence on him. When you seek, you show your desire for his wisdom and presence. When you knock, you trust him to open doors that only he can open. If an answer is slow in coming, you can keep coming to him, because the waiting refines your character, clarifies your desires and draws you nearer to the Father.

The same generosity is meant to flow out from you. Before you speak or act, you can ask how you would want to be treated in the other person’s place, and then do that. It means being the first to show kindness, to forgive, to understand and to act with integrity, at home, at work and in your community, and also with people who are difficult, different from you or hostile toward you. The Father who gives good things to you is the reason, and the love of Christ poured into your heart by the Spirit is the strength for it.