This is the Golden Rule. It comes as the capstone, and final command, that concludes the messages taught in verses 1–11.
Verses 1 and 2 set the basic commandment about judging with care.
Verses 3–5 gave an example of where we might withhold judgment and exercise charity.
Verse 6 demonstrates a time when judgment needed to be used in ways that recognized that not all are righteous.
Verses 7–8 tells us to turn to God to understand what we need to know. In context, it is to understand how to judge in all situations.
Verses 9–11 comforts those asking, that they might know that God will respond to them favorably.
Finally, verse 12 gives us God’s guideline. We might need more specific guidelines for some occasions, such as those listed in verse 6, but as a rule of thumb, the “measure” for how we are to judge is: “whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” Jesus declares that this message encapsulates “the law and the prophets.” We remember, with this phrase, Jesus’s declaration: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfil” (3 Nephi 12:17. Matthew 5:17).