You asked

what were the cultural expectations around generosity in the roman world compared to this command?

The passage, plainly, with room to sit with it.

Luke 6:30-31

“Give to everyone who asks you, and don’t ask him who takes away your goods to give them back again. “As you would like men to do to you, do likewise to them.”

This passage is part of Jesus' sermon in Luke's Gospel, often called the Sermon on the Plain. Here, Jesus is teaching his disciples and a large crowd about radical love, generosity, and forgiveness, urging them to live by a different standard than the world around them.

How might this command to give without expectation of return challenge modern understandings of charity or fair exchange?

Then — the setting

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Across the Testaments

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Around the passage

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Where readings differ

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Keep thinking

Read alongside it

Matthew 5:42
Jesus also teaches to give to those who ask and not to turn away from those who want to borrow.
2 Corinthians 9:7
Paul encourages cheerful giving, not under compulsion, echoing a spirit of willing generosity.
Proverbs 19:17
This proverb connects generosity to the poor with lending to the Lord, who will repay.

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