The Hard Sayings: Luke 6:30

Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.

This article is part of a series explaining the sayings of Jesus that are hard to understand. This list was put together by the Lord's Library. To see the list an access earlier articles in this series, go to this page.

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Luke 6:30 is translated in a way that loses a lot of Jesus’s meaning and all of his plays on words. It adds ideas that he didn’t say at all.

Jesus spoke this line near the beginning of the Sermon on the Plains in Luke. This “sermon” echoes several of the topics and catchphrases from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. It occurs two verses after Luke 6:27, (“…Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,”) the topic of our previous Substack article. In Luke’s Gospel, this verse follows a version of “ turning the other cheek, Luke 6:29 (“If someone slaps you on one cheek…”). The modern versions of Luke 6:30 say:

NIV: Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.

• The words in boldface are explained in this article.

The second part of Luke 6:30 is surprisingly different than the better known version in Matthew. In Matthew, the second part was about loaning to those who want to borrow from us. This idea here is more shocking, which is what Jesus likes in his punchlines. But is it what we see in the English translactions?

The first surprise here is that this verse was addressed to an individual, not the group. We can tell this because the pronoun, “you” in Greek has different forms for the singular and plural. All the earlier verse were address to the whole audience except for the previous verse. This coincides with the change in topic. We see this change from plural to singular and back again commonly in these “sermons.” To me, it indicates that Jesus is answering a question asked from his audience. After he answers it, he goes back to addressing the group.

Everyone Asking

This verse has many contrasts. Jesus contrasts “everyone”, which is the Greek word that means “all,” with “anyone,” which is actually the word that means “the one” when not introducing a noun. This verse also contrasts a positive command with the negative one. Both commands are limited. The first is limited to those who “ask”. The second is limited to those who “take.” But the translation of these verbs into “ask” and “take” are misleading.

The Greek translated as "ask" means "asking for" something. It is better to translate this word consistently as "beg" to avoid confusion with a different Greek word meaning "ask a question." This is the first verb in Jesus’s formula of asking, seeking, and knocking (Luke 11:9 “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find…”). This “ask” is also the setup for the play on words at the end of the verse.

"Takes" is not the common Greek word usually translated as “take.” Instead, it is one of Christ's favorite "multiple meaning" words. It can mean “raise,” “exalt,” “lift up,” “elevate” or “remove.” It isn’t the common word meaning “take.” Whenever this word is used, listeners must decide its meaning from the context. Jesus makes a game of this. He uses this word in many ways, both positively and negatively. Jesus uses it to refer to what happens to him, both being raised from the dead and lifted up on the cross. The verb came to mean “stealing” as our "shoplifting," with the sense of stealing rather than taking something accidentally. This word is a participle introduced by a definite article, discussed in detail here. Jesus doesn’t use the common word meaning “anyone” but said “the one raising up,” “the one exalting,” or “the one stealing.”

Those Taking

We need more context to decide takes meaning, but the Greek doesn’t use words that the Gospel’s English does. The next phrase is so vague it can refer, literally, to any “thing.”

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