Luke 6:38

Look at where you are in the sentence before you even get to the giving. Jesus just said "give to everyone who asks" and "do not demand it back" ( Luke 6:30) and told you to love your enemies expecting nothing in return. Verse 38 is the payoff line to that whole run of hard commands. He's not talking about tithing or church offerings here — he's talking about the reckless, no-strings generosity of loving people who can never repay you.

The picture he uses is a grain market. Imagine a merchant filling your basket: he pours in the grain, then presses it down to make room for more, then shakes the basket so it settles even tighter, then keeps pouring until it's spilling over the top and into the fold of your robe you're using as a bag Tyndale. That's four separate verbs — pressed down, shaken together, running over — piled up to say: not a fair measure, not even a generous measure, but an absurdly overflowing one.

Then comes the sting in the tail: "with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you." This isn't a magic formula for getting rich by giving money away — that's a distortion of the verse you'll hear from certain preachers, and it's worth naming plainly: Jesus isn't promising a financial return on investment. He's describing how God relates to the generous heart versus the stingy, grudging one. The same line shows up almost word for word in Matthew 7:2, but there it's about judgment, not giving — which tells you this was a saying Jesus used more than once, in more than one context, and the principle underneath it is bigger than money: whatever posture you take toward others — generous or tightfisted, merciful or harsh — that's the posture you'll find coming back at you, ultimately from God himself.

Where this sits in Luke: it caps his version of the Sermon on the Plain ( Luke 6:20-49), Luke's parallel to Matthew's Sermon on the Mount — Jesus redefining what blessing and reward actually look like in the upside-down kingdom he's announcing.

Luke wrote his Gospel probably in the AD 60s-80s, most likely for a Gentile audience represented by "Theophilus" ( Luke 1:3) — someone who needed the Jewish story of Jesus explained carefully, without assuming background knowledge. This particular sermon, though, is Jesus speaking much earlier, probably in the early 30s AD, to a crowd on a level stretch of ground somewhere in Galilee, packed with his twelve newly-chosen apostles, disciples, and ordinary people who'd walked from as far as Tyre and Sidon to be healed ( Luke 6:17-19).

The image Jesus reaches for — a merchant measuring out grain — would have been instantly familiar to everyone listening. Grain was currency in that world; it was how you fed your family through the year, how you paid debts, how you knew whether you'd survive a bad harvest. Buying grain at market meant watching the seller's hands like a hawk, because a dishonest measure (a basket with a false bottom, or one that wasn't shaken down properly) was one of the oldest tricks for cheating the poor — which is exactly why the Law had warned against "differing measures" as detestable to God (see the warnings behind Proverbs' repeated concern for honest dealing, echoed in Proverbs 22:9's picture of the generous man). Everyone in that crowd had either been cheated by a stingy measure or had haggled for a generous one. Jesus takes that everyday, slightly tense marketplace moment and turns it into a picture of how God deals with the generous heart.

This teaching also stands squarely inside a much older Jewish stream of thought: Deuteronomy 15:10 had already promised that God blesses the open-handed giver, and Proverbs 19:17 had already said that kindness to the poor is effectively a loan you make to God himself, who repays it. Jesus isn't inventing a new idea; he's turning up the volume on something Israel's wisdom tradition had been saying for centuries, and sharpening it against the backdrop of religious leaders who had a reputation for tight-fisted, careful, self-protective righteousness.

The verb δίδωμι (dídōmi, G1325) — "to give" — anchors the whole verse, appearing at the very start as a command and then twice more in different forms as the passive result: it will be given. Greek loves to do this — start with the human action and let the grammar itself show you the response coming back Strong's.

The word for the standard being measured is μέτρον (métron, G3358), where we get our word "meter" — it just means a measured amount, a portion. But watch the verbs stacked around it: πιέζω (piézō, G4085), "to pack down," and σαλεύω (saleúō, G4531), "to shake, to agitate" — the same word used elsewhere for things being violently shaken or toppled — and then ὑπερεκχύνω (hyperekchýnō, G5240), a compound built from "over" (hypér) plus "pour out," meaning to overflow Strong's. That last word is rare and vivid — it's not just "full," it's spilling past the brim, running down the sides.

Notice too the quality word: καλός (kalós, G2570) describes the measure as "good." The Strong's notes point out something worth sitting with: Greek actually has two different words for "good" — kalós, which leans toward what's beautiful, fitting, admirable to look at, and agathós (a different word entirely), which leans toward what's intrinsically, morally good Strong's. Jesus picks kalós here — the measure God gives isn't just technically sufficient, it's beautiful, generous to behold, the kind of gift that makes you catch your breath.

And κόλπος (kólpos, G2859) — "bosom" or "lap" — pictures the loose fold of a robe used as a makeshift sack, the most personal, close-to-the-body place you could receive something Strong's Adam Clarke.

Here's the quiet but real thread: everything Jesus commands in this verse, he does first — and does infinitely. He is the ultimate giver who withheld nothing, who "though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor" ( 2 Corinthians 8:9), pouring himself out — the same overflow language, really — not measured, not calculated, not demanding repayment from people who could never pay him back. The cross is the picture of pressed-down, shaken-together, running-over giving taken to its limit: God did not ration his mercy to fit what we deserved.

And notice the measure that gets measured back to us isn't ultimately grain — in the gospel, it's grace. Paul will pick up almost this exact shape of thought in Ephesians 1:7-8, where he says God lavished — poured out — his grace on us "with all wisdom and understanding." The Father doesn't measure out forgiveness to Jesus in stingy portions and Jesus doesn't measure it out stingily to you. If you want to know what the "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over" actually looks like when God is the one giving it, look at the cross and the empty tomb — that is God's answer to the question "how generous will you be with me?"

There's also a warning tucked in here that lands squarely on Jesus's own teaching about judgment: Matthew 7:2 uses this same "measure for measure" principle about how we judge others, and James 2:13 says "judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful." Jesus, who showed mercy without limit, is also the one who will one day be the measure by which every unmerciful heart is finally measured. So this verse isn't just a warm promise — it's also, quietly, a preview of the last judgment, where the King who gave everything asks whether you gave anything at all.

Be honest with yourself for a second: when you read "give, and it will be given to you," what did your gut do? Did it perk up like you'd just found a formula — give more, get more back? That instinct is worth catching and killing, because that's not what Jesus is offering you here. He's not running a vending machine where generosity is the coin you insert to get blessing to drop out. He's describing the character of the God you belong to, and inviting you to start resembling him.

The cost this verse asks of you is specific: stop keeping score. Stop calculating whether the person asking you for time, money, patience, or forgiveness "deserves" it or will ever pay you back. That's the whole context Jesus builds in the verses right before this one — love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, lend expecting nothing back ( Luke 6:35). The measure you use on other people — grudging or generous, suspicious or trusting, tight-fisted or open-handed — Jesus says that's the measure that comes back to define your own life, and ultimately the measure by which you'll be met.

So ask yourself plainly: where in your life right now are you using a stingy measure? With your money, sure — but also with your forgiveness, your attention, your willingness to believe the best about somebody who's disappointed you. God isn't asking you to be generous so he'll owe you. He's asking you to be generous because that's what it looks like to actually belong to him — because he has already, at the cross, poured out on you a measure so overflowing it spilled into the fold of your own robe. Give like someone who has already been given everything. That's the only motive this verse can survive on.

• Lord, show me the places where I've been calculating instead of giving — where I've been keeping a ledger with people instead of loving them freely.
• Thank you for the overflowing, pressed-down measure of mercy you poured out on me at the cross when I had nothing to offer back.
• Give me the courage to give — my time, my money, my forgiveness — to someone who can never repay me this week.
• Search my heart for stinginess disguised as caution or wisdom, and soften whatever is tight-fisted in me.
• Help me remember, when I'm tempted to judge someone harshly, that the measure I use on them is the measure I'm asking you to use on me.

• Think of the last time you gave something away — money, time, forgiveness. Were you keeping score, even a little, on whether it would come back to you?
• Who in your life right now would you call "unable to pay you back"? How do you actually treat them?
• Where has your measure toward other people — your patience, your grace, your generosity — been noticeably tighter than the measure God has used on you?
• If God measured back to you exactly the mercy you've shown others this month, would you be relieved or afraid?
• What would it cost you, specifically, this week, to give in a way that's "pressed down, shaken together, running over" instead of careful and calculated?