“God’s acts of love toward humans are acts of gracious generosity, of undeserved kindness to which no rights are correlated. God expects of covenantal communities the same extraordinary generosity.
Hear, then, Jesus’ appeal to his disciples to practice extraordinary generosity: “If anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles” [Matt. 5:40-41]…The generosity of the second mile is a duty the Christian should deliver even though the neighbor has no right to it…
Clearly, unmerited generosity of this sort presupposes that Jesus’ disciples possess a character of faith, hope, and love that predisposes them to mercy and forgiveness and not to vengeance and retribution; a character whose habits invite emotions, like gentleness and compassion, that inspire acts of kindness for which the aggressor can claim no right.
What is extraordinary about Christian generosity, then, is that no rights correlate to its acts and when this is the case such acts may very well benefit a wrongdoer. The generosity Jesus showed toward the woman caught in adultery was extraordinary because the grace of merciful forgiveness was directed toward one who was clearly a wrongdoer and deserving of punishment…
The merciful generosity with which God has redeemed the faithful is the same generosity with which the faithful are to redeem the world…By undertaking projects of extraordinary kindness especially toward the undeserving, a covenantal community bears into the world the same extraordinary grace whereby God in Christ redeems and reconciles the world and establishes a kingdom of peace.”
James E. Gilman, Fidelity of Heart: An Ethic of Christian Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) 84-86.