The Quran

يا أَيُّهَا الَّذينَ آمَنوا إِذا ناجَيتُمُ الرَّسولَ فَقَدِّموا بَينَ يَدَي نَجواكُم صَدَقَةً ۚ ذٰلِكَ خَيرٌ لَكُم وَأَطهَرُ ۚ فَإِن لَم تَجِدوا فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ غَفورٌ رَحيمٌ

Muhammad Asad

O YOU who have attained to faith! Whenever you [intend to] consult the Apostle, offer up something in charity on the occasion of your consultation:¹ this will be for your own good, and more conducive to your [inner] purity. Yet if you are unable to do so,² [know that,] verily, God is much-forgiving,a dispenser of grace.

This call to an exercise of charity on every occasion (bayna yaday) of one's "consultation" with God's Apostle has been widely misunderstood as applying only to factual consultations with him, i.e., in his lifetime, supposedly with a view to lessening the encroachments on his time by some of his too-eager followers. This misunderstanding, together with the qualified dispensation from the above-mentioned injunction expressed in the next verse, has given rise to the unwarranted contention by some of the commentators that this injunction has been "abrogated". But apart from the fact that the theory of "abrogation" as such is entirely untenable (see 2:106 and the corresponding note 87), the above verse reveals its true meaning as soon as we realize that the term "the Apostle" (ar-rasul) is used in the Qur'an not merely to designate the unique person of the Prophet Muhammad but also the sum-total of the teachings conveyed by him to the world. This is evident from the many Qur'anic exhortations, "Pay heed unto God and the Apostle", and, more specifically (in 4:59), "if you are at variance over any matter, refer it unto God [i.e., the Qur'an) and the Apostle [i.e., his sunnah]", which latter is but meant to elucidate the former. Taken in this sense, the above reference to a "consultation with the Apostle" obviously applies not only to his person and his contemporaries, but rather to his teachings in general and to believers of all times and environments. In other words, every believer is exhorted to "offer up something in charity" - whether it be material alms to a needy person, or the imparting of knowledge to such as may be in need of enlightenment, or even a mere word of kindness to a weak human being - whenever he intends to immerse himself in a study of the Apostle's teachings or, as the Qur'an phrases it, to "consult" him who has conveyed the divine writ to us.
Lit., "if you do not find", sc., anyone on whom to bestow charity at that particular moment, or have - for whatever reason - no opportunity to exercise it.