True Hospitality

"Let love be without hypocrisy.

. . .Be devoted to one another in brotherly love;

give preference to one another in honor

. . . practicing hospitality."

See Romans 12:9-13.

Hospitality—just what does that mean?  Most of us think of hospitality as hosting our friends in our home—serving a scrumptious meal for dear friends presented on a lovely table or providing clean and cozy accommodations for good friends from out of town.  But, actually, having our friends over for dinner isn’t hospitality at all.

The real meaning of the New Testament Greek word in Romans 12:13, which is translated as "hospitality," is actually love for strangers.

Love for strangers.  That’s right.  People we don’t know well. Certainly there’s nothing wrong about hosting friends in our homes.  In fact, it’s a wonderful thing to do, but we can’t legitimately call it Romans 12 hospitality.

Why?  Because hospitality is literally love for strangers.  How could we have missed this for so long?

This concept of hospitality is absolutely revolutionary.  You don’t even technically need to be in your own home to practice hospitality.  An attitude of love toward people you don’t know well can be pursued anywhere.  Granted, you can certainly demonstrate that love by inviting someone to your home, but true hospitality will also manifest in the way we treat someone outside our established circle of friends in any and every setting imaginable.

This changes everything!  Pursuing and practicing real hospitality means cliques are banned.  Inside jokes are entirely inappropriate behavior.  Hospitality means nobody within our reach ever feels like an outsider.  Nobody within our reach feels left out or like a fifth wheel.  Nobody in our presence should ever wish they could melt into the floor because their existence isn’t even acknowledged.

Hospitality leaves absolutely no room for self-centered behavior.  Hospitality means we will be others focused.  We will not be content to keep to our comfortable circle of old friends if there is a newcomer near.  We will get out of our selfish little comfort zones to reach out to draw in someone new.  And if after a conversation with someone, you realize you learned nothing about the other person, guess what?  That was inhospitable, too.  If you did all the talking, you displayed a great love of self, but no love for a stranger.

If we’re going to practice hospitality, there’s no getting by with an excuse of a reserved nature or shyness, either.   Refusing to talk to someone new is simply being inhospitable.

This real, Biblical hospitality is a challenging calling.  This is going to change everything.  It will stretch us.  We can never be comfortable with life as it is in our own little circle ever again.  But God never calls us to something He can’t or won’t empower.  The real obstacle to the practice of true hospitality is our focus on self.  Paul reminds us, in Philippians 2, of the ultimate stranger-love Jesus showed to us when He gave up His rights as God to come to earth to save us.  And he urges us to have the same attitude.

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit,

but with humility of mind

let each of you regard one another as more important than himself;

do not merely look out for your own personal interests,

but also for the interests of others.” 

Philippians 2:3-4

The nature of real hospitality creates an almost paradoxical phenomenon.  As we practice hospitality to strangers, pretty soon those strangers aren’t strangers anymore.  Of course, we can still spend time with them and host them now as our friends, but our eyes must be looking ever outward, and our hearts must be constantly reaching farther—to the ones at the fringes of and beyond our normal circles—if we are to continue to pursue true hospitality.

Truly, the practice of real, Biblical hospitality has nothing to do with how we treat our friends.  Instead it has everything to do with lovingly turning strangers into friends.  It’s about how we meet and treat strangers whether they come to us or we go to them.  And in fact, if we are really going to love strangers, we will go to them, both literally physically and in the way our hearts are turned toward them.  

Let us be the kind of people who make others feel welcomed, loved, appreciated, and valued whether we have known them for a year, an hour, a lifetime, or for only a minute!

May we be the kind of people who make others feel that they have come home the very moment they enter our presence.

P.S. Can you just imagine what the pursuit of real hospitality would mean for the spread of the gospel?!