The Gift of Hospitality

Question 4115

The gift of hospitality is the Spirit-given capacity to open one home, one table and one life to others, especially to strangers and to fellow believers in need, in a way that makes the love of God tangible. The New Testament word for hospitality is philoxenia, which joins the word for love, phileo, to the word for a stranger, xenos. So the term itself means love of the stranger, and that is a striking thing for the Spirit to plant in the human heart, because the natural instinct is to love the familiar and to be wary of the outsider. Where this gift is at work, that instinct is reversed, and the door that would naturally stay shut swings open.

Peter is the one who names it most directly as a grace to be exercised. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling, he writes, and then he sets it within the wider stewardship of the gifts each believer has received (1 Peter 4:9 to 10). The little phrase without grumbling is telling. The gift of hospitality is not satisfied with reluctant duty performed through gritted teeth. It welcomes gladly, and the welcome is the point.

What the gift of hospitality is for

Hospitality in the ancient world was a practical necessity that carried enormous weight. Inns were few, often dangerous and morally squalid, and the travelling Christian, the visiting preacher, the believer fleeing persecution, all depended on the open homes of the saints. When John writes his third letter he commends Gaius precisely for receiving the travelling brothers and sending them on their way in a manner worthy of God (3 John 5 to 8), and he rebukes Diotrephes for refusing to welcome them. The early Christian mission ran along a network of hospitable homes, and without that network the gospel would have struggled to travel at all. The gift of hospitality was, quite literally, part of the infrastructure of the spreading church.

The home is also where the church first met. There were no buildings for the better part of three centuries, and the gatherings that we read of in the New Testament took place in houses. Aquila and Priscilla had a church in their house, as did Nympha, as did Philemon. To open your home was therefore to provide the very place where the body of Christ assembled, and the believer with this gift was offering far more than a meal. He was offering the meeting place of the people of God. You can see how this practical service sits among the other graces in our overview of the different spiritual gifts listed in Scripture.

The difference between the gift and the duty

As with giving, every Christian is called to be hospitable, whether or not he possesses a special gift in this area. Paul lists hospitality among the qualifications for an elder, which means that some measure of it is expected of every spiritual leader (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:8). The letter to the Hebrews urges the whole church not to neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares, a glance back at Abraham at the oaks of Mamre (Hebrews 13:2). So the open door is asked of all of us. What then distinguishes the person with the gift?

The difference lies in the ease, the scale and the joy. Many believers find the welcoming of others a real effort, an interruption of routine, a drain on resources and energy that they undertake out of obedience and are quietly relieved to see end. The person with the gift of hospitality is energised rather than drained by it. Their home seems to expand to hold whoever turns up, the extra place at the table is no trouble, the spare room is always ready, and the stranger is made to feel within minutes that he has come home. They do it often, they do it well, and they do it without the grumbling that Peter warned against. The same open-handed spirit that animates the gift of giving is here turned towards the welcome of people rather than the relief of material need.

Scripture gives us warm portraits of this grace. Lydia, the seller of purple, was no sooner converted than she prevailed upon Paul and his companions to come and stay at her house, and her home in Philippi became a base for the gospel (Acts 16:14 to 15). The Shunammite woman built a small room on her roof and furnished it so that Elisha would have somewhere to stay whenever he passed by (2 Kings 4:8 to 10). Neither woman was looking for thanks, and both simply saw a servant of God who needed a roof and gladly provided it. That instinct, to notice the need for welcome and to meet it before being asked, is the gift of hospitality showing its hand. It is practical, it is unshowy, and it quietly advances the work of God.

Hospitality as a picture of the gospel

There is a reason the Spirit dignifies this homely service with the status of a gift, and it is that hospitality preaches. The whole gospel can be told as a story of welcome. We were strangers and foreigners, far off, with no claim on the household of God, and we have been brought near and made members of his household (Ephesians 2:19). The Lord Jesus told of a father who ran to meet a returning son and threw a feast for him, and he described the final blessedness of the redeemed as a marriage supper. When a believer opens his home to a stranger and seats him at a generous table, he is acting out in miniature the welcome that God himself has extended to sinners. The guest may not be able to put it into words, but he has felt something of the love of God in being received.

This is why hospitality so often goes hand in hand with showing mercy. The one who welcomes the stranger is usually quick to feel the need of the poor, the lonely, the bereaved and the overlooked, and the table that is open to the travelling preacher is open also to the single person with nowhere to go on a Sunday. Our study of the mercy of God shows the same heart of God that this gift puts on display in the ordinary setting of a home.

Hospitality without grumbling, and without pride

Two dangers attend this gift, and Peter names the first when he says without grumbling. Even a gifted host can grow weary, can start to keep an inward ledger of all that has been given and how little has been returned, and can let the welcome curdle into a sense of being used. The Spirit who gives the grace also supplies the gladness that keeps it sweet, and the host who finds himself grumbling should return to the Lord for a fresh filling rather than soldier on resentfully. You can read about that renewing in our study of being filled with the Spirit.

The other danger is that hospitality can drift into performance, the carefully staged dinner that is really about impressing the guests rather than blessing them. True philoxenia is far more interested in the comfort of the visitor than in the impression made by the host. A modest meal offered with genuine warmth fulfils the gift completely, while a lavish display offered to win admiration misses it entirely. The widow who fed Elijah from her last handful of flour exercised more of this grace than many a wealthy table, because she gave what she had with an open heart and trusted God for the rest.

So, now what?

If you recognise this gift in yourself, then take heart that your homely labours matter more than you may have realised. The cups of tea, the spare beds, the extra places laid, the strangers made welcome, none of it is small in the eyes of the Lord who said that a cup of cold water given in his name would not lose its reward. Keep your door open, keep your welcome glad, and remember that you are giving people a taste of the welcome of God.

If hospitality does not come naturally to you, the command of Hebrews 13:2 still stands, and the good news is that the gift can be cultivated even where it is not lavishly given. Start small. Invite one person who would otherwise be alone. Open your home once where you would normally keep it closed. The Spirit is well able to grow a grace from a small and obedient beginning, and many a reluctant host has discovered, in the doing of it, a joy he did not know was there.

Above all, let your welcome point beyond itself. When you receive a stranger, you are rehearsing the welcome that God has given you in Christ, and you may find that the open door of your home becomes the open door through which someone first glimpses the love of their Saviour.

“Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” 1 Peter 4:9