As a pastor, there are many things that I always thank God for about Redeemer as a church or church family. One of them is hospitality. Redeemer’s act of love and hospitality was one of the Church’s attractive qualities that drew me and my family to humbly accept the pastorate at Redeemer. Before and after we came to Redeemer, the hospitable and loving hearts and hands of you, the saints at Redeemer, has been overwhelming to my heart and the hearts of everyone in my family. And so that you know, this testimony about the hospitable nature of Redeemer is not only the testimony of your pastor’s family. Recently, one of our new members told me that one of the reasons why he decided to become a member at Redeemer was the warm and gracious hospitality that he received from one of our members in the flock. How I thank the Lord for that hospitable member in the hospitable Church.
Hopefully, from my hearty testimony about the hospitable character of Redeemer in the preceding paragraph, you now realize that the intent and desire of my heart in writing to you an article on the ministry of hospitality in the Church is not to suggest to you in any way or form that hospitality does not exist in Redeemer, or to address you as beginners in the School of Christian hospitality. No, that is not the purpose of my article. And that is because you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, have proven by your own actions that you love hospitality and you always render it to guests and visitors joyfully.
Nevertheless, what has been said so far about Redeemer’s admired quality in hospitality does not mean that we are perfect in the area of biblical hospitality. It doesn’t mean we don’t need to be taught on how to cultivate excellence in providing hospitality in the Church to those who need it. As growth and increase is required in every aspect of the Christian life, Christian hospitality also demands an ongoing learning and growth so that whenever it is done it would display the grace of God to strangers.
With that thought in mind, I then would like to share some important matters of biblical hospitality in the Church. But first, let’s ask the obvious question. What is hospitality? As a general definition, hospitality is to welcome or receive a stranger (someone who does not belong to your home or Church) and make him feel at home. In the context of biblical and Church hospitality, Christians in the household of faith (Church) receive and welcome strangers, not primarily on behalf of themselves or the Church to which they belong, but on behalf of Jesus Christ, who paid the ultimate price of dying on the cross in order to save them from the power of sin and eternal death and bring them into God’s redeemed community— the Church.
You remember the language that our Lord Jesus Christ uses in Matthew 25, the chapter in the New Testament in which he addresses believers about the purpose and motive of providing hospitality to the needy— the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, prisoner? Well, the qualifier word that he uses for why his followers welcome and help strangers is, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). Thus from Jesus’s explanation of what Christian hospitality is all about, the first component of biblical hospitality that we need to understand is that Christians show hospitality to strangers and the needy for the sake of Christ, or as if it is done to Christ. That’s why Jesus uses the important pointing words, “You did it to me.”
Before we depart from Jesus’s call to genuine and practical Christian hospitality in Matthew 25, I want you to think about why Jesus refers to the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and prisoners in his compassionate heart and mind as his brothers. Why do you think Jesus calls strangers brothers? Think about it biblically and from Jesus’ perspective, my friend.
The amazing answer to the question is that before the disadvantaged group in Matthew 25 that Jesus calls “my brothers” became his brothers, they were strangers towards him and the Father who sent him to find them and bring them home. That’s the exact picture that Paul uses for those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ in Ephesians 2:12-13, “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the common wealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
So what do we learn from these words of the Holy Spirit through Paul in relation to biblical hospitality? This is what we learn. Before our conversion, all of us who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and brought into the membership of Christ’s Church were strangers to God. And when God saved us by his Sovereign grace and through faith in his son Jesus Christ alone, he was receiving and accepting strangers and aliens into his own community or Church.
Hence, biblical hospitality originates not in the heart and kindness of men and women in the Church but in the eternal love and grace of God, who transformed their hearts and minds by the power of His Spirit, made them partakers of his divine nature and built them up as his house (Church) on earth. Therefore, all the work of hospitality that the people of God offer in the Church must be the reflection of God’s gracious and loving character (disposition) towards people who have been alienated from him because of Sin.
So every time believers in the Church provide hospitality to visitors (greet and welcome visitors to worship, help visitors in worship to feel at home and familiarize themselves with what goes on during worship, translate for them to avoid language barrier, provide nursery to infants and toddlers so parents can attend worship, sit with visitors during fellowship meal to share more of Christ and encourage visitors to come back to worship the Lord, invite visitors over to their house for a meal and Christian acquaintance and strategic evangelism) they act and behave in the same way that their heavenly Father acted toward them when they were still strangers to him in order to draw them to himself by his loving and caring heart.
That was the identical instruction that the Lord gave to the people of Israel after he delivered them from the hands of the Pharaoh of Egypt, “Love the sojourner therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). By this command that the Lord gave to the people of Israel to be hospitable toward aliens and strangers in their land and home, he was reminding them that they themselves were strangers in the land and homes of the Egyptians but that the Egyptians and their king did not receive and welcome them as friends but as slaves and abused them in cruelty and harshness. But He (the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) came down from heaven to deliver them from the cruelty of the Egyptians and the bondage of their false gods and provide gracious divine hospitality to them.
What divine hospitality? The divine hospitality that started with delivering a people under the power of Egypt (which represents Sin) and who were strangers to the true God of Israel, then continuing by leading them through the wilderness, feeding them with manna from heaven and protecting them from all encumbrances on their way to Canaan, the land of the promise, that the Lord promised them as a resting home. Moses has summarized this hospitable character of God for His people in a powerful and beautiful way in Psalm 90:1 when he said, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.”
In a sense Moses was declaring that God indeed has been very hospitable to His people. And it is because of that eternal and unconditional love and care that God showed to us who were strangers to God’s salvation and family, that the Lord calls us to be hospitable toward all who are strangers to Him and His Church. A brief recap of how God demonstrated His saving and fatherly hospitality to us former aliens would help us to put things in their proper perspective.
As you know from Scripture, the key to the unfolding of God’s gracious hospitality to us was God becoming human through the birth of Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary. In Theology we call that Incarnation. And Incarnation is the process through which the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, took human flesh and became like us, through the conception and birth of a Virgin, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now keep this in mind: for God to become human and identify Himself with us sinners, He first had to leave His comfort zone in heaven above.
What God did for us through the incarnation of His son Jesus Christ and then the death on the cross in order to change our status before Him as strangers and aliens to God’s redeemed and holy people, was a sacrificial act of love and hospitality. All the humble and kind deeds that our Lord Jesus Christ performed during His earthly ministry (eating and drinking with sinners in order to call them to faith and repentance, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, helping the poor, showing compassion to the widows and bereaved, sharing a common room with His friends, loving the children unconditionally) were a living and striking examples of what a biblical and sacrificial hospitality is and should look like.
Notice how Paul gives us a description of it in 2 Corinthians 8:9 “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” This, my friends, was Christ’s act of priceless hospitality, and while doing all these things to strangers such as you and me, our Lord Jesus Christ never (ever) saw them as elements of inconvenience in His earthly ministry but fulfilled it graciously, unreservedly and without any word or sign of grumbling.
If you, my friend, want to do hospitality in the Church and outside of the Church for God’s glory and as the prime expression of God’s gracious character towards undeserving sinners, Christ Jesus (and all who followed His model in offering biblical hospitality to strangers and lost sinners) are examples for you to follow. Let me share with you some of the patterns and ways on how to follow their examples in showing hospitality effectively:
- By the grace of God, provide hospitality to believers in the Church who need it and visitors in God’s worship with your Agape kind of love. The Agape type of love is the kind of love that Christ demonstrated to sinners by His death on the Cross. Relating to biblical hospitality, it means a sacrificial love. Remember, this is not just brotherly love, “phileo love”, which is exhibited in a close relationship, like between Christians in the same Church, but the highest form of love, “the love of the Cross”, that Christ showed to us by His sacrifice upon the Cross. The good example of an Agape type of hospitality is the loving and sacrificial hospitality that the Good Samaritan extended to the Jew who fell among the robbers (Luke 10:25-37). The compassionate hospitality that the Good Samaritan showed to the Jew was an Agape type of love and care provided to a stranger. So let us provide hospitality that resembles the love of the Cross.
- By the strength that Christ gives us, let us leave our comfort zone in order to love and serve others in the love of Christ. “Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (John 13:5)
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3)
- Guard your heart that you do not view Christian hospitality in the Church as a matter of inconvenience. Always remember Job. In the midst of his long and awful trials, the one thing that he never stopped doing was showing hospitality to strangers (Job 31:32). Isn’t that worth noting, my friend? In the case of Job, he was welcoming and entertaining strangers in his home at the time that he was inflicted physically and his situation was not suitable for providing hospitality to strangers passing by his house. So every time you are called to provide hospitality in the Church, consider Jesus leaving his glorious home in heaven, lying in a manger and washing his disciples’ feet, and Job being stricken and wounded but saying to the aliens who passed by his house, come inside and be refreshed in my house. Following the examples of Jesus and Job in the area of fulfilling biblical hospitality in the Church will help you not to see the ministry of hospitality in the Church as an inconvenience.
- Do hospitality primarily as a matter of the heart and to reflect God’s gracious love to the strangers, not as a technique or a task. Be mindful of this all the time, my friend. Biblical hospitality is not about our house or a smiling face to visitors but about our heart. The heart is the abode of an authentic and genuine hospitality and the authentic hospitality is rooted in the love of the Cross reigning in our hearts. This means if hospitality is Christians acting to reflect the love of Christ to the strangers whom the Lord brings to them, it must flow from the heart and must be linked to the underserving and unmerited grace of God in our life. It was for that very reason that Paul exhorts believers about their love for one another and all people in this way, “Let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9). You see, according to Paul, providing hospitality merely as a task or performance lacks effectiveness that comes from the love of Christ filled in the heart of believers, and can always be exposed to the frustration and discomfort that the flesh provokes inside of God’s children. So guard your heart from that.
To summarize all the things that I have been telling you about a hospitable Church and how biblical hospitality should be understood and be done in the Church, let me restate to you what Christian hospitality is for God’s people. For the people of God, the duty of hospitality comes right from the center of who God was for His people— that He made a home for His people and brought them there by His mighty and hospitable hand. Then based on that, His people are called to reflect and extend His grace to others (strangers and outsiders) by providing hospitality for the glory of God and for the purpose of strategic evangelism.
Again, I am thankful to the Lord that you, my brothers and sisters, are part of a hospitable Church. But still, because your ongoing spiritual growth in all aspects of the Christian life, including the ministry of Christian hospitality, is a matter of my pastoral goal and prayers for you all, I would like to encourage you to read this article prayerfully and with readiness to start doing the things that you haven’t started doing yet in the area of Christian hospitality in Christ’s Church.
In the name of the great and hospitable Shepherd!
Your friend and Pastor
Zaki
“Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.” (Prov 19:17)