Hospitality refers to love of strangers. How do you respond to strangers?
I realize that there have been a lot of cultural changes in the last 4,000 years! Today we tend to use the word “hospitality” to refer to entertaining friends. But the idea in scripture has to do with how we treat strangers.
Hebrews 13:2 states well what the biblical concept of hospitality is all about: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Where the English says “hospitality to strangers” there is only one Greek word: philoxenias (literally, love of strangers).
After all, everyone loves their friends! There is nothing uniquely Christian about having friends over! The question is what do you think of strangers?
Over the next couple of weeks we'll be looking at two different concepts of how to treat strangers.
This week we see Abraham's hospitality.
Next week we will see the sort of hospitality offered in Sodom.
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