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"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” - John 13:35
'And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.' - Acts 2:42
In the midst of division and dissension in American society, Christians must be unified, not in their love and tolerance of sin and wickedness, but in their love for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
A primary way that we can become and remain united in love, while simultaneously reaching out to the unbelievers in our communities, is through hospitality.
Love is...
To begin this conversation, we need to establish some of the facets of what genuine, biblical love is, hopefully giving a more full-orbed picture of this oft-overused word.
Firstly, love is relational. It isn't simply an immaterial and amorphous concept that has no physical grounding. It isn't some philosophical or esoteric construct. Love is, at its core, a relational verb. It cannot exist on its own; it must have an object to be directed toward. That is why love existed before the universe existed. Our God is a triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, eternally coexistent in love. At the core of all of this is the idea of relationship. For genuine love to be expressed in this world at all, there must be genuine relationships between people, a sort of bond held together with affectionate grace and care. Without this crucial foundation, love becomes a sort of pie-in-the-sky idea that only the hippies can seem to figure out.
Secondly, love is sacrificial. One of the key features of this relational bond we call love is the idea of sacrifice. This doesn't simply mean dying for another, although it can and does mean that, but it goes much further. It is sacrificial of time, energy, money, sleep, convenience, and emotion. For so many of us, we cannot truly and genuinely love anyone but ourselves, much less fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, because we are so consumed with our own little lives and problems, never even bothering to look up from our world to see the need in someone else's. Our heavenly Father demonstrated this most clearly in the sending of His Son, Jesus Christ, in the flesh to live a perfect life and die a perfect death for our sake. That is both relational and sacrificial.
Thirdly, love is invitational. This may not have been an aspect of love that you have considered in the past, but hear me out. For relationship to occur, there must be a certain level of invitation by one party to another. There must be an opening up of the deeply personal recesses of the heart, allowing another to see the real you. No real love can exist without this invitation. Forced love will never bear fruit, because there was no invitation. Surface level love will never bear fruit, because there is no opening up. To foster genuine, world-changing love, we must invite others into real, sacrificial, and invitational relationships. Again, our God demonstrated this most beautifully in Jesus. By sending Christ in the flesh, he burst open the door of hostility that our sinful hearts had bolted shut. But he calls sinners to repent, to come to him by faith in Christ, by invitation. He doesn't force anyone to go to heaven. He invites them.
Now, let's turn our attention to hospitality.
Hospitality
Merriam-Webster defines hospitality as "generous and cordial treatment, reception, or disposition of and towards guests." That's nice, but I prefer the Bible's definition. Scripture uses the Greek word philoxenia. I know that looks scary, but it actually has a beautifully simple meaning. The root phileo means love among people connected by kinship or faith, and the word xenos means stranger. So when you slap this all together, the biblical definition of hospitality is simply love of strangers. So how does all of this connect with the need for Christians to be united in love primarily with love for each other, and secondarily with love for the unbelievers of the world?
Well, firstly, hospitality is relational. At its core, and what it does better than almost anything else on earth, is build relationships. There is something so divinely sweet about sitting around a dinner table in laughter or tears. There is an emotional bridge that is crossed when bread is broken. By welcoming others into our homes, we are showing our desire to have a relationship with them in ways that we don't have with everyone else. This is a real opportunity to build relationships with people that could never be achieved at church on Sunday or at work on Monday. In my own personal life, strong and lifelong bonds have been built by simply opening up our home for a meal and fellowship time with others. That can happen for you, too. But it will only happen if you are committed to loving others in a relational and godly way. Lone wolf Christianity is piss poor at relational love.
Secondly, hospitality is sacrificial. This one doesn't need much explanation. With the hectic nature of American life, we barely have time (or so we think) for our spouses and children, much less others. However, if we want to pursue love, we must, and I mean must, intentionally make sacrifices and carve out time for hospitality. It doesn't happen by accident; it must be pursued. For the last couple months, once a week we have twenty or thirty people over to our home for a big potluck-style dinner and fellowship. That includes kids. I am in no way tooting my own horn, but it is a sacrifice to set up, clean up, and tear down all of that. But when I sit at the end of a banquet-style conglomeration of plastic tables, gazing on the faces of the people I love the most loving each other, all the thought of the pains of clean up and late night bath times for my kids fade away, because what I get to experience is nothing short of heavenly.
Finally, hospitality is invitational. If you remember what I said about love being invitational, you will carry over the intention of that quite easily to hospitality. Newsflash: people can't come over to your house for dinner if you don't invite them over. To take it a step further though, no sacrificial relationship of love can be built with the people you have invited over for dinner unless you take the step of inviting those people into your actual life. It isn't enough to simply invite them into your home; you must, with wisdom, invite them into your actual life. This is where the rubber meets the road. There have been many nights where we have sat around the table crying with brothers and sisters in Christ as we seek to navigate the difficulties of life in a fallen world together, in relationship, but this would never have happened if we hadn't opened ourselves up to them and invited them into our lives, without shame.
My passion for hospitality is simple, really; at the heart of the gospel is a message of hospitality. A good and loving God invites strangers into relationship with him through the sacrifice of the most precious person that has ever existed, Jesus Christ, and by repentance and faith he sends the Holy Spirit to live within us in unceasing relationship every moment of the rest of our lives. If we miss this, we will miss the beauty and simplicity of an indispensable aspect of our Christian witness.
So may we, as the blood-bought Bride of Jesus Christ, earnestly and genuinely pursue love by opening our hearts and our homes to welcome in the brother and sister, as well as the stranger, for the sake of bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.