Hospitality, The Heart of the Gospel

This blog is part of a series of posts exploring the practices of biblical hospitality as a missional strategy.

Why should you care about hospitality? Because it is a reflection of what you believe and understand about the gospel. After researching hospitality in the Old and New Testament there is no doubt concerning the connection between hospitality and the gospel. Hospitality is seen in the New Testament as the practical outworking of their theology, what they believed about God, and soteriology, what they believed about salvation. Biblical hospitality is the heart of the gospel message.

The gospel is the divine starting place for hospitality. Seeing God’s plan of redemption unfold in Scripture as He calls out to those who are far off to come home should compel us to emulate the practice of welcoming saints and strangers.

The gospel communicates the hospitality of God.

Paul writes in Ephesians 2:12-13, “At that time you were without Christ, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Eph. 2:12-13)

Paul connects the picture of foreigners in the Old Testament to separated sinners in the New Testament. Apart from Christ we are separated foreigners, but in God’s hospitality through Christ we are no longer strangers, Jesus died to welcome us into God’s household. Believers should marvel and God’s expression of hospitality through Christ Jesus. Hospitality now becomes a gospel-centered ethic for God’s people to respond in kind to strangers and foreigners.

The gospel compels us to practice the hospitality of God.

Steve Wilkins communicates this truth beautifully in Face to Face: Meditations on Friendship and Hospitality,

In Romans, Paul exhorts the whole church at Rome to be "given to hospitality" (Rom. 12:13). This is a good principle in itself, but we should be aware of the broader context to understand it fully. Paul has just written eleven chapters explaining the wonderful and mysterious grace of God and what that grace has accomplished for God's people. Through Christ, we have been redeemed, saved, and justified, and we are now being sanctified. Then in chapter twelve, Paul begins to give particular commands on the basis of the theology and soteriology that he has just given.[1]

Hospitality was the outworking of Paul’s theology and soteriology. If hospitality is the heart of the gospel and I believe it is, kingdom citizens should be manifesting biblical hospitality. Hospitality was considered a kingdom ethic for kingdom citizens. The early church practiced hospitality, because it was the natural outworking of their theology and soteriology, Are you modeling and leading others to manifest biblical hospitality?

[1]. Steve Wilkins, Face to Face: Meditations on Friendship and Hospitality (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2002), 88.