What Does the Bible Say About Hospitality? The Word Means Love of Strangers

Hospitality today usually means having people you know over for a meal. The biblical word is narrower than that, and harder.

What the word literally says

The Greek is philoxenia — from philos (love) and xenos (stranger, foreigner). Literally: love of strangers.

Its opposite, xenophobia, is still in use. Same root, opposite direction.

So when Romans 12:13 says "given to hospitality", it is not about having friends round. It is about receiving people you do not know.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.Hebrews 13:2 (KJV)

Abraham at the tent door

Hebrews 13:2's "entertained angels unawares" points at Genesis 18.

The details are worth having: Abraham is ninety-nine, sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. He sees three men standing opposite, and the first thing he does is "run to meet them from the tent door" (18:2).

A ninety-nine-year-old running at noon. Then he prepares bread, a calf, butter and milk — by the quantities given, far more food than three people needed.

He did not know who they were. Not while he was running.

Why it is in the qualifications for elders

When 1 Timothy 3:2 lists the requirements for an overseer, "given to hospitality" sits next to "apt to teach". Titus 1:8 does the same.

The placement says something: receiving strangers is treated as a testable character trait, ranked alongside teaching ability.

1 Peter 4:9 adds a very practical clause: "Use hospitality one to another without grudging." Those last two words admit what it actually costs.

Why it mattered so much then

The first century had no reliable inns, and Christians were frequently thrown out of households and moving around. Travelling preachers depended on believers' homes.

3 John 5-8 is entirely a commendation of a man named Gaius for receiving passing brothers, concluding "we therefore ought to receive such, that we might be fellowhelpers to the truth".

Hospitality then was not a social nicety. It was infrastructure.

What it looks like now

You do not need to become a good host. Following the word's actual direction, the nearest equivalent is:

Put your attention on the person you do not yet know. The one at the back of church nobody is talking to. The neighbour who just moved in. The new colleague.

Jesus is blunter in Luke 14:12-14: "When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours… But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind."

His stated reason: "for they cannot recompense thee." Which is exactly where this meets gratitude: hosting someone who cannot repay you is a person's acknowledgement of what they were given for free.

Read Genesis 18 and Luke 14 in the BiblePro app. And do look for a local church — a place to be received, and to receive others.