HOSPITALITY: A THREE LEGGED STOOL - PART 2
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Last week, we said that hospitality is a three-legged stool, with the first leg being our experience of God's gracious nature. Tonight we look at the second leg, hospitality as covenant union.
Hospitality as Covenant Union
Just as there is a real union between each believer and God, by virtue of covenant, so there is a real union between each believer and all others. We often mistakenly think of the church as a kind of bottle, filled up with a loose collection of marbles, and its only purpose is to hold these distinct, atomized individuals together in one location for one day out of the week. They are together, but there is no real bond between them.
This is far from the truth—in that we are joined to Christ, we are joined to one another as well. We are members of one another and cannot exist in isolation from each other. Covenant community is not a nice fringe benefit of Christianity; it is essential. A Christian cannot exist apart from it, and those who are isolated are in great danger of perishing spiritually. No individual member can prosper apart from the whole.
Our American mentality of individualism and anti-covenantalism deludes us into thinking we can exist by ourselves—"just me and Jesus." On the contrary, if Christians actually listened to Jesus, and understood His role as the Head of a new race, they would hear that they need both Him and the church, His body.
He saves men and women through the ministry of His body, and the metaphor of a body is not used lightly—it is full of instruction. If a person cut off his little finger, what happens to it? It does not find itself, or realize its dreams, or grow to be independent, mature, and strong.
Disconnected from the nourishment of the body, it disintegrates ignominiously into nothing. A similar decomposition occurs when a believer is isolated from the body. He causes suffering to himself and to the body, because we need others in order to prosper in grace.
As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
—the covenant does not destroy our individuality, thanks be to God. We are all very different and I hope that we love that truth, laugh about it, and fully appreciate its consequences.
I hope that all Christians can delight in the amazing beauty of the lawful variations that exist between us. "There are many members," and the covenant of God's grace does not destroy personality but rather sanctifies it. Each member still remains himself, though it is always a better self when joined to the body.
Paul continues:
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”
On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,
and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty,
which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it,
that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
No matter how "honorable" or "dishonorable" a certain member may seem, all are necessary to all others and no member can do anything of itself. We need each other. The unity of the body of Christ inspires a holy sentiment but being theologically grounded; it is not mere sentimentalism.
Our interdependence is natural and inescapable because God uses the ministry of each individual member to sanctify and build up the whole.
from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Paul does not give us a picture of each member having a personal pipeline of grace from Christ, each drawing his nourishment directly from Him. Rather, the picture is of Christ as the head; he energizes, strengthens, and blesses the whole body. His blessing is mediated through each of the members to each of the others. He does minister to individuals immediately by His Spirit, but He normally builds us in grace by our interaction with the other members of the body.
No one can grow in grace without the body. It is impossible to grow up in fullness of maturity apart from its ministry. Fellowship and hospitality are expressions of our necessary and vital relationships with one another. Hospitality is founded upon the covenant union that exists between God's people. We are one body.
The third leg of hospitality is the mutual love that God’s people have for one another.
In the New Testament, the commands to perform this duty always occur in the context of our larger duty of love.
Let brotherly love continue.
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Hospitality is a mark of thriving brotherly love. Peter says, expecting the end of the age,
The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
Love covers sins, because its fruit is to take away the things that divide believers. Its manifestation, Peter explains in the next verse, is this:
Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
Hospitality is one of the clear manifestations of biblical love and affection. When believers love each other with sincere hearts, they will sincerely pursue hospitality with all their heart. When a church does not delight in hospitality, it is the symptom of a fearful cancer in their midst, which will draw all vigor and the blessing from that body. Their love for Christ and His people has grown cold. For wherever there is fervent love for Christ, there is always fervent love for His people:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
A loving spirit does not expect to be loved in return. Sometimes we think a loving person is a soul hungry for love, one who is very sensitive to any slight, feeling sorry for himself and remembering every small offense which shows that people do not respect and adore him as he deserves. That kind of person does not have a loving or sensitive soul, but a simple and selfish one.
A truly loving spirit responds to the love of God by brimming with love for those around him, and it is irrelevant whether that love is returned. He has been captured by the love of God, and the profound depth of His response overshadows and annuls all other responses. He wants to love the brethren even if they do not love him. John continues:
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
We love because he first loved us.
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
There are no alternative options here; the true lover of God loves the fellow saints. When we grow in this love, God extends more blessing to us. If we do not love each other, we may be sure that the Spirit is not dwelling in us. This love is one of the preeminent marks that distinguishes God’s people from the world.
In the passage, John has expounded our Savior’s words:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Love distinguishes believers because the unbeliever is basically incapable of loving anyone but himself; selfishness, unconcern and indifference are the things that characterize him. His chief desire is to preserve his own peace and quiet and not be put out or inconvenienced by anyone else. But when a man is saved, his heart is changed from one that worships itself and its own convenience into one that worships God and loves Him and His children. Because of this, the absence of hospitality is a fearful thing. If there is no concern for hospitality, there is no love for God’s people. When there is no love for God’s people, there is no love for Him.
We know very little about heaven and the eternal, glorified state, and when the Scripture speaks of it we should pay close attention. It is no accident that one of the more prominent images of heaven is a gathering and sitting down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven,
If someone is not familiar with biblical hospitality, this cannot be much of a metaphor for future bliss. If we have no knowledge of biblical hospitality, we might be tempted to think, “So, we sit down … and then what?” Why doesn’t this description ring with glory in our ears? Because we have never sat down at a table and known the joy of its fullness. Not a fullness of food, but of fellowship, a table where the saints sit, rest, talk, and enjoy the weight of God’s goodness.
In eternity we are freed to enjoy His goodness to our utmost capacity, together with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all kinds of strange and interesting people from all the corners of the earth. Our hope for heaven is dimmed by our failures to love on earth. The picture does not move us, because there is no love for it to move.