Hospitality is one of those Christian virtues that should ordinarily be found among believers, yet it seems to have gradually weakened in a culture increasingly centred on personal space, convenience, and the desire to live without disturbance. Privacy has become so important that accommodating even family members now feels burdensome, let alone opening our homes or resources to people with whom we have little or no relationship.

Some weeks ago, I was discussing with a colleague who told me that when he gets married, neither his family members nor his wife’s family members would be allowed to stay with them. They could visit, of course, but living with them—even temporarily—would not be permitted beyond what he considered convenient. I was struck by his position and tried to explain how difficult such a principle might be to sustain over a lifetime. Parents grow older. Siblings encounter difficulties. Relatives could travel and suddenly need somewhere to stay. Emergencies arise. Life has a way of presenting circumstances that do not always fit neatly within the boundaries we establish in advance. It will take being heavily inconsiderate (to avoid using the word ‘evil’) to hold rigidly to such a principle in the face of genuine need.

His reasoning was understandable. He was trying to avoid the kind of family interference and domestic conflict he had either witnessed or heard about. Yet I explained that while boundaries may sometimes be necessary, building one’s life around the determination never to be inconvenienced by others can gradually move us away from a fundamental Christian disposition—hospitality. Sometimes what appears to be wisdom might be a product of dysfunction or a pattern formed by painful experience or inherited assumptions rather than the reality before us.

Jesus included hospitality among the most basic expressions of love when He said, “I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in” (Matthew 25:35). What is striking is how ordinary these acts are. Feeding someone, giving water, receiving a stranger, clothing someone and visiting the sick do not appear spectacular, yet Jesus identifies Himself so closely with the people receiving them that He says, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40).

Hospitality Is Making Room

Hospitality is often reduced to inviting people over for a well-prepared meal, having an attractive guest room or knowing how to entertain visitors properly. Those things can be expressions of hospitality, but biblical hospitality goes deeper. At its heart, hospitality is the willingness to make room for another person.

Sometimes that room is physical. Sometimes it is room at your table, in your schedule, within your resources or inside plans that originally included only yourself.

Paul instructs believers to be “distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality” (Romans 12:13). Peter similarly writes, “Use hospitality one to another without grudging” (1 Peter 4:9). That final phrase is important because it recognises something very practical about hospitality: people can inconvenience us.

Someone may stay longer than expected. A guest may interrupt your routine. Helping a relative may cost money. Receiving someone may require adjusting plans. Hospitality becomes a Christian virtue precisely because love willingly absorbs a measure of inconvenience for the good of another person.

Peter therefore does not merely say, “Be hospitable.” He says to do it without grudging. It is possible to open the door while inwardly resenting everyone who walked through it.

The Home Can Become an Instrument of Love

Throughout Scripture, homes repeatedly become places through which people encounter God's provision and fellowship. Abraham, for instance, saw strangers approaching and hurried to receive them. He offered water for their thirst and feet, invited them to rest, and prepared a generous meal for them (Genesis 18:1–8). Lydia, after receiving the gospel, urged Paul and his companions, “If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there” (Acts 16:15). Priscilla and Aquila opened their home to believers, so much so that Paul referred to “the church that is in their house” (Romans 16:5).

The early Christian home was not merely a private retreat from everyone else. It could become a place of fellowship, ministry, provision and refuge. This does not mean that every believer must constantly have people living in their house. Circumstances differ, and wisdom matters. But it does challenge the idea that everything God has given us exists solely for our personal comfort.

Hospitality is service to God (Matthew 25:35–40); your home can serve God. Your table can serve God. A spare room can serve God. Even the little you possess can become part of how someone else is made aware of and experiences the kindness of God.

The writer of Hebrews says, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2). The point is not that we should receive people because they might secretly be angels; it is that we should not underestimate what God may do through an ordinary act of welcome.

Hospitality Extends Beyond Our Circle

It is usually easier to accommodate people we already love. Biblical hospitality, however, stretches us beyond familiar relationships. The very idea of hospitality in Scripture carries the sense of welcoming the stranger. Jesus challenged the tendency to extend generosity only to people who can return it. He said:

“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” (Luke 14:12–13).

Jesus was not prohibiting meals with family and friends. He was confronting transactional generosity. If our kindness exists only among people who can repay us, then it has not yet fully taken on the character of divine love.

Hospitality therefore asks, Who am I willing to make room for, even when they may have nothing to give me in return?

This may be a visitor at church who knows nobody. It may be a young person far from home. It may be someone travelling through your city, a family going through difficulty, a widow, a student, a missionary, or simply someone who needs to know that there is somewhere they are welcome.

These are qualities many of us saw modelled by our parents and older generations, but they seem to be gradually fading.

I remember arriving at university for the first time, in a completely unfamiliar environment and farther from home than I had ever been. It was also my first real experience of living independently of my parents. My landlady, who has since become a mother to me, welcomed me into her own home from our very first meeting. Because my apartment was yet to be completed, she accommodated and fed me for about three months without ever grudging or making me feel like a burden.

Looking back, I realise how much that act of hospitality meant to a young person trying to find his footing in an unfamiliar environment. Interestingly, during my four to five years at university, I also had several opportunities to accommodate several others in that same apartment.

Hospitality as Service to God

There is also a spiritual dimension to hospitality that should not be overlooked: what we do for people can become service rendered unto God. Jesus made this remarkably clear: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40).

Abraham opened his tent and table to three ‘strangers’ and in the course of that encounter, received the promise of Isaac (Genesis 18:1–14). The Shunammite woman repeatedly fed Elisha and eventually prepared a room for him; the woman who had no child later received the promise of a son (2 Kings 4:8–17). Rahab received and protected the Israelite spies, and when Jericho fell, she and her household were preserved (Joshua 2:1–14; 6:22–25; Hebrews 11:31). These people were not purchasing blessings with hospitality, but their willingness to make what they possessed available to others was not overlooked by God. Hebrews similarly assures us, “God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name” (Hebrews 6:10). When such things are done from love and as unto the Lord, they become more than social kindness; they become service to God. Paul therefore writes, “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Colossians 3:23).

This principle appears repeatedly throughout Scripture. Proverbs says, “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again” (Proverbs 19:17). God identifies so closely with the person in need that generosity towards them is described as lending to Him, and He takes responsibility for the repayment.

Hospitality and Boundaries

I should strike a balance here: hospitality should not be confused with the absence of wisdom. There may be situations in which allowing someone to remain indefinitely in your home becomes unhealthy, disruptive, or even unsafe. Some relationships require boundaries. A family must consider privacy, finances, children, responsibilities and the peace of the household. Scripture does not teach reckless access to everything we possess.

A sobering example appears in the account of King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20:12–19 and Isaiah 39:1–8. After Hezekiah recovered from his illness, the king of Babylon sent messengers with letters and a gift. Hezekiah received them and “shewed them all the house of his precious things” (2 Kings 20:13). Isaiah later confronted him and prophesied that the days would come when everything in his house would be carried away to Babylon (2 Kings 20:16–18).

Put into today’s language, Hezekiah exposed his family, his finances and his faith to people he did not truly know. He gave foreign envoys extraordinary access to the treasures and resources of his kingdom. While the passage is not principally a teaching on domestic boundaries, it does remind us that openness and unrestricted access are not the same thing. What God has entrusted to you must be guarded with wisdom—making room is different from unrestricted access.

But boundaries and hospitality are not opposites. The real question is what produces the boundary. Is it wisdom, or selfishness? Is it stewardship, or an unwillingness ever to be inconvenienced? Are we protecting something genuinely important, or simply organising life so tightly around ourselves that nobody else's need is allowed to interrupt us? Christian maturity requires enough honesty to know the difference.

Jesus Himself sometimes withdrew from people (Luke 5:16), yet His need for solitude never produced indifference. He could seek rest and still be “moved with compassion” when the multitude followed Him (Matthew 14:13–14). Christian hospitality operates in this same balance: we may have boundaries, but our hearts must remain open.

Hospitality Is Love Made Available

One reason Scripture places such value on hospitality is that love must eventually become available to people. We can say that we care about others while maintaining a life in which nobody is ever allowed access. We can speak about generosity while protecting every resource exclusively for ourselves. Hospitality challenges that contradiction.

John asks, “Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1 John 3:17). Love does not mean that we can meet every need, but it should make us available enough to consider what we can do.

Perhaps this is why hospitality was even listed among the qualifications for Christian leadership. A bishop was expected to be “given to hospitality” (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:8). Spiritual maturity was not measured only by teaching ability or doctrinal soundness; it was also visible in the capacity to receive and care for people.

Hospitality says, in practical terms, there is room for you here.

Sometimes that means a place to sleep. Sometimes it means a plate of food, a chair at the table, transportation, assistance, an introduction, a few hours of your time or simply making someone feel that they are not an inconvenience.

And perhaps that is where many of us need to examine ourselves. In protecting our peace, have we gradually become unavailable? In establishing personal space, have we unintentionally removed every space where another person can be received?

The gospel itself tells the story of a God who made room for us. We who were “strangers from the covenants of promise” have been “made nigh by the blood of Christ” and brought into the “household of God” (Ephesians 2:12–13,19).

We were strangers, and Christ brought us near.

As that grace forms us, it should increasingly produce people whose homes, resources and lives can also make room for others.