Loving Those in Your Outer Circle

Turan started with a question: how many of us truly enjoy having people we barely know stay in our home? And how many of us, at the mere mention of it, start thinking about the mess, the judgment, the cleanup?

Some people have the gift of hospitality. Some of us do not. He remembered Linda Davis from high school, who kept opening her house no matter how the parties went, and how he always wondered what made someone willing to be that vulnerable.

Gift or not, we are all called to love the people outside our inner circle. The inner circle is easy: spouse, children, close friends, the people we do life with by choice. The outer circle is harder. People we do not know well. Strangers.

John’s word for the love owed them is philoxenia, from philo, brotherly love, and xenos, stranger. Warm, friendly, brotherly love for strangers.

We turned to 2 John, written from the elder to the elect lady and her children, most likely a church. John leads with truth and love, and he keeps using one word: walk. This is a how-to lesson. What it looks like day to day to walk in truth and walk in love.

The command to love one another is not new. It goes back to Leviticus. But Jesus gave it a new shape: love one another as I have loved you.

And to love the way Jesus loved is to be vulnerable and to sacrifice. Extend love that is not returned, and you will be hurt. God knows that hurt every time we do not love him back. To love is to put another’s good ahead of your own.

Then John draws a hard line. There are deceivers who deny that Jesus came in the flesh, and to them we do not show hospitality.

Turan pulled out three clear points. The danger they pose is losing our reward, not our salvation. They are known by whether they abide in the teaching of Christ. And we are not to welcome them, because greeting them endorses them, and because we would spend our vulnerability and sacrifice for no good reason.

In 3 John, John holds up two men. Gaius, who welcomes traveling teachers of the gospel and sends them on their way well supplied. And Diotrephes, who loves being first, refuses to welcome the brothers, and pushes out those who would.

One walks in the truth. The other does not. The difference shows up in how they treat strangers.

Turan closed with a tool he has leaned on for years, a four-block diagram. We sort the people in our outer circle two ways: are they believers or not, and are they teaching about Christ or not.

Believers teaching the truth get our fullest philoxenia, welcomed like inner circle, because we become fellow workers with them. Believers who are not teaching still get warm, sacrificial love, within reason.

Non-believers who are not teaching we love as God loves them, but with care about how far we spend ourselves, since the love may not come back. And non-believers who are teaching about Christ are a red flag. Those are the ones John says to withhold hospitality from.

So the challenge landed in two directions. For those of us without the gift, God says stretch, and reserve your greatest love for his people. For those of us who give hospitality freely, God says be discerning, and do not hand your warmth to a false teacher.

Something to sit with this week:

Who is in your outer circle right now, and which of them is God asking you to love with real, sacrificial hospitality this week?