On reflecting on my sermon on Biblical Hospitality, one of my parishioners, Gracie Scott, offered some thoughts and applications based on her study of the issue framed by a Trinitarian model:
God, the three in one, is hospitably life giving, so how are we to be also?
Triune God – Father, Christ, Holy Spirit
FATHER: Breaths life into man (6th day)
Man: Gen. 1:28 Christians are to be fathers as well (parenting as a type of hospitality)
CHRIST: Justification, He awakens the soul through His blood
Man: Welcome the lost into our homes that they may see and hear the Good News (eating with the tax collectors who are in need a Physician, Mark 2:17)
HOLY SPIRIT: Sanctification – aids and speaks throughout our life after justification
Man: Fellowship with fellow believers. “Iron sharpening iron” (Prov. 27:17) throughout sanctification.
Another parishioner, Kandace Trotter, summarized in her senior thesis the contrast between selfishness and the God who delights in hosting:
The selfishness pervasive today does not take into account that God is hospitable, and each person of the Trinity acts selflessly toward the other, always serving one another in love (Smith 22, 41). Just as the Trinity is serving one another in love, so we should be serving with hearts overflowing with love. Hospitality is an act of physical and spiritual selflessness, so let us take this virtue and apply it in our daily lives, seeing that selflessness and hospitality flow out of love and respect for the Triune nature of God (Peterson 17).
Well done, ladies!
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