Welcome Others: The Book of Romans As A Basis For Hospitality
What does the book of Romans have to do with Hospitality?
In short, EVERYTHING! But it might not be very clear at first. The book of Romans (like every book of the Bible) assumes you have a good understanding of the preceding books. They build off of each other. The Apostle Paul, who is widely considered the author of Romans, was a former Pharisee (think religiously fundamentalist) and would have had a masterful handle on the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet his upbringing and knowledge of the Scriptures had fueled in him a vehement commitment to Jewish separation from all non-Jewish culture. He loathed any thought of a watered down, syncretistic form of religion. So much so, he sought to imprison, or even kill, any Jews that had latched onto the new Jesus movement that was welcoming Gentiles into the promises of God (presumably for Jews alone). His supernatural encounter with the risen Jesus on the infamous road to Damascus brought him into a completely new understanding of who God is and what those promises actually mean. And then Jesus commissioned him to be an Apostle to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus to these very Gentiles throughout the entire world.
Paul, along with other Jesus’ followers, would travel throughout the Roman Empire, proclaiming the Gospel, and forming these new disciples into communities called churches. This caused a great conflict as culturally Jewish background Christians were coming into regular relationship with Gentile background Christians. People who, historically, had different customs around eating, washing, praying, working, etc. were now being asked to share a common life together. Needless to say it caused a LOT of tension.
This tension though could not, and did not, impede the calling God has put on Paul’s life to take the Gospel to the nations. This calling was rooted in Scripture (Genesis 12:1-3; Isaiah 49:6), experientially validated (Acts 9) and continually empowered (Colossians 1:29). This forced Paul to really consider how the Gospel changes these things that hinder progress for God’s vision for the world. Which is why letters like Romans exist.
The letter is organized brilliantly, with Paul leveling the playing field between Jew and Gentile in the first 3 chapters. Paul masterfully shows how everyone is guilty before a holy God if righteousness is based on the self (1:18-3:20). To start in a disposition of “othering” toward another person then, is a denial of one of the most basic commonalities of all humans, our desperation for rescue. Paul starts the next section laying out that God has acted in the person and work of Jesus to do just that, make salvation (and thus all the promises God gave Abraham) available on the basis of grace, through faith (3:21-4:25). Not bloodline, not ethnicity, not gender, not wealth, not anything generating from the self. He then begins to show the inner logic of the Gospel and its effects on a person, concluding that nothing can separate us from the love of God (5:1-8:39). Paul lays out how this was the plan of God all along, leading him to doxological worship (9:1-11:36). From there, Paul takes all of that (which he calls the mercy of God) and begins to connect imperatives to it, like showing hospitality. Like all of Paul’s letters, he grounds every command in grace and promises. He never divorces them.
One of the general undercurrents of the New Testament is Jew and Gentile relations, who were strangers in one another’s eyes. Which is why Romans is the first letter after the Gospels and Acts because it lays out a comprehensive understanding of why hospitality was, and is, a key ingredient in the mission of God. And it’s why Paul can look at Romans, Christians, Jew and Gentile, and say, “welcome others, as God in Christ, has welcomed you” (15:7).
