Love of the Stranger

The New Testament is full of instructions for how the church should treat itself — unity, love, humility. But in 1 Peter 4, written during one of the bloodiest periods in church history, Peter reaches for a word that isn't about the church at all. Not philadelphia — love of brothers and sisters — but philoxenos: love of the stranger. Working through 1 Peter 4:7–11, Dominic Jackson traces what hospitality actually means in its biblical sense, why Peter's call to extend it without grumbling puts our own excuses in sharp relief, and what it might look like for a church to function less like a members’ club and more like a hospital.