Love For Strangers (Hebrews 13:2)

The Marks of Kingdom Citizens in Hebrews 13

Hebrews 13, when you've found your place, let's pray together before we look at God's Word. Our Father, we bow our heads and our hearts before You this morning, and it is our earnest desire that we would come face-to-face with Christ and Your grace in the pages of Scripture, that though we see our own failure to apply truth and our own failure to live up to the standards of Your Word and the example of Jesus Christ, that we may also find in Your Word hope and encouragement in the Gospel, satisfaction in Christ, and consolation for us in our weariness and in our exhaustion.

We pray that our minds and our hearts would be renewed by Your Word and that You would accomplish this through the work of Your Spirit. As we give our attention and our thoughts now to truth, we pray that we would be conformed to the image of Christ and transformed by Your Word.

We love You and we thank You for the joy and delight that it is to open Your Word, have it before us in our own language, and to be able to converse and fellowship around these things. Blessed this time, we pray for the glory of Christ our Lord, in His name we pray, amen.

So what are the marks of kingdom citizens? Assuming that you have been given a kingdom which is unshakeable and that kingdom is eternal and that your life is wrapped up in that kingdom and that you are a citizen of that, what is a kingdom citizen and what does the life of a kingdom citizen look like?

That is something that should concern us from the moment that we are transformed and redeemed and saved. How do kingdom citizens live in this world which is not our home and we are not citizens of any earthly kingdom in any kind of eternal sense?

We are temporary residents here. And that is the question, that is the answer in that question, is the focus of Hebrews chapter 13 as the author now comes to this giant conclusion to all of the argument that he has been making for 12 chapters.

And you see the conclusion begin at chapter 12 verse 28 where he says, Therefore since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

That therefore at verse 28 is the ultimate therefore. He has told us that we are redeemed and that we are saved, that our sins have been taken away and atoned for, that Christ has died to cleanse our conscience and to clear our slate and to give us His righteousness.

He has told us now that Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father and is currently interceding for us from which position He has secured us everlastingly and we have hope in this life and hope for the next all because of what Christ has done.

And so therefore the author says, having brought all of that argument now to a head at the end of chapter 12, therefore here is how we ought to live. Here is what we should do. Here is what should characterize us.

Here is how we should behave. And that's what chapter 13 is, a list of exhortations and commands and closing considerations by which the author is bringing to a focus now how it is that all of the truth in the first 12 chapters impacts our day-to-day lives.

If all of that is true, if Christ has given Himself for you in your place and if you have received an unshakable kingdom, then here is what should be true of you. Here's how you should live. Verse 28, we should show gratitude.

Verse 28, we should offer to God acceptable service with reverence and awe. Chapter 13 verse 1, we should love the brethren. And then chapter 13 verse 2 and on it follows these other practical applications, things that kingdom citizens do.

And last week we looked at verse 1, the brotherly love commandment, let the love of the brethren continue, just two major words in the Greek which basically just says that brotherly affection that characterizes family members, that love of the brethren, let that continue in the church.

Let that continue in your life. Then that command to show brotherly love, which we saw last week, is natural for the believer. The expression, the possession of brotherly love is natural for the believer.

It is something that is instinctive to the Christian. That idea of brotherly love now sort of overshadows, it hangs over the rest of these commandments in this opening paragraph of chapter 13. Look at verse 2.

Hospitality as Love for Strangers

These are all expressions, by the way, of brotherly love. Verse 2, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it. We should remember the prisoners.

Verse 3, as though in prison with them and those who are ill-treated since you yourselves are in the body. Both of those are expressions of brotherly love. Let brotherly love continue, let love of the strangers continue, and let love of prisoners continue.

Verse 4 is also an expression of an appropriate brotherly love. Marriage is to be held in honor among all and the marriage bed is to be undefiled. For fornicators and adulterers God will judge. It is an expression of brotherly love that we honor marriage and keep our marriage bed undefiled from fornication and adultery.

That is an expression of proper love. Another expression of proper love is to be free from the love of money, verse 5, being content with what you have for He Himself has said, I will never desert you nor will I forsake you.

So there is an improper love with which proper love is contrasted in verse 4. That is the love of, in an inappropriate way of those who are not our spouse or somebody of the opposite sex or somebody else where that love is inappropriate, that's verse 4.

Then there is the contrast with another kind of inappropriate love. That is the love for money, the love for things and an active discontentment. And another expression of brotherly love is in verse 7, follow the example of God of Gideon.

Remember those who led you, who spoke the Word of God to you and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. So brotherly love is sort of the overarching command, the overarching principle, this brotherly affection, let it continue in the church.

What does that look like? Here are some very practical applications of that, some very practical ways where that is worked out in body life. Verse 2, this is our text for this morning, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.

That is our verse for this morning. That first kind of expression of brotherly love is the love of strangers or showing hospitality to strangers. And there are three questions that we're going to answer this morning, three considerations and here they are.

Number one, what is hospitality? What is hospitality? Number two, why is it important? Of all the things that we could be commanded to exercise, why is hospitality important? And number three, what do angels have to do with it?

That's a good question. What do angels have to do with this? Like it would have been sufficient simply to say, exercise hospitality and then to move on. But what in the world do angels have to do with exercising hospitality?

You notice that at the end of verse 2, for by this, that is by the exercise or the showing of love for strangers, hospitality, some have entertained angels without knowing it or angels unaware as some of the older translations say.

So let's begin with what is hospitality? Let me offer you a definition. It was important to define what brotherly love was or brotherly affection was last week in verse 1. There's a form or a part of the word brotherly love that also appears in this verse and it is the word for love because that's what hospitality is.

Hospitality is a form of love. And so the word that is used here that is translated hospitality is phileozynia. Phileozynia. And it's actually a combination of two words. So just as brotherly love or affection, love for the brothers, is one word that is a combination of two other words, a phileo meaning love or a kind of love, that is a kind affection, not an erotic love and not the kind of agape love, but a brotherly affection.

And then adelphos, which is brotherly, love of the brethren, they've crammed those two words together to get brotherly love, philadelphia, it's the same word that we get our city name from. Well, this likewise is two words kind of combined into one, phileo again, the word love.

We are to have phileo delphia, which is love of the brethren, and we are to have a phileo zynia, which is a love for strangers. And the word zynia is the word that is translated in the New Testament as lodging place or guest room.

It comes from the word xenos, which means stranger or foreigner. We're familiar with that word because we have some of our English words that come from that, like xenophobia, which is the fear of strangers, the fear of foreigners, the fear of those who are not like us.

So a phileozynia is a love for strangers or a love for foreigners or for others. And so the author is commending to us a kind affection, a warm regard, a friendly love for strangers. The word for stranger, by the way, sorry, a form of the word for stranger, xenos is the word for stranger, zynia, that Greek word in the New Testament is sometimes used as a lodging place or a room.

For instance, in Philemon chapter, Philemon has one chapter, Philemon verse 22, where Paul says to Philemon, at the same time also prepare me a lodging, a zynia, prepare me a room, for I hope that through your prayers I will be given to you.

So the idea of a phileozynia is the love of a lodging place. It's the combination of the idea of preparing somebody a lodging for strangers or foreigners and then the affection that is attached to that.

You could own a hotel and have no love whatsoever and sell out your rooms to complete strangers each and every night and never exercise hospitality, even though you might have hospitality services. But that's not hospitality.

Hospitality is having a kind or warm affection for strangers to the point where you are willing to open up your home, open up your table, and to provide means or sustenance to other people who are not part of your home.

They might be strangers, they might be foreigners, and they may even be people within the body of Christ. So the NASB translation, show hospitality to strangers, is somewhat redundant because the word hospitality, it would have been sufficient to just simply say, show hospitality.

But to show hospitality to strangers is to say, show the love of strangers to strangers. What he's describing here is the kind of love that is willing to open up your home and to prepare a lodging, to prepare a room, or to give somebody a room and board.

If show hospitality, if we translate it, just show hospitality, you and I might be tempted to think that what the author has in mind here is simply being kind to the people that we like, the people that are like us, the people that we really enjoy hanging around with.

And this command would include that, but this command is much broader than that. This command has to do with doing that for strangers. Now you say, Jim, I'm getting my stranger danger warning is going up here.

There's got to be some consideration. You're certainly not talking about just running and grabbing a random homeless person off of the street and bringing them into my house to lodge with my family, are you?

Not entirely. There are some considerations which I'll get to later on, but I want you to understand that this word is not just talking about opening up our table to the people that we like to hang out with, our close friends.

That is a form of hospitality, but hospitality is in no way limited to that. This word was used to receive others into your home and to provide food and lodging. It is to open your home and your heart to others.

You can see how this is a form of brotherly love. I think that the author has in mind here a love to brothers who are strangers. It's not just that we open our homes in hospitality to people who are believers.

It certainly includes that, but it also goes beyond that. It is more than that. And notice that this was an expected practice, which is why the author says, don't neglect to do this. In other words, it was going on and he is encouraging them to not forget.

That's really the word that is translated neglect. It means to forget it or to lose sight of it or to simply let it pass out of your mind, to not recall to do it. It was the word used for something that is forgotten or lost to your remembrance.

So really this is a command to remember to do something. In other words, it is the expectation that believers will open their homes to other people, strangers and people that they know well, Christians and non-Christians.

And that when that is going on and this is happening within the home, within the believer's home, that you and I will not get to the point where we start forgetting to do this because of whatever considerations come into our lives from outside of this.

Don't neglect it. Remember this. In fact, this list of commands is a list of commands to remember different things. We are to remember to let brotherly love continue. We are to remember to show hospitality to strangers, verse 2.

We are to remember the prisoners, verse 3. We are to remember our marriage vows, verse 4. We are to remember that the Lord Himself has said, I will never leave you nor desert you, verse 5. And we are to remember those who teach us the Word of God, verse 7.

There's a lot of things to remember and this is just another one of them. This hospitality, this love for strangers that is to go on, don't let it slip from your mind so that it gets out of your mind and thus out of your life.

Because once it is out of your mind and you're not thinking about it, life will come and the days will stack up and the weeks will pass one after another and pretty soon you realize, it has been months or years since I have done anything like this.

But once you forget to do it, then it will be forgotten from your life and you and others will suffer as a result of it. And I mean suffer not because God's going to discipline you or hurt you or harm you, that's not the idea, but just that we lose out a blessing when we forget to do this.

One last thing I should say about what is hospitality, and this is something that needs to be dislodged from our minds and our hearts. It is not a spiritual gift. It's not a spiritual gift, it's a command.

People say this all the time, my gift is hospitality. No, nobody has the spiritual gift of hospitality. The command to you is to be hospitable, to exercise hospitality, but nobody has that gift. Now you may have certain character qualities, you may have certain natural wiring, you may be a gregarious and outward going personality, there might be things about your life and your pattern of life or your home that makes hospitality easier than it is for somebody else, but there's no such thing as that gift.

You may have other gifts that play well with exercising hospitality, but it is not a spiritual gift. And you can go to Ephesians chapter 4 where the gifts, the teaching gifts and equipping gifts are listed, or you can go to 1 Peter chapter 4 where the distinction is made between serving gifts and speaking gifts, or you can go to the list of gifts in Romans chapter 12 or the list of gifts in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and guess what?

You will not find in any of those listings of spiritual gifts. In any of the four places where spiritual gifts are dealt with in the New Testament, you will not find hospitality listed among them because it is not a gift, it is a command.

Imagine if you will that it were a gift, but it were listed here along with all of these other commands. Have you ever heard anybody say, I would be very hospitable, I would exercise hospitality, but hospitality is not my spiritual gift?

Of course it's not your spiritual gift. It's not anybody's spiritual gift. Nobody has that gift, but everybody has that command. Nobody would ever say, look, brotherly love is not my spiritual gift. I know it is commanded here in verse 1, but it's not my spiritual gift.

I'm more of the sarcastic, cynical, critical, snarky type of a person. That's my spiritual gift. Brotherly love is not it. Would you ever expect anybody to say remembering prisoners is not my spiritual gift?

Nobody's spiritual gift. How about the person who said, look, moral purity and holding my marriage in honor and keeping my marriage bed undefiled, not my spiritual gift. What would you think of such a person?

You'd say you're a lunatic. It doesn't matter whether it's a spiritual gift or not. It's not a spiritual gift. Guess what it is? It is a command, which means that it is incumbent upon all of us. Nobody has that spiritual gift.

It is a command to be obeyed, which is why Paul in Romans 12, after talking about spiritual gifts, by the way, he does mention hospitality, but not in connection with spiritual gifts. In Romans 12, in the first, well, verses 3 -8, he talks about the various spiritual gifts, but then he talks about things that are incumbent upon all of God's people.

Romans 12, verse 9, let love be without hypocrisy. Notice the reference there to love. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good, be devoted to one another in brotherly love, giving preference to one another and honor, not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.

That's not a list of spiritual gifts. Rejoicing is not a spiritual gift, being diligent, fervent in spirit, brotherly love, giving preference to one another, those are not spiritual gifts. Those are commands that all of us have to exercise by God's grace, virtues of loving kindness toward one another, and hospitality is included in that list.

Hospitality is also included as one of the qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. It is also included as a qualification for widows who were to be put on the list that the church would support in their destitution, and that's in 1 Timothy 5 as well.

Hospitality is also not just a New Testament command or ethic. This is something to remember. It's not just a New Testament ethic. Something goes back to the Old Testament. In fact, it's part of the law, Leviticus 19, verse 34, 34.

The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as a native among you, and you shall love him as yourself. For you were an alien in this land of Egypt, I am the Lord your God. Now notice how the Lord there says, you once were an alien, a foreigner, a stranger, and therefore when you get into the land and the people come into your land who are aliens and foreigners and strangers, you should treat them with kindness, remembering that you yourself were once just like them.

And that command is repeated in Deuteronomy 10, he who executes justice for the orphan and the widow and shows his love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. So show your love for the alien, for you are aliens in the land of Egypt.

In Job 31, when Job was reciting, when Job was defending his own integrity and talking about how he had not sinned against his neighbor, he lists his treatment of aliens and his acts of hospitality as among his righteous deeds.

Job 31, verse 19, if I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing or that the needy had no covering, verse 32, the alien has not lodged outside for I have opened my doors to the traveler. He asked Job, what is one of the marks of your righteousness?

He had opened up his doors to the traveler. That's exercising hospitality. It was an expression of God's heart and therefore it was to be important to Israel and if it was to be important to Israel, it was to be important to you and I as well.

So not just a New Testament ethic, this goes all the way back to the earliest, the first book of the Bible ever written is the book of Job. The first book was not Genesis. The earliest book was the book of Job.

Even Job there talks about how he had exercised hospitality and treated aliens and strangers. Now second question, why is it important? What is it? It is the love for strangers and second, why is it important?

Why Hospitality Matters for Kingdom Citizens

It is important because it displays the character of God through the lives of His people. This is significant. It displays the character of God. It is no mistake that the author has just said, therefore, since you have received a kingdom which cannot be shaken, in other words, all of the future is yours.

The new heavens and the new earth, the new creation, resurrected body, you are heirs of the kingdom. Everything that Yahweh owns He has given to His Son and everything that the Son has received He shares with all of those who are in Him.

So you are looking around here at other believers and you are seeing a kingdom of kings and priests who will reign in that new heavens and that new earth. So it is as if the author is saying, since you have been given everything by God that can possibly be given to you, show love to strangers.

In other words, out of the wealth of what you have been given, what we have been given, we give out to other people. You have received a kingdom. God has opened up His table to you. God has opened up His family to you.

Everything that God has, He has made available to you. He has laid it out and welcomed you to that table and welcomed you into His family. He gives you His entire kingdom. And so now it is as if the author is saying, so that little kingdom that you have here on earth, open that up to other people and share it with them in the same way that God has shared His kingdom with you.

You've received an unshakeable kingdom. So therefore, this little shaky kingdom that you have, open it up and share it with other people. It models the character of God and the nature of God to show kindness like that and care for outsiders.

And just as the children of Israel were once aliens and strangers in a foreign land that was not theirs, God redeemed them out of it and brought them into their land, so you and I were once aliens and strangers from the covenants of promise and from God's family And we have been brought in and brought near through the blood of Christ.

And the title, Pilgrim or Alien, is one of the best titles that you could use to describe what a Christian life is. We are in that way exactly as Abraham was and as Isaac and Jacob were. Hebrews 11 verse 9, by faith Abraham lived as an alien in the land of promise.

Remember his sojourn, wandering around, living in tents, looking for that city that has foundation whose maker and builder is God. And Abraham lived as a sojourner in this world. There's a very real sense in which when we welcome strangers and other people into our homes, they may be strangers or travelers or aliens or people we don't know very well, and we welcome them in, we are modeling the same thing that God has done for us.

And we are offering up what God has given to us to serve other people and to benefit them. And then we are modeling the character of God in doing so and reminding ourselves that you and I were also once aliens and strangers to the covenants of promise.

And God has brought us in and welcomed us in. This practice was essential in ancient cultures, by the way. Far more essential than it is in our culture and in our time. And I speak here only of Western American Christianity, but it was something that was incredibly necessary in ancient times when people would travel because they didn't have hotels and Airbnbs and ramadas and inns with pools and hot tubs and all that good stuff.

If you wanted to go to a hot tub, you went to a bathhouse and those were places of ill repute. And if you were traveling from one city to another and you didn't know anybody in that city to go stay with, a friend, a family member, an acquaintance, somebody that you had connected with previously that would open their home and share it with you, then you either slept outside, which itself was dangerous, because imagine sleeping outside in South Central LA, that can be a dangerous place to sleep.

And if you didn't do that, then you might choose to take up lodging in one of the houses or places where they would sell rooms and those were something akin to a brothel, not a ramada, but a brothel. So as a believer, if you were traveling to another city and you wanted to avoid danger, temptation, the appearance of evil, and just being immersed in a culture that you had already left, if you didn't have somebody in that city to stay with, you were in horrible straits.

It was essential back then. Not only essential in the ancient culture, but listen, it was essential in a culture and in a place where the church was persecuted. And these early Hebrew Christians, they were being persecuted.

We already read back in chapter 10 how some of them had had their possessions seized and some had been thrown into prison. When you live in a persecuted culture, there is, of course, the temptation to close in on for yourself and amongst your own.

If we lived in a persecuted country, the natural inclination for the child of God would be to turn inward and to say, I need to protect my family, I need to protect what is mine. I can't trust people traveling into the city that they're not a turncoat, that they're not a plant from the government trying to seek out the location of a home church.

I can't trust that. So the natural inclination is to close up and to stop doing that. You don't even want to go exercise kindness to prisoners and to remember them. Why? Because if you go to the prison to give bread and sustenance and show kindness to people who are in prison, who were once the week before in your church, if you do that, then guess what?

They think of you. You become the next target on their list. So in a persecuted culture and an ancient culture like that, the natural inclination is to turn inward. And the author here is saying, you need to remember to do the exact opposite.

Open yourself up to strangers who will come in, show them hospitality. It is an evangelistic opportunity. It is also a way to demonstrate grace and kindness to your brothers and sisters in Christ. And though you might be inclined to forget the prisoner and to forget hospitality, a persecuted culture is the wrong time to do that.

That is so counterintuitive, is it not? That is so counterintuitive. The natural inclination would be to say, no way. I will exercise hospitality once it is safer to do so. And the reality is that hospitality is a risky thing.

This kind of grace and obedience is an expensive thing, and it is a time-consuming thing. It is an energy-draining thing. But it is a Christian thing, not a gift, but a command. It is all the more necessary in difficult times for believers to exercise hospitality.

We have a great New Testament example of this in Acts 16 when Paul is on his second missionary journey. After receiving the Macedonian vision, they sail across the sea and they land in the city of Philippi.

And they go into the city. And then on a Sabbath day, they go back outside of the city to where the Jews who had been expelled from Roman colonies at that time met for prayer outside the city by the river.

And it says that Paul went out there and spoke to the women who were gathered there for prayer. Acts 16, verse 14, a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening.

And the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay.

And she prevailed upon us, Luke says. Notice what happened. The Lord opened her heart and Lydia opened her home. The most natural response for her after embracing Christ and being baptized and understanding that salvation, the most natural thing for her was to open up her home and to implore Paul and Luke and anybody else who was traveling with him to come and to stay there and have lodging.

Because if Paul didn't stay there, Lydia was, by the way, the first convert in all of Europe. He landed in Europe and converted this woman and she gave them a place to stay. She opened up her house and gave them lodging.

That is the most practical demonstration of love and brotherhood. God opened her heart and Lydia opened her home. And if she hadn't done that, by the way, then Paul and the traveling companions would have had no other place to stay.

They'd never been to Philippi before. They didn't have connections there. She was the first convert, the first Christian in Philippi. Now here's the question. Is this only for believers? I suggested to you that there is no limit that is placed on us in the text that we just exercise this grace to those who are in Christ.

So is this something that we are called only to do for believers? I don't think that it is something that we are called only to do for believers. I think it is something we are called especially to do to believers.

We're to do good to all men and especially those who are of the household of faith. In other words, some of our very first expressions of brotherly love should be to the brothers in exercising hospitality and welcoming them in and sharing our sustenance with them.

But it certainly should not stop with the church. It certainly could go beyond that and we should be seeking opportunity to have other people into our home who are not believers because that is an evangelistic encounter.

That is an evangelistic opportunity. When you have unbelievers at your table and you say, may we ask the Lord's blessing on this, this is our custom as a family so we are going to pray, and you begin to pray and thank God for that food and then you begin to discuss things as a family, spiritual things, that is an incredible evangelistic opportunity.

So it's not just limited to believers. It should also have something to do with unbelievers and there should be unbelievers who are on your target list of people to welcome in and to demonstrate the grace of hospitality to.

By the way, this is something that if it were, that it is almost uniquely a Christian thing in our culture. There are rare times when outside of this, unbelievers get together but what do their get-togethers look like?

Their get-togethers look like exclusively their drinking buddies or their partying buddies or something that they do that gathers everybody together. The Christian expression of hospitality and showing kindness to others is something of an entirely different nature.

It's an entirely different character. We do this evangelistically. We do this as an expression of affection and love and how different that is from what the unbeliever is exposed to when they get together and they think it's just all about talking about politics and it's all about getting together and drinking or partying or doing what they do until late at night and then going home.

The Christian expression of this grace is such a testimony to the unbelieving world. Now, having said all of that, before we talk about what angels have to do with it, let me offer to you some practical considerations.

Now, a little over a year ago, if you want to know what this looks like in application, I would commend to you a message that was preached here a little over a year ago by David Forsyth where he talked about how to start doing hospitality, what hospitality looks like, how you express it, some considerations, etc.

I'm not going to go back and I don't want to rehash all of that. I would just commend that message to you. I do want to talk about some practical considerations and then I will leave the application of this up to you.

So, here's my practical considerations. We do have to remember that we have obligations alongside of hospitality that can sometimes conflict with hospitality. That should be obvious. There are limits to the ways in which we express this love and this grace to other people, especially when we're talking about strangers.

So for instance, I am not suggesting that you go find a random homeless person, bring them home, and allow them to sleep in the basement with your small children. That's not hospitality. See, that's not wise.

You may have obligations to your family, to your spouse, to your children that will affect how it is that we make application of this principle. There will be times when hospitality looks different for different families and even for the same family at different seasons of life.

So for instance, a single mother who works an eight-hour day so that she can provide for her two teenage children, the exercising of hospitality, this grace, is going to look different in her life than it looks in the life of a retired couple who have nothing but space, nothing but time, and nothing but money.

See how it's going to look different? It's going to look different for you with small children and all the demands that go with that than it will look for you when your children are older and half of them have moved out of the house or all of them have moved out of the house.

Hospitality is going to look different for different families. It's going to look different in different environments. And my job is not to say, here's what it's going to look like in your life. You should follow this person or do exactly what this person does because that may be unrealistic to you.

But here are the principles. Do I have a heart for strangers? These are the questions. Do I have a heart for strangers? Am I willing to open up my little kingdom and give of what I have to other people, those that I know well as well as those that I don't know as well?

Am I willing to give of myself and my provision and my efforts and my time and my attention and my affections to other people? Do I welcome others into my home with grace and kindness? Have I neglected to show love to strangers?

Do I demonstrate my love for others in such a tangible way? How can I improve in showing hospitality to others? And have I forgotten how important this is? Those are the questions that we can answer. Now again, I would leave the application of that up to you and your circumstance and your situation.