The benefits of loving strangers
A couple of years ago when my family was in Switzerland, we didn’t understand much German and we were trying to figure out where a particular store was. The maps were confusing. We didn’t know how to ask for help.
But an angel in disguise saw our bewildered look and came to our rescue. She spoke English and helped us figure things out. It was a wonderful example of hospitality. We felt so cared for and this woman expressed so much genuine love in helping us. For just a few minutes we didn’t feel like strangers.
That’s what loving strangers can do. It breaks down barriers and draws a bigger circle that includes more of God’s children.
Loving strangers in the Bible
There are so many examples in the Bible of people expressing hospitality and love to strangers. This sets a powerful example for you and me in the way we should think about and treat strangers, whether it’s a visitor at church, a new kid at school or a new person at work, or someone from a different cultural, religious, or national background.
Why should we be kind to and even love visitors and strangers, especially if they’re different from us? Because when we do, God reveals blessings that we might not have seen or been receptive to otherwise.
This verse from Leviticus reminds us that it’s really about the Golden Rule, treating others the way you want to be treated.
And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 19:33, 34 NKJV
You never know who God has sent to bless you in the guise of a stranger.
Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality to strangers
A great example of this is when three strangers visited Abraham and Sarah on the plains of Mamre. Abraham saw three men, ran to meet them and welcomed them graciously.
And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground,
And said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said.
And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth. Genesis 18:2-6 KJV
Abraham goes on to prepare a feast for them, showing a very generous sense of hospitality to these strangers.
What Abraham and Sarah didn’t know was that these three men, or as they have also been called, angels, came with good news that Sarah, in her old age, would become pregnant.
As I said, you never know what blessing will come when you entertain and are loving toward strangers.
Loving strangers brings blessings
When you love the stranger in your midst, it opens the windows of heaven for you to encounter God in your life. And it always blesses the stranger as well.
Remember when God told Elijah to go to a widow in Zarephath? This was not a Jewish territory. He would be a stranger to her and she would be a stranger to him. But they each helped the other.
When they first met, Elijah asked her to bring him some water and something to eat, but she confided she only had a handful of meal and a little bit of oil and was planning to make her last meal for her and her son before they died.
Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son.”
For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD sends rain on the land.’”
She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah. 1 Kings 17:13-16 NIV
These two strangers blessed each other many times over. In fact, after Elijah had been there a while, the son of the widow became ill an died. But Elijah prayed and the child came back to life. What a way to express love to a stranger.
And it all started with Elijah being obedient to God who was telling him who to go to.
Who is God telling you to minister to?
Strangers loving strangers
The prophet Elisha also had his opportunities to bless a stranger. Naaman, the commander of the Syrian army had leprosy and came to Elisha to be healed. Here again were two people who were strangers to each other.
In fact, the reason Naaman even knew about Elisha was because a little Jewish girl, who had been captured by the Syrians, was a servant to Naaman’s wife and told her that Elisha could heal him.
Put yourself in the place of this little girl, who was not just a stranger in a foreign land, but also a servant against her will. As a stranger, she was expressing love for her master and mistress. Then Naaman, went outside his territory, his comfort zone, to become a stranger in the area where Elisha was.
You can read this story in 2 Kings, Chapter 5.
Elisha heals Naaman of his leprosy by sending him to dip in the River Jordan seven times.
Now I admit, that is a rather unusual way to express hospitality, telling someone to go jump in the river, but the result of healing was certainly worth this unusual request.
Nabal’s lack of hospitality
Unfortunately, not everyone in the Bible had this broad sense of hospitality toward strangers or those who were different from them.
When David requested food for his men from Nabal, Nabal not only refused but responded with anger. His selfishness prevented him from being hospitable to someone who was to be the future king of Israel and could have been a big blessing to him in the long run.
Fortunately, Nabal’s wife Abigail, was the opposite of her husband and saved the day with an overabundance of hospitality.
You can read this story in 1 Samuel, Chapter 25, starting verse 2.
Why should we be loving strangers?
Now I want to come back to Elijah and Elisha. Jesus actually refers to how these two prophets ministered to strangers, to non-Jews. This upset the religious authorities of his day, who had a nationalistic sense of their religion. They thought they, the Jews, were the only ones God loved. Jesus was trying to show that God loves everyone, as shown by the example of these two Old Testament prophets.
So if you ever wonder why you should love strangers, it’s because God does. To God, there are no strangers. All are His children and should be treated with love.
The best example of how to love and treat strangers is the life of Jesus. Repeatedly, Jesus reached out to, blessed, and healed those who were strangers, outcasts, and the rejects of society.
His Parable of the Good Samaritan was the epitome of what it meant to love the stranger. Now of course in this parable it’s billed as loving your neighbor, but Jesus blew the concept of who a neighbor is out of the water.
In effect, he was telling his audience there are no strangers. Everyone is your neighbor and you should treat everyone as such.
The only reason Jesus could deliver the moral of this parable with such authority was because he was already doing exactly what he was preaching. Jesus loved his neighbors, all his neighbors, everyone whom others would think of as strangers.
Why loving strangers is possible
Yes, of course, Jesus ministered to his fellow Jews. But he also reached out to and responded to those who were not Jewish: the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob, the Roman centurion, the Syrophoenician woman, just to name a few.
He could love these people even when others, including his closest disciples, thought they were cringe-worthy.
How could he love them? Because he could see God love them. Jesus made it clear he couldn’t do anything by himself.
Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. John 5:19 NIV
That’s a good thing for you and me to remember. You can’t love the stranger, those who are different from you, the outcast, without God’s help, without first seeing that God loves them. Once you see God loving them, then it’s much easier for you to love them.
Loving yourself first
If anyone ever obeyed the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, it was Jesus. The more I’ve thought about that, I realized that means Jesus actually loved himself as well. Not in a selfish, egotistical way. But in a humble spiritual way.
Jesus knew his relationship with God and his God-given purpose as the Messiah. He didn’t just accept his identity and purpose, but he embraced them with love. He must have loved himself for who he was as the Son of God.
This is really the first step you and I need to take in loving our neighbor, loving the stranger in our midst, to love ourselves the way Jesus loved himself.
If you don’t truly love yourself, it’s going to be pretty difficult to love your neighbor or strangers.
Accept the fact that you are a child of God—that’s who you really are—and love yourself as such.
You’re not the mistakes you’ve made. You’re not what others think or say about you. You are the loved, loving, and lovable child of God.
It is not selfish to love yourself in this way. Just the opposite, in fact. To love yourself in the right way is an act of humility because you’re acknowledging that as a child of God, it is God who has made you who and what you are, and that you have not.
Once you can see yourself as a child of God and love yourself in that light, it’s easy to see and love everyone you encounter the way Jesus would have.
Peter and John an example for loving strangers
When Peter and John were about to enter the Temple and saw a lame man begging out front, they saw so much more than met the eye. They saw a precious child of God and reached out with the love of Christ. The man was healed.
You can read this story in Acts, Chapter 3.
How often do you walk by someone like that? Not necessarily a lame beggar in front of church, but anyone who is in need: a stranger, an immigrant, an outcast?
Sometimes these people are right under our noses and we don’t even see them. How do you respond? Do you not even see them? Do you ignore them? Are you judgmental? Are you compassionate but don’t think you can do anything or don’t know what to do that would really help? Do you reach out and try to help?
There’s no formula. There’s no one-size-fits-all response.
How do you respond to a stranger in need?
There have been times when I have helped the stranger on the street. And there have been times I walked right by someone, sometimes pretending I didn’t even see them. That kind of always leaves an empty feeling in me.
But over the years, I have gotten better at responding with love.
Several years ago, when I was in Boise, Idaho I met a man outside the grocery store who was begging and looked like he was in a pretty serious situation. I’m embarrassed to say I walked right past him. I crossed the street and God stopped me in my tracks. He told me to go back and talk to this man.
Now, he wasn’t a stranger from a foreign country, but he was certainly a stranger to me and very different from me in many ways.
I went up to him and asked if I could sit with him for a few minutes. He welcomed me into his space very graciously. I was the stranger in a sense and he was showing hospitality to me.
I simply asked him to tell me his story. We talked for about 45 minutes. We laughed and cried together. But mostly I just loved him. I had this deep love for this total stranger who opened his heart to me. It was such a blessing.
I did not give him any money. I didn’t solve his problems. I just loved him and treated him as a brother. He felt this and expressed his love for me in return.
My excuses for not loving strangers
The reason I have not always reached out to people in this kind of a situation is because I was afraid to get involved, afraid I’ll get taken advantage of, or afraid I’ll do or say the wrong thing and not be able to make a difference. But at the root of it all, it’s usually because I’m afraid to love as much as Jesus did.
But, as I said, there have been times when I wasn’t afraid. Right after I started the podcast, I did an episode where I talked about this. It’s Episode 4: Are You Afraid to Love as Much as Jesus Did?
Now if you think of yourself as an extrovert, interacting with strangers may seem easier on the surface and more challenging if you see yourself as an introvert. But both of these labels are just that—labels, human limitations you’ve accepted about yourself.
I encourage you to approach your ministering to “strangers” by identifying yourself simply as a child of God, a follower of Jesus, who loves yourself and loves your neighbors, including the strangers in your midst.
Over the years, I have observed many introverts and extroverts. Not always, but often, they are not really interacting or not interacting with others out of love for their neighbors. They are more focused on themselves and what they want or need or are afraid of, than expressing love to the person they’re talking to or avoiding.
Real motives for loving strangers
Interacting and engaging with others is really an opportunity to express Christly love to someone. It’s not about what kind of personality you have. It’s about how much you consciously choose to follow Jesus’s example of loving others.
Jesus reminds us that how we treat others is actually how we treat him.
The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40 NIV
So it really comes down to: How much do you love Jesus?
Every time you express love to a neighbor, a stranger, or anyone in need, you’re expressing your love to and for Jesus.
Jesus engaged with, loved, and healed people from a wide range of socioeconomic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. How can you and I follow his example?
Obviously you can’t talk to and help every single person you meet every single day. But you can be alert to who God puts in your path.
Talking to perfect strangers
Recently my wife and I were in a foreign country sitting at breakfast in the hotel. We didn’t know anyone there. But the couple at the table next to us caught our eye. We started a tentative conversation and it blossomed into a deep sharing of ideas. It turned out that we had a lot in common on many levels.
Some people might just call this serendipity, or think it’s no big deal. But I’ve come to see the hand of God at work in situations like this, where He puts in our path someone we can be a blessing to and who will be a blessing to us as well. We could have easily been so absorbed in ourselves that we didn’t even notice the couple next to us.
Years ago, I might not have been as willing to talk to someone I didn’t know, especially in a foreign country. But God has gently encouraged me to see the opportunities He gives me to express love to strangers and in turn be blessed by them.
I encourage you to be alert to the opportunities God gives you to express love to those He puts in your path.
Paul says
When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality. Romans 12:13 NLT
The Greek word for “hospitality” in this verse is philoxenia. It literally means “love for strangers.”
One Jewish scholar points out that in the Hebrew Scriptures there is one verse commanding us to love our neighbors but 36 places that command us to love strangers.
God is giving you opportunities for loving strangers
Let’s come back to this idea of loving strangers. It’s hard to do sometimes for a variety of reasons. But it becomes easier when you have been a stranger somewhere, whether in a foreign country, a different city or neighborhood, a church, or a new job.
When you have been an outsider, it often gives you empathy for those who may feel they’re on the outside.
Look how Jesus treated the stranger and how he practiced hospitality. Jesus didn’t have a home to invite people to but he included them at the “table” of his love, so to speak. Wherever he was he made people feel at home. He helped people realize they were part of God’s family, always welcome, never a stranger. The result was healing and restoration.
You and I can do the same. This week, look for the opportunities God puts in front of you to love the strangers in your midst.
Photo Credit: Matt Collamer
_____________
James Early, the Jesus Mindset Coach, is a Bible teacher, speaker, and church mentor. He conducts Bible workshops online and in person. His focus is on getting back to the original Christianity of Jesus by embracing the mindset of Christ in daily life. Contact him here.
Make a donation to support the show
_____________
Bible References
Leviticus 19:33, 34 NKJV
33 And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him.
34 The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
Genesis 18:2-6 KJV
2 And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground,
3 And said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant:
4 Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree:
5 And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said.
6 And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.
1 Kings 17:13-16 NIV
13 Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son.”
14 For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD sends rain on the land.’ ”
15 She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family.
16 For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah.
John 5:19 NIV
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
Matthew 25:40 NIV
40 The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Romans 12:13 NLT
13 When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality.
