You Would Have To Know Them First

He looks after his own and he is very good at it and the circle has a hard edge.

Inside the circle he is magnificent. Family, of course. The two families they have been close to for twenty years. A cousin's household. Two men he worked with.

Inside that boundary he will do anything. He has driven through the night. He has given money he did not have and never mentioned it again. He has sat in hospitals.

Outside it, nothing.

Not out of coldness. He would say, and he would believe it, that you cannot help everybody and that a man's first duty is to his own, and there is a great deal of truth in that and I am not going to dismantle it.

But watch how the edge works in practice.

A stranger needs something. He notices. He feels the pull. And then a rule engages, quietly, and the rule says: you do not know them, you do not know the situation, it is not your place, somebody who knows them should do it.

And he moves on, and nothing happens, and he is a good man the entire time.

He is fifty-nine. The circle has not admitted a new person in twelve years.

So let me ask you.

Who would you help today if you did not have to know them first?

The instruction names strangers

There is a short instruction near the end of Hebrews that is easy to read as a general encouragement to be nice, and the noun in it is very specific.

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.Hebrews 13:2

Strangers.

Not neighbors, not brothers, not the household of faith, all of which are commanded elsewhere and are good. Strangers. People with whom you have no history, no relationship and no prior obligation.

Hebrews 13 makes the absence of any existing connection the defining feature of the person being welcomed, and the Spirit put that word in the sentence deliberately, so the rule that says you would have to know them first has never once been in the instruction.

Now, hermano, plainly, because you are a serious man and I am not going to charm you.

Your loyalty is a real virtue. In an age with very little of it, you have kept twenty year friendships in working order, and I would rather have you as a friend than most men I know. Hebrews 13 still says do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, and the Spirit chose the words do not forget, which is the language of something already known.

But loyalty has an edge on it by nature, and an edge that has not moved in twelve years has stopped being loyalty and started being a wall with people you love inside it.

Hebrews 13 says do not forget, which is the language of something already known and quietly dropped, and the Spirit chose that phrasing, which means the pull you feel and then override is a memory of an instruction rather than a sentimental impulse.

And the second half of the verse is doing something I want you to see clearly.

Some have entertained angels without knowing it. The point is not that you should be scanning for angels. The point is that they did not know who was at the door, and it did not matter to what they did.

Hebrews 13 has hospitality happening before the identity of the guest is established, and the Spirit was in that order, so needing to know the situation first has never once been the condition of the welcome.