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Brotherly love and the entertaining of strangers are a part of acceptable service to
God. This is seen by a further reference to 13: 15, 16: "By Him therefore let us offer
the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His
name". If we stop here, however, we are not rendering acceptable service. Brotherly
love and hospitality must be added; therefore the passage continues: "But to do good
and to have fellowship, forget not". The words "forget not" are the structural link with
Heb. 13: 1, 2:
"Be not forgetful" (verse 2).
"For with SUCH sacrifices God is well pleased" (verse 16).
This close connection between God and the brotherhood in service has been expressed
in Heb. 10: 22-24:
"Let us draw near . . . . . Let us hold fast . . . . . Let us consider one another."
While we have no room for humanism, we are also sure that a mere doctrinal
exactness is not acceptable with God. The true service embraces the Lord and His
people, and is sound both in doctrine and practice. So the third reference to "acceptable"
stresses "doing":
"Now the God of peace (literally "of the peace", something already mentioned and
understood, Heb. 7: 2; 12: 11, 14), that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus,
that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting (age-abiding)
covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working (doing) in you
that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ" (Heb. 13: 20, 21).
Philippians, the parallel epistle in the dispensation of the Mystery, has the same
emphasis:
"It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do."
"Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me,
DO: and the God of peace shall be with you" (Phil. 2: 13; 4: 9).
Hospitality (philoxenia), "the entertaining of strangers", is urged upon the believer
more than once in the epistles. Rom. 12: 10 and 13 unite "brotherly love" with
"hospitality" as does Heb. 13: 1, 2. One of the qualifications of the bishop was that he
should be "given to hospitality" (I Tim. 3: 2; Titus 1: 8), and I Pet. 4: 9 says: "Use
hospitality one to another without grudging", for an element of unwillingness blights
service to the Lord. The onus of hospitality in our present mode of life often falls upon
the woman. Here is an act of acceptable service which can be truly rendered to God as
the prayer, praise and pulpit utterance of her husband. Indeed, Heb. 13: 15, 16 shows
that worship in the assembly may be vitiated by the lack of consideration for others
afterwards. The times for true acceptable service are not only Sundays at 11a.m. and
6.30p.m., but they may have as much to do with clean sheets as with robes of
righteousness, and in dispensing the bread that perisheth as with the Word of truth.
We have had brotherly love and love of strangers (philadelphia and philoxenia). We
are now reminded of love that goes out to those who, though not present with us, need
our sympathy: "Remember them which are bound" (Heb. 13: 3). God is ever "mindful"