The host reproved

The Guests reproved. Of true Hospitality.

(The Gospel History, Section 107)

And he said to him also that had bidden him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, nor thy kinsmen, nor rich neighbours; lest haply they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed; because they have not wherewith to recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the just.

Commentary by J. R. Dummelow

Lk 14:12–14. On entertaining the poor (peculiar to Lk, whose Gospel is full of sympathy with the poor). 12. Thy friends, etc.] A man is not in the true sense hospitable, who entertains only those who can entertain again. Such interested hospitality is not wrong, but there is no merit in it, and it does not lay up treasure in heaven. 14. At the resurrection of the just] i.e. at the glorious resurrection to life eternal which the righteous only will enjoy, with which is contrasted ‘the resurrection of condemnation’ which awaits the unrighteous (Jn 5:29). ‘The resurrection of the just’ here answers exactly to ‘the resurrection from the dead,’ viz. of righteous persons only (Phil 3:11 RV), as distinguished from ‘the resurrection of the dead,’ which includes all mankind (Ac 17:32). Our Lord’s words give no real sanction to the Jewish belief in two distinct resurrections, the first of the righteous the second of the unrighteous, traces of which some expositors find in 1 Cor 15:23, 1 Th 4:16, and especially in Rev 20:5, 6.

The host reproved

(The Saviour of the World, Vol VI Book IV Poem LXVI)

Noted the Lord a smile half-hid
In the host whose guests of Him were chid?
Called he, too, help from Him who gives
Those words by which a man’s soul lives?
Straight turned Christ to His host, and spake
That word should teach the man to make
A feast well pleasing in the eyes
Of God:—

“Would’st thou indeed devise

A dinner or a supper, should
Shew in the sight of God as good?
Ask not thy friends, nor rich men call,
Nor brethren nor relations; all
These can make feast for thee again
In proud delight to entertain:
But would’st thou make a feast, My friend,
Whose recompense shall know no end,
Be reckoned at the Judgment day
Among the debts thy God shall pay?
Go, bid the maimed, the blind and poor,
Let orphans gather at thy door;
Bring in the needy to thy feast;
Thy God is honoured in these, least!”

St. Luke xiv. 12–14.

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