What Does Romans 12:13 Mean?
Share in common the needs of the set apart. Pursue the love of strangers.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.THE KEY
What English calls distributing, the verse’s verb means sharing in common, making another’s need part of a shared life.
THE MEANING
The needs among the set-apart community become a shared concern, not somebody else’s private burden. That same shared life reaches toward strangers: welcome is pursued as love of the stranger.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that need belongs only to the person who has it and generosity is a one-way transfer; here, the needy are participants in shared life.
THE ROOT
κοινωνοῦντες
koinōnountes
GROWS FROM
κοινων-
koinōn-
To share in common, to participate in something held together.
“share in common” in this verse is koinōnountes. The verb frames meeting a need as participation in a shared life, rather than a transfer between unrelated people. The person in need is not outside that common life; their need is part of what the community shares.
ALSO GROWS
koinōnia: Sharing in common; participation
κοινωνία
The related noun names the shared participation already present in the verse’s verb.
koinōnos: Partner; participant
κοινωνός
This branch makes visible the shared standing of giver and receiver.
koinos: Common; shared
κοινός
The same word family carries the idea of what belongs to or is held by more than one.
διώκοντες
diōkontes
GROWS FROM
διωκ-
diōk-
To pursue, chase after.
“pursue the love of strangers” in this verse is diōkontes. The Greek participle describes actively pursuing hospitality. In this same chapter, the same verb is used for those who “persecute” the reader: pursuit can be directed toward harm or toward welcome.
ALSO GROWS
diōkō: Pursue; chase after
διώκω
This is the verb behind “given to,” showing hospitality as something actively sought.
diōkontas: Those who pursue; those who persecute
διώκοντας
Romans 12:14 uses this form for persecutors, showing how the same pursuit takes its character from its object.
φιλοξενίαν
philoxenian
GROWS FROM
ξεν-
xen-
A stranger or guest; someone beyond the familiar circle.
The Greek word φιλοξενία (philoxenia, hospitality toward strangers) includes the stranger within the idea itself. Hospitality here reaches beyond familiar company to make welcome for someone unknown.
ALSO GROWS
xenos: Stranger; guest
ξένος
The word at the center of hospitality names the person being welcomed.
philoxenos: Hospitable; welcoming strangers
φιλόξενος
This related word makes the stranger-directed welcome explicit.
THE PATTERN
The needs within a community are met through sharing in common, and its welcome extends to the stranger.
If there is among you one in want, from one of your brothers, within any of your gates in the land the LORD your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your brother, the one in want.And all who trusted were together, and had all things in common.Do not let slip the opening of your home to strangers, for by it some have sheltered messengers without knowing it.THE THREAD
Do not let slip the opening of your home to strangers, for by it some have sheltered messengers without knowing it.Hebrews 13:2 uses the same Greek noun φιλοξενία (philoxenia, hospitality toward strangers) that Romans 12:13 names. The KJV phrase “entertain strangers” makes explicit what is already inside the word: this hospitality opens toward the stranger.
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