to welcome wholeheartedly: to receive a person or a message gladly and with approval
This is the word for a warm reception, and the warmth is built into it. The plain verb behind it (δέχομαι) simply means to take someone or something in; this longer form insists that the taking-in was hearty, glad, and approving rather than merely allowed. It belonged to the polite vocabulary of the day, the sort of language a city used when it honored a visiting envoy. Greek had other words for other shades of receiving: one for taking a guest under your own roof (ὑποδέχομαι), another for receiving what you have been waiting and hoping for (προσδέχομαι).
Every use of this word in the New Testament comes from Luke, and each one marks a moment when somebody was taken in gladly instead of turned away:
- a waiting crowd receiving Jesus back across the lake
- Jesus receiving crowds who had followed him uninvited
- a congregation asked by letter to receive a traveling teacher
- believers in Jerusalem receiving Paul and his companions gladly
- Paul in Rome receiving everyone who came to the house he rented
That last one closes the book of Acts. Under guard and paying his own way, Paul is still the one doing the welcoming.
Twice what is received is not a person but something offered. At Pentecost the crowd receives Peter's message, which means far more than hearing it, since the people who receive it are baptized the same day. In a courtroom at Caesarea a lawyer tells the governor that his reforms are received with gratitude everywhere. In both places the word means an approving yes, not a bare taking-in.