dechomai

At its heart this word is about how you treat a person who comes to you. To welcome someone is more than to let them through the door; it is to take them in gladly, to honor them, and to side with what they stand for. The opposite is to turn them away.

In the teaching of Jesus this welcome carries enormous weight, because welcoming the right person means welcoming the one who sent them. To welcome a disciple, a prophet, or even a child in Jesus' name is to welcome Jesus himself, and through him the Father. To shut the door on his messengers is to shut it on him. So a simple act of hospitality becomes a verdict on the gospel and on the one who brought it.

The same word covers ordinary, warm hospitality between people:

• the Galileans welcoming Jesus
• churches welcoming Paul and his coworkers
• Rahab taking in the spies
• old Simeon gathering the infant Jesus into his arms

In every case the welcome is glad and deliberate, not grudging.

When the object is not a person but a thing, the same verb means to take what is offered and make it your own. With a message it means more than to hear it: it means to embrace it as true and to act on it.

• Luke's seed on the rock receives the word with joy
• the Bereans receive the word eagerly and then check it against Scripture
• the Thessalonians receive Paul's preaching not as a human word but as God's

To refuse the word, or to receive a counterfeit gospel, is the deadly version of the same act.

With an ordinary object the word is plainer still: to receive a bill, a cup, letters, or a gift sent from a friend. Paul calls the support sent from Philippi a gift he has received, a fragrant offering pleasing to God. Stephen, dying, asks the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit.

What ties the two meanings together is a single posture: to take something to yourself with favor rather than to reject it. The difference is only what is being received. Welcoming a person and accepting a message are close enough that the Gospel sayings slide between them, but a translator usually needs the word "welcome" for people and the word "accept" or "take" for things.