Romans 12 3 thru 8

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“In Christ We Form One Body,” Romans 12:3-8 (May 22, 2016) 3

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. PRAY We are in the middle of a five week series on Romans 12, where we are looking at what the apostle Paul says about how Christians should approach life – how Christians, those who follow Jesus, should live their lives. The first two sermons in this series were on the first two verses of Romans 12, and the focus was very much individual. But in these last three sermon, we’ll pull the lens back so to speak and look not so much at individual application but what the Christian life looks like corporately. We’ll look at how we should relate to other people as we live our lives for Christ. And a big part, a huge part, of how we relate to other people as Christians is spiritual gifts. It’s an indispensable part of the Christian life. If you’re here today and you’ve been in churches for a long time, and especially if you come from a more charismatic church background, then you know about spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts have been a hot topic in Christianity over the last several decades, and it may have been a more controversial part of Christianity than any other issue in the twentieth century. Others of you may not have any idea what I mean when I say spiritual gifts. You may think, “Oh, you mean those inspirational bookmarks my aunt used to get me for Christmas with the Bible verses on them?” No. Those may indeed be very spiritual gifts, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Three points to the sermon today: first, what are spiritual gifts? Second, how are they distributed to the church? Third, how are we to use them? First, what are spiritual gifts? Let’s read verses 6-8: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.” If you look around, you’ll find a lot of teaching and instruction on spiritual gifts, and a lot of it focuses on the miraculous gifts – healing and speaking in tongues. Everyone wants to know, “Do those gifts exist today? How can the miraculous gifts be used? Can I get

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that gift? Should I pray for it?” No one, though, is worried about the gift of exhortation. I’ve never heard anyone say, “I’m really praying God will give me the gift of service.” And that just shows you how out of whack American Christianity is when it comes to the subject of spiritual gifts, because when you read the apostle Paul (and practically everything we know about spiritual gifts comes from his writings), he continually deemphasizes the miraculous, showy gifts. He says all gifts are important. The best definition I’ve ever heard of spiritual gifts comes from Tim Keller, and he defines them like this: spiritual gifts are “differing abilities given by the Holy Spirit to each believer to meet needs is such a way that it creates a community of people who are growing into the fullness of the character of Jesus Christ.” And I like this definition for two reasons: first, it emphasizes that God gives these gifts to “meet needs.” That’s Paul’s concern with spiritual gifts: he is not concerned that you can show off with them, not that you can draw a crowd with them, but that you meet needs with them. Now, most scholars that I’ve read (and certainly all I really trust) agree there is no comprehensive list of spiritual gifts anywhere in the Bible. Paul gives us one list here in Romans 12, but he gives us another list in 1 Corinthians 12, and then a third in Ephesians 4, and none of those lists match completely. Peter gives still a fourth list in 1 Peter 4. They also agree that we can’t know in great detail what Paul meant by just about any of the gifts. We just don’t know, for example, the precise differences between what Paul meant by prophecy and what he meant by teaching. We can’t even know, precisely, what Paul meant by “acts of mercy” or “service.” What kinds of service? What kinds of acts of mercy? We just don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, because the promise of spiritual gifts is that God has given all the gifts necessary to meet all the needs of the church. If you see a need, that means God has given the gift needed to meet it, even if we can’t precisely define those gifts. For example, you can divide the gifts in Romans 12 into two smaller groups: prophesying, teaching, and exhortation are gifts that make sure God’s people have their spiritual needs met. They make it possible for the church to be fed with the Word of God, to know who God is and what his purposes are in the world, we know what he has done for us in Jesus Christ, and they enable us to be encouraged, exhorted, to remain faithful. On the other hand, service, giving, and acts of mercy meet physical needs, to make sure no one goes without food to eat or clothes to wear, to make sure no one who is sick is not cared for, and leadership is a gift that makes sure what is needed gets to the ones who need it. So when you step back and look at these gifts, you realize pretty quickly that there is no possible need the church could have that a gift does not meet. And what is the end goal of the spiritual gifts? The second part of the definition: spiritual gifts “create a community of people who are growing into the fullness of the character of Jesus Christ.” I don’t know of any passage that sums it up better than Acts 2:42-47 – this passage is

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talking about the early church, and certainly the early church was a group of people whose needs were being fully met with the various spiritual gifts, and this is what Luke says about them: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” Acts 2:42-47. Here’s the phrase I would use to describe those people: completely, totally happy and satisfied in Jesus. Spiritually, they are satisfied – they are devoted to prayer and to learning what the apostles taught, and they are so satisfied that it overflows in the form of daily worship in the temple courts and lots of deep, rich fellowship with one another. They know what Jesus has done for them – that though they were sinners, though in fact some of them had played a role in getting their Messiah, the Lord Jesus, crucified, though they were deserving of God’s wrath, God had forgiven them. He had put on Jesus the punishment they deserved, and now they believed God raised Jesus from the dead and were totally forgiven. What they learned from the apostles brought them tremendous joy. So spiritually, they are totally satisfied. They are complete in God’s love. But it’s not only spiritual needs that were met. Physically, they had what they needed. If anyone lacked anything, the others would just bring what they had and share it. No one went without, no one viewed their possessions and belonging only to them, but they viewed them as belonging to the Lord and to be used for the benefit of God’s people. Therefore, they were completely, totally satisfied and happy in Jesus, not just spiritually but also physically. Every conceivable need a follower of Jesus could have the spiritual gifts met. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Second, how are they given to the church? The first and most important thing to know about the distribution of spiritual gifts is this: everyone has a gift. All God’s people have a gift. Paul says in verse 6: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them …” Romans 12:6. All of us have the gifts, Paul says, so let’s use them. Same thing in 1 Peter 4:10: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace…” All of us have the gifts. If that’s true, and it is, then I want us to think out four implications for every single one of us in the church today: first, because everyone has the gifts, then my goodness the church desperately needs you. If you have a spiritual gift it’s because there is a need to be met. God does not give spiritual gifts in a vacuum – the gifts are always given in proportion to a need. And if you are not using your gift, then a need is going unmet.

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Paul in verse 4 compares the church to a body, made up of many different members. It’s a common theme in the New Testament, and Paul uses it again in 1 Corinthians, where he says, “If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.” 1 Corinthians 12:15-18. You know what Paul’s saying there? God has set it up so that there are no unimportant Christians, and there are no insignificant gifts. You are desperately needed. If you are a Christian, you have a gift that no other Christian on the planet has, and if you aren’t using it to serve and equip the body, then the body is suffering unnecessarily. The body needs your unique gift. You must know that there are hands only you can hold, ears that will only listen to you, needs only you can meet, and demons only you can cast out. Whether it’s taking someone a meal, or teaching a children’s Sunday school class, or starting a Bible study in your home, or visiting the sick or those in prison, or helping to organize volunteers, or giving money because God has blessed you with more money than most people, or taking someone who’s hurting out for coffee and listening to them (that’s a real gift; it may be that because of your unique life experiences you can listen to someone and provide exhortation in a way no one else on the planet can) – it could be any number of things, but they are all indispensable to the health of the church. Application: how are you using your spiritual gifts? You must use your gifts or the body cannot be healthy. John MacArthur has told the story many times about a man in his church in California whose son died. And about six months after the funeral the father called John MacArthur up and said, “You came and visited when he died, but I haven’t heard from you since. Do you even care about me?” That’s the kind of phone call every pastor dreads. Yet you know what? The pastor cannot be at every single bedside, cannot counsel every single hurting person, cannot teach every single class and cannot serve every single meal. But the body can. The limbs and the organs of the body of Christ can be there for one another, but only if you are willing to use your gift to meet the needs of the church. Second, you also need the church. Probably more now than at any other time in the history of the church, individual Christians, and individual Christian families, are strongly tempted to think they don’t need the church, they don’t need a strong Christian community around them. It is so easy to feel self-sufficient, because we live in a time of financial prosperity and we can go to the store and get our own food and we can find our own entertainment. Spiritually it’s tempting to think we can take care of ourselves, because we can go find our own sermons online and books to read and Bible studies. Plus, our schedules are so crazy with work and visiting family and with our kids’ sports that it’s very, very easy to feel like Christian community and fellowship would be a nice optional add-on to our lives, but it’s not necessary.

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But in reality, what you’re doing there is you are thinking more highly of yourself than you ought. Romans 12:3: “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” When you think of you and your family as basically this self-sufficient unit doing it’s own thing in Oxford, Mississippi, you are not thinking with sober judgment. No matter how prosperous you and your family are, no matter how gifted you might be, you need the rest of the body. “The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable …” 1 Corinthians 12:21-22. Do you know why some of you are so stressed? Why your marriage feels so weak, and you and your spouse don’t really seem to enjoy one another anymore? Why you’re not getting along with your kids? Do you know why the last adjective you would use to describe your life is “joyful” or “peaceful”? It’s probably because you have bought the lie that you are self-sufficient. It’s not true – you need others. You need the body. Third implication: no individual local church will have the perfect mix of gifts. I said earlier that the promise of spiritual gifts is God has given the church all the gifts necessary to meet all the needs of the church. But I don’t want to create the impression that all needs inside of one particular local church can be met by the local church. Paul wrote the book of Romans “To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.” Romans 1:7. The promise should be thought of in terms of all the Christians in a geographic area – like Oxford – and not to each individual local church. The first church I served as pastor was a very small church – if we had sixty people on a Sunday morning, that was a lot. And I know that within that tiny little organization, we did not have the gifts to meet all the needs. There were a few members who did a lot of work and, frankly, got burned out because there just wasn’t anyone else who could help. I think that’s true in every small church, especially in churches that have just a few dozen people. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that bigger is better – the bigger a church is, in theory there should be enough gifts to meet all the needs, certainly once you have a thousand or more members. But what ends up happening in all big churches is that many, many of the believers just look around at all the different people and assume someone else will make sure the needs are met, and their individual gifts go into hibernation. A lot can get done in big churches because there’s so much paid staff, but that’s not really the body ministering to the body the way Paul describes it. So small churches can’t meet the needs of all their members, and big churches can end up sucking the gifts of Christians out of circulation. This means that churches must work together more to make sure the body of Christ is cared for in our city. And we are trying to do that. But it also means that you shouldn’t

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move from one church in a town to another church because you think you’ll find the perfect mix of spiritual gifts in the new church. It’s not a sin to join a new church in town. There are good reasons to leave a church. But there is no local church that will be a perfect fit for you. Fourth, spiritual gifts can cause tension and even conflict within the church. It’s natural for Christians to think their particular gifts should be emphasized more in the church. When you’re good at something, of course it’s going to be important to you. But when you meet someone else in the church who has some other gift, there will be tension and, on occasion, conflict. So of course the Christians who have gifts that equip the church spiritually will think that Bible studies and sermons and evangelism and a church library are of utmost importance, because that’s what they’re good at. And of course on the other side those Christians who have gifts that provide for physical needs will think that visiting the sick and caring for the poor and the shut-ins and mission trips that involve digging wells and building schools are what’s most important. Now, which group of gifts are most important? And of course the answer is: no gift is more important than any other. They are all necessary to meet needs, or God wouldn’t have given them. But it’s ok if there is a certain degree of tension in the church, because that just means that the body is taking the doctrine of spiritual gifts seriously and trying to use them. They are asking, “What should we be doing? Where should we use our resources, and where should our priorities be?” It’s also the reason why there is so much diversity in Christianity. It really does happen that Christians who emphasize certain gifts tend to go to church together, so the gift mix can vary greatly from church to church. Some people get really frustrated when they look at the Christian world and ask, “Why is it that there is so much diversity in Christianity? All these different churches and denominations – why is that?” Spiritual gifts are one reason. The other is sin. But spiritual gifts do cause, and sometimes for good reason cause a helpful tension in the church. Third, how are we to use our spiritual gifts? Practically, how do we put the gifts God gives us into action? I know one Christian teacher who says he is sick and tired of seeing spiritual gift inventories. Do you know what those are? They were fairly popular several years ago, it seems that churches used them a lot then, not so much now. They were questionnaires you could take that would supposedly tell you which spiritual gifts you had. Some churches even have them on their website. This teacher said that in his experience spiritual gift inventories weren’t all that helpful. He said that Christians don’t need gift lists, we need need lists. If we see a need, we meet it – that’s how we use our gifts for the common good. A good example of this is the parable of the Good Samaritan. When the Samaritan was riding along the rode to Jericho on his donkey and he saw the man lying half-dead in the ditch, he didn’t stop to take a

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spiritual gift inventory to see if he had the gift of mercy. No, he saw a need and he met it – and that’s our calling, Christians. How can we put this into action? Two things: first, focus on the needs you more than on the gifts you think you have. I have over the years had men come to me and lots of letters in the mail from people who were not members of my church, and say, “Pastor, you need to let me speak to your church on a Sunday morning. I have a message for them that I think they really need to hear.” What was that guy saying? He’s saying, “I have a spiritual gift that your church would benefit from.” But almost always that guy has never been in my church, has no idea what we’ve been going through as a church, no idea what I’ve been teaching and what we need to cover. What’s going on? He’s focusing on what he thinks his gift is without any reference to the need of God’s people. That’s not how you put gifts into action – gifts are given in reference to needs. Other times, I’ve had people come to me (sometimes these are members), who have sat me down and said, “Pastor, there is a big need in our community. We have this group of people who are not being cared for, and they really need our church’s help. I really feel like we need to do something about it.” And do you know what my reply always is? “What are you going to do about it?” Because the doctrine of spiritual gifts means you will focus on the needs that you see, and if you see a need it’s almost always because God wants to use you in some way to meet them. You know one mark of a healthy church? When ministries are bubbling up all over the place and the paid staff, the elders, have nothing to do with it. I love it when some ministry, some Bible study, some outreach effort is started by a member of the church and I had nothing to do with it, maybe didn’t even know about it beforehand. Someone just saw a need and didn’t come and ask our permission but went out and tried to meet it on his or her own. There will be a sort of spiritual anarchy in a church when spiritual gifts are being used, and the congregation will not be passive. If you are a control freak, that’s frightening, but it’s how the Holy Spirit chooses to do his work. The only way you can be absolutely sure you have a spiritual gift is to start using the gifts you think you have on the needs you see. Do you see a need, whether it’s physical or spiritual? Then go ahead and try to meet it – maybe the Holy Spirit has given you a gift. And maybe not. If you think our church needs another Bible study, so you start one, but after a month no one is coming back to it, maybe you don’t have gift of teaching. Or, maybe there just isn’t a need for that right now. Spiritual inventories aren’t bad, but they divorce the evaluation of gifts from the evaluation of current needs, so they are only so helpful. But that gets us to the second way we can practically use the gifts God has given us. Second, focus on spiritual fruit more than spiritual gifts. Do you know what spiritual fruit is? Character qualities always produced by the work of the Holy Spirit in someone’s

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life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and selfcontrol. Paul says at the end of the day it doesn’t matter how talented you are. You may be a great speaker, you may an incredible leader and organizer, you may know the Bible backwards and forwards. But if it is not producing spiritual fruit in the lives of the people around you, what good is it? If it’s not resulting in love, joy, peace, gentleness, selfcontrol in the people around you, then it doesn’t really matter at all. Corinth was a church full of spiritual gifts, but Paul in a very famous passage always read at weddings actually rebukes them because, while they have the gifts, they’re not producing fruit. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. As maybe all of you know, non-profit organizations, including churches and other religious organizations, are the beneficiaries of a very valuable designation under federal law – they are listed as charitable organizations, and that means that if you give money to the church you get to take the value of that gift and deduct it from your total income and, therefore, pay less taxes. It’s a great thing for churches because it makes it easier for people to want to contribute to them. But there has been a lot of talk in some more liberal, progressive political circles that Congress needs to do away with the charitable deduction altogether, especially for churches, in part because Christians hold views that they find so objectionable, but also because they say, “What good are they? A bunch of people come together in a building once a week to sing some songs and hear some boring lecture on an ancient book? What should the rest of the country subsidize that?” And you know what? If that’s all we are as a Christian church, they are absolutely right. But what if fruit is being produced? What if communities are being filled with people who are more loving, more peaceful, more joyful, more self-controlled, because of the gifts being used by the churches in it? What if marriages get stronger, and people feel less stress and miss less work and get sick less, and what if children are healthier and do better in school, all in part because there is fruit piling up everywhere? What if physical needs are being met – people finding housing, getting food, getting clothes, because the churches are exercising their gifts? That would be different, wouldn’t it? What if the world around us looked at Christian churches, and our church in particular, and said, “You know, I hate what they believe, but I hope those churches are always in Oxford because if they close down we’re going to have to raise taxes to make up for all the good they bring to our city.” “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” 1 Peter 2:12. Friends, are you using your gifts in such a way so as to make the world around us say that? PRAY.

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