In God forever. Amen. Beginning in verse three, 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. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leaves with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. The word of the Lord. Thank you to God. The church is made up of people, so the church reflects the people in her. Some people are empire builders, empires built on personality, usually around strong speaking gifts. Some people are lone wolves. They don’t want others around them. They usually are people who like to criticize the church as if they’re not a part of the church, being third person of the church that they are included in as members the body of Christ.
There are some who want to lead, and what they mean by that is have other people do what they say. They demand submission, but they’re not really willing themselves to submit to others. We see that all the time. We see the church reflects people, good and bad, and sometimes, indifferent. If you are looking for a perfect church with people in it, you will not find one. We know that. I’m sure you’ve heard this common complaint that so many say, But the church is full of hypocrites. You’re right. So are the bars, so are the schools, so is the workforce, and every other human gathering place is filled with hypocrites because there’s humans involved. In Christ, we do not exist for ourselves, but we are members of one another. A community shaped by grace serves one another according to the very the same grace. God has chosen to work out our salvation in this messy arena of the church. Jesus takes outsiders, all of us, and makes us insiders, all of us. I can guarantee you every person here, if not thinking this now, has at one time rather thought, I’m an outsider. I don’t belong.
Well, you don’t belong like none of the rest of us belong to. We are all outsiders that Christ has made insiders, and we struggle with that. We’re being forged into this heavenly people, and forging, it takes heat and a hammer. God uses both, and it’s uncomfortable at times in the church. We are to apply God’s words to our lives, and we do so with the gifts that he has given for us in this whole process. If you belong to Jesus, you can’t opt out of his family. This new community, it’s centered on Jesus. It’s not on personal wealth, it’s not on achievement, social status, ethnicity. It’s centered on the personal work of Christ. But we all know the changing of the old guard of the human heart, it never goes smoothly. Even the very gifts of God that are made for our very good, we use to promote self. We see that. We see it in ourselves, we see it in others. But by God’s grace, the Lord has put us into the body of Christ at our conversion, and we are to serve one another with the gifts that he gives to us, with this very same grace that he has blessed us with.
Paul has given us already 11 chapters of what God has done for sinful people through Jesus. And now he’s directing us to the action in living out what Jesus has done in the world. We saw last week those very familiar words, I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, by all the things that he has done for you, present to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, wholly acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect. And now he fills that out. I quote you last week, that paraphrase from J. B. Phillips, Don’t let the world around you, squeeze you into its mold. And God here is showing us how he is squeezing us into his mold, transforming us in body life in the church. One body with different gifts. And this shared body life is a gift of grace that you and I grow in. And we see this one body. He begins in verse 3, For by the grace given to me, Paul is speaking as the authority of one as an apostle of Jesus.
He opened up this very letter saying, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart by the gospel of God. He’s saying, I have a particular gift, and I’m using that gift now. I am exhorting you. I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. It’s a call for humility to everyone in the Church of Rome, both Jewish and Gentile Christians. Earlier in chapter 11, he specifically reminded the Gentile Christians. He said, Don’t be wise in your own sight. And now he’s including everyone. To think with sober judgment. Now, this does include those who are thinking too less of themselves than they should or those having false humility. It includes that. But the main direction he’s speaking of is towards pride. That’s the main struggle. All that we have is by grace. So we evaluate even our greatest strengths by the standard of grace. Paul, earlier in 1 Corinthians 4, he said, What do you have you that you didn’t receive? If you received it, why do you act as if you didn’t receive it? If it’s been given to you as a gift, that’s something that you’ve worked.
That’s something that somehow you are above somebody else because you have it. It’s a gift given to you. It doesn’t translate as well into English here, but in verse three, Paul uses the verb to think four times in this one verse. If you read it more woodenly, it would say something like, Do not think beyond what is necessary to think, but that you think with sober thinking. He’s making sure to put that one home. How you think of yourself, how you think of others. It’s to be done in a rightness. And this transformed mind that worship God, it does so to serving others. That’s a part of the thinking process where you go, it’s not about me, it’s about we. It’s a change. I’m no longer just thinking about me. I’m thinking about how this affects the body, all of us. As one writer puts it, I cannot fully renew my mind without the active help of other believers. Think about that. Do you really believe that? I cannot fully renew my mind with what Paul is saying, without the active help of other believers. That’s why Paul has just said that, and he’s connecting the dots here.
You can’t. We need one another. Paul is saying, Don’t overestimate yourself. Now, I know you’ve all heard this term at one point or other, being an armchair quarterback. That speaks of a person who sits and watches and critiques the way a coach or a player is doing something and knows that if only the coach or the players would listen to them as they yell at the TV, Do this, do that, or This would be the… If you would have listened, we would have score this goal, a countdown, whatever, and you’re just sure of it. Well, that’s not just done in sports. It’s in politics, construction, health care, driving, teaching, farming, gardening, the church, everything. Paul says, Don’t overestimate yourself. People do that all the time. We overestimate what we think we know, and we make sure to tell people. And it’s human pride. It assures us that if we have success in one area, then we must be expert in all areas. And the greater the wealth or the Fame, the greater this false confidence. I made a fortune making industrial fruit processing widgets. Widgets. Let me pontificate on art, music, architecture, health care, all of which I’ve never actually studied.
Do it without even blinking. We’ve been around people like that. You’re like, Are you kidding me? How we overestimate ourselves because of maybe a giftedness in one area that doesn’t necessarily transcribe into others. And Paul is saying, Each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. We think with a renewed mind. Each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Well, that phrase is a little bit tricky. There’s a couple of options how to translate it. We could say, is Paul saying, Think of yourself according to the amount of faith that you have been given, which means you take measure in the sense of a measuring cup. You’ve been poured into. You have a measure of faith given to you. Or as Paul saying, Think of yourself according to the standard of faith given to you, which means you take the word measure in the sense of a measuring rock. That’s the distinction. Sometimes we struggle with what Paul is saying here, saying, Judge by yourself by the proportion of faith measured out to you by God, or our shared faith is the measure, the standard to judge ourselves by. I think the latter one fits best with how Paul has been talking about faith throughout Romans.
Faith is the standard. It is the faith once given to all the saints. It’s not the subjective sense, but objective that he’s using here. But either way, either which way you take it, it’s by God’s grace that this is worked out. It’s by God’s grace if you see yourself as having a measure poured out to you or by God’s grace, the standard given to you, it doesn’t change. And he goes on in verse 4, For as in one body, we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. Very similar to what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12. There, being very literal, Paul said the body is made of different body parts, different organs. His point is in the body of Christ, you’re not a complete you. You’re a kidney, you’re an arm. If you withdraw, you are disconnected from the other necessary parts. And he says in verse 5, So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. The Holy spirit makes Christians, Christians. Social status, ethnicity all give way to being in Christ. No one is given an advantage and no one is excluded.
All Christians bear the name of Christ in their baptism. All are baptized into his death. There’s solidarity because the spirit has regenerated us. We are born again by Christ to the life-giving power of the spirit. That marks all of us. Paul’s main point here is no one is below you or above you. All have been given a gift by grace. Everybody is a part of this. To belong to Jesus means you belong to the church with a capital C, the Universal Church, the body of Christ. But that always gets lived out in a small sea, local church. Paul speaks of the various gifts given to the church, which we experience in a local setting. People who think they can belong to Jesus without belonging to church, they’re walking in disobed. You can’t. You can’t Then B, speaking of the church in third person, they. If you belong to Christ, it’s a you, it’s a we, not a third person. We belong to the body of Christ. And in Christ, we do not exist for ourselves, but are members one to another, and this one body has been given different gifts. Paul goes on. He gives us a list, not meant to be exhaustive.
It’s similar to 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4. God God gives gifts to his people for the good of the body of Christ, the church. He says in verse 6, Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. Each part of the human body, it’s necessary for the whole body to function. We understand that, and you certainly know when something’s not working, how important that piece is. Same analogy to the church. There’s no one that’s a mini me. There’s no miniature church in you. I got all the gifts like the church, but just a smaller version. Big, little. No, you don’t. You’re more like a Mr. Potato head. We’re a bunch of parts, eyebrows and eyes and glasses and ears, and we’re all jammed up there to make a potato head. We need everybody to be able to do that. Nobody’s complete in themselves. That’s how God has designed it. You need the others to function as the body of Christ. And notice in this list that Paul gives us of seven things that three are speaking and four are serving kinds. Again, not an exhaustive list. He’s just listing things in general.
He says, If prophecy in proportion to your faith. What does proportion to your faith mean? Like in verse 3, if we understand faith as a standard, then we’re to judge the words according to the standard of Christian faith, Christian truth. It’s an objective sense, not subjective. What is said cannot contradict the faith once given to the saints. I think that better fits with what Paul said earlier in verse 3. It’s not about speaking your mind according to your thoughts. It’s speaking what is in accordance with the word of God. The next question then is, what is prophecy? Well, this has been understood in a lot of ways over the last 100 years. Prior to that, it’s a little more uniform. But some can speak of prophecy like a Catholic prophet, like the Elijah and Isaiah, and they say, Well, we don’t have that today. We have a lowercase prophet. While that idea is popular in some circles, I don’t think it does justice to what prophecy is. It’s lowering the quality of your expectation to make it fit what people want to see today. Others speak of it as an instruction directed towards There’s a specific situation given in the future with a more immediate inspiration.
There’s something taking place and someone has an inspiration way of speaking to that particular issue. Possible. I appreciate New Testament scholar Richard Langecker. He just summarizes the whole thing. He said, Prophecy here is not predicting the future, but inspired Christian preaching, bringing forth the word of God into the lives of other people. That’s what prophets do. That’s what preaching ought to do, to bring forth the word of God into the lives of people. This next one is serving. If your gift is serving, serve. It’s the Greek word where we get our word deacon from, diakonos. It’s just a general word for serving others in some capacity in lots of ways you can serve. If it’s service, serve. The one who teaches, teach. The one who exhorts, and that could be an exhorting, like an encouragement, a counseling, and maybe more like a coaching, trying to get somebody to move and get them to do something. It includes all those kinds of things. If it’s exhorting, exhort. The one who contributes to give, do so in generosity. If you’re going to give, do it in generosity. And the one who leads, do it with zeal. Or sometimes they can do it with diligence.
The one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. If you’re doing acts of mercy to people who are in need of help, doing that with a cheerful heart is a part of the gift you’re giving them. If you’re going to someone who’s sick and really suffering and the cheerfulness in their heart is because you left, you’ve failed to use this gift correctly. I’m so glad you’re no longer here. No, you want to be able to actually bring cheer into their life in hard circumstances while you are trying to minister to those needs. I really appreciate. Christopher Ashe does a great summary of the gifts. I put that in your bulletin. It’s a really good way of summarizing this. He said, The governing principle seems to be that when we use a gift, we ought to use it simply in order to achieve what the gift is given for. It seems obvious, but that’s what it is. Whatever the gift is, we use it to the end that it’s given for, not in service of some hidden self-serving agenda. That’s the stickler, isn’t it? How easy it is for us to use a gift to do something with a hidden agenda behind it.
Motivation is so difficult for us, for sinful people. It’s hard for us to discern, to help us to simply ask the question, who benefits from the exercise of God’s gifts? Who benefits? If I do this for personal benefiting me or to manipulate others, either wanting them to have a good thought towards me or get them to do something or somehow I am the recipient of the benefit, I’m not using God’s gift for the purpose it’s intended for. It’s always a use for the purpose of somebody else. Gifts are given for the benefit of others. That’s why we belong to a local church. It’s the place where gifts are used and they are governed. There’s a check and balance, as it were, in the use of gifts, where we’re able to speak into one another’s lives on the appropriateness of how those things get administered. Now, to be sure, we can serve beyond the local church. I’m not questioning that. Some people have amazing gifts that go way beyond the local church. They serve the body of Christ worldwide. Wonderful. But the service is not less than the local church. It can be more. Amen. But it’s not less than.
Because we’re a part of a local body. And what Paul is saying, it cuts against both the proud and the dejected. The proud are saying, I’m superior to you all. You need me. No, we don’t. We don’t need you like that. You’re going to serve with pride in those gifts, not helpful. Or someone, I’m just a lowly nothing. Nobody needs anything I have. Nope, wrong. If God has given you a gift, we need it. It cuts the feet out from being overly dejected and overly proud because both of those are just the same thing. One is the flip side of the other. The body needs all this parts functioning well. None are better or less. They’re necessary for the whole body. And with that, then immediately, it tells us, don’t envy the gift of others. God didn’t make a mistake with you. It is a universal fallen tendency to envy other people. We struggle with that. We compare ourselves to one another all the time. What they have, we want to have. You see that from the earliest days. One child can have a toy and the other one has another one playing with it.
And suddenly it could be almost identical toy. They want that one. We do that. We want the other gift. Who among us wouldn’t change something about us if we could? But God didn’t make a mistake. He didn’t short-change you with your gifts. Don’t envy the gifts of others. Use the gifts God has given to you to bring glory to him. Because if he designed it, that’s what’s important. If you look at the various gift lists in the four or five places in the New Testament, how you’re counting, you see there’s a wide variety. How do I know what my gift is? Well, what do you like to do? Gifts and desires generally go together. God has put those things that you have a desire and a like to do something. That’s a gift. Sometimes it’s not always so evident. But what is it you like to do? I really appreciate, one, there’s a gathering of different people who want to serve in South America, and people were talking about how they felt called by God to do this thing or that thing, and God, what he wanted them to do. This one man is an ophtalmologist.
He goes, Well, I don’t really know if God called me to some of those things, but I got some skill sets, and those people had some needs. I just thought I would go and help them with the skills God gave me. Well, exactly. Take the things you have and go apply them to those who need them. It doesn’t mean in serving that you have to have, I have a specific gift. If there’s a specific need and you’re not necessarily good at it, but you’re the only one standing there, it’s now your opportunity to use a gift you don’t know much about. Serve. That’s the goal. Well, some observations on gifts. It is possible that your character can disqualify you from God’s gift. One of the greatest mistakes we make, and one that is heightened by our digital age, is assuming that giftedness equals godliness. That is not the case at all. A danger, particularly for those with speaking gifts, that we have to be very mindful of, is that talking about godly things doesn’t make me godly. It It doesn’t. This makes me informed. Speaking on prayer doesn’t make me a man of prayer. What makes me a man of prayer is actually praying.
How easy it is to talk about those things and substitute that for actually having those things. And the great danger of the digital age is that we are disconnected from the lives of the people on the screen or the people on the audio. We can’t see how they live out their lives. And that’s a major problem because we don’t know if indeed they are connecting their character with their gift. I’m going to read a list of names, all well-known Christian personalities in just the last decade that have not matched the life of teaching to their gifts in this way. And I’m reading this because these are all public figures. All these are publicly known. I’m not calling out anybody necessarily. These are things that are out there in the public domain. Mark Driskill, James McDonald, Bill Hyvel, Terry Noble, Carl Lynch, Josh Harrison, Brian Houston, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Mike Bickle, Ravi Zacarias. All of those scandals behind their name. They have disqualified themselves from the use of the gifts that God has given to them. We need to see that as a serious warning. These gifts are to be given as gifts for the body of Christ.
The grace that shapes us is to be reflected in the character that represents these gifts. We’re imperfect, we’re sinful, yes and amen. But there are some levels of disobedience that will disqualify you from certain gifts. Another observation. Criticism is not a gift. I sometimes call this the gift of Shimei. When David He’s leaving Jerusalem and Shimei came out and started cursing and throwing stones at him. Some people feel that that’s what they’ve been gifted with. I’m telling you, it’s not. Pointing out problems is pretty easy. Being part of the solution, that’s much harder to do. It’s not hard to go, Hey, dude, you got a flat tire. You might want to change that. Thank you. That was such a level of awareness beyond what I capable of functioning with. Sometimes you do have a way of discerning things that maybe others don’t. That’s a gift of discernment. That’s not criticism. Those are different. Years ago, I was getting ready to start the second service, and a man who’s no longer here, he informed me that the men’s toilet was clogged. He took the time to track me down, all the time downstairs to come up here to tell me that.
The plunger is right next to it. I said, Maybe you can figure it out. I got this look of utter shock on his face. I actually had to tell somebody else if they had time to take care of it. It’s easy to criticize. It’s easy to point things out. But how can you be a part of the solution to serve? And serving the Lord always involves serving others. Serving others is a way of putting to death my own flesh and my own pride. We need to help one another to fully renew our minds. It’s done in community, this renewal. The forging that takes place with the heat and the hammer often is because you don’t want to do it. You don’t want to serve somebody else. We want people to serve us. And it breaks us down because we become more like Christ, the one who came not to be served, but to serve and to offer his life as a ransom for many. That is the paradigm. That is the person that we are being conformed to. And if he is serving other people, you and I are serving other people. That’s what it looks like.
To be shaped by grace is to serve in the same grace. And as we do this, imperfectly to be sure, we’re imperfect people. We’re sinful people. But we are a redeemed people being transformed. That what we will one day be when Jesus returns, we are now the Vanguard of that. We get to look now in part what we will fully be in glory. And as we do that, there is such an invitation to the world when they see that. People who may disagree with your beliefs, with your doctrine, who may have all kinds of problems with the hypocrites in a church and the names of people that they can list off who just fleeced the sheep. But they have a really hard time criticizing Mother Teresa. They have a hard time criticizing when you are going to do something for somebody in need without getting anything back. You look at that and go, Man, I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about you Christians. It’s just different. It’s the aroma of life. It’s the joy of the good news of Jesus that shapes and transforms us, that We are saying, I’m going to serve you at cost to myself because it brings glory to my savior.
And there is a way for me to please my Father through these acts of services given to me. We’re by grace, not by works. At the same time, we are told that we have been set apart for these works, that we would do them all through grace. You can’t separate them out. And that’s the part that people can see and catch hold of. There’s something different about you. And you’re right. It’s because Jesus got a hold of me. And though I am a selfish person who wants everything for me, I am trying, because of his spirit in me, to serve other people, to bring him glory. And I don’t do it well. But by his grace, he is going to complete the work that he began in me. And that’s all we have. That’s what we have. So if you see a problem, be a solution for it. If you see someone hurting, come alongside them. If you’re not sure of how God has gifted you, move in a direction of a need. Just be a blessing for somebody. Reaching out and just providing something that somebody needs in some way. It’s encouragement, encourage. How easy it is to just to say something kind, to light somebody up.
Some people say, When you mean grace, you just mean being kind. It’s not less than that. It’s way more than that, but it’s certainly not less than that. That the joy of Christ gets to be spread into a world around us in such desperate need in simple acts of serving with the gifts you’ve been given. Pray with me. Father, as we come before you, we say thank you. We say thank you for how you have called us from darkness into light. Lord, how you, by your spirit, have regenerated us. And Father, thank you that you have gifted all of us to serve one another. Lord, that’s just incredible to think of on such a global scale. And yet at the same time, Father, we ask you for forgiveness. Lord, we have hid your gifts. We have coveted the gifts of others. And Father, we ask that you would forgive us for this. And then, Father, the life of your people living out here at Faith Covenant Church and our brothers and sisters in the valley, beyond, we ask Lord God, that the name of Jesus would be lifted up because of the good, kind deed done from your people, one to another.
We pray and ask this all through Jesus, our Lord.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.