Now in our ongoing study of Romans we have almost finished
chapter 12, and we have been looking at it verse by verse. But today I want to try to go back over
this again in a summary, because I believe it is such an important passage
regarding the church and I want to make sure that we don’t lose sight of the
forest because of the trees. In
other words, we need to stay focused on the big picture. And the big picture that is presented
here is the life of the believer within the church. Too many times when we come to this chapter and others like
it, we want to cherry pick certain subordinate themes such as spiritual gifts
or love, and focus on them. But it
is extremely important for the health of the church to take this whole chapter
in context, and see how each section works together to achieve one common goal.
The word church is never mentioned in this chapter, but the
idea of the body of Christ is clearly presented, and we should all know that the
church and the body of Christ is synonymous. Now it is clear from the context that Paul having laid the
groundwork of the doctrine of salvation in the first 11 chapters, in other
words, how you become part of the body of Christ, he is now presenting in the
rest of the book how the church should function. But I believe that this first
chapter of application, chapter 12, has been overlooked in it’s importance for
straightforwardly giving us the guiding principles for church life.
This is God’s blueprint for how the church is supposed to
function. And yet I am afraid that
today the church as a whole is so far off track that we are in very real danger
of being completely ineffective,
if not altogether useless for the Kingdom of God. Consequently, in spite of the church’s efforts to figure out
new ways to be relevant to the world and our culture, we actually have become
of almost no influence whatsoever. If anything, the church is being influenced
by the culture, rather than the church influencing the culture. As a result, the
modern church is of little use to the culture, and sadly, in many cases of
little use to God either.
This is why we are losing the culture war. This is why churches are failing to win
the hearts and minds of our children and our youth. This is why thousands of churches across our country are
dying along with their aging congregations made up almost solely from the ranks
of the elderly from previous
generations while our children and
young people abandon ship at an alarming rate. The most often heard request I get from people after a
service is asking me to pray for their kids who have abandoned the faith. The exodus has reached almost
catastrophic proportions.
But the solution to the church’s problems isn’t a better praise
band, or creating more of a night club atmosphere in our churches which we hope
the world would be more attracted to, or trying to recreate a Disney movie set
in our children’s church, but the only solution, the only hope for the church
is found right here in this passage.
The church needs to become relevant, not to the world, but relevant to
God again, and relevant to the rest of the body, and only when that happens
will the world be drawn to the church.
In the second chapter of Acts, we see the first church. It came into existence in the midst of
a culture not that different from ours.
Jerusalem was multi cultural. It was heavily influenced by pagan
religions and Greek and Roman culture.
Every type of sin was rampant.
Immorality of every kind was common place. Homosexuality was openly practiced by the Roman Emperors and
much of the upper class of Greek society.
And yet notice what it says about the early church in Act 2:42 “They were continually devoting
themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of
bread and to prayer.” What? That’s it? No concerts? No
skits? No drama? Just a bunch of preaching and prayer
and fellowship? How archaic. It must have been a dismal failure. But no, after God saved 3000 people the
first day, it says, “Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and
breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with
gladness and sincerity of heart,
praising God and having favor with all the people. And the
Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.”
So right there God’s blueprint for the church was
instituted. And Paul just takes
that and unpacks it here in this chapter.
And he basically says, God’s blueprint for the church can be broken down
into three parts. 1.The church’s
attitude to God, 2. The church’s
attitudes toward fellow Christians, and 3. the church’s attitude toward the
world.
Now first off, understand that the body of Christ or the
church is not an organization, it’s not a building, but is made up of
individual believers. Look at vs.
4 and 5, “For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do
not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and
individually members one of another.”
We individually are the body of Christ, and corporately we make up the
church of Christ.
1Cor. 6:19 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of
the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not
your own?” You have been bought
with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. So as a result of becoming righteous and holy through faith in Christ, the
Spirit of Christ lives in our bodies, so that we become the living stones which
make up this spiritual body we call the church. 1Peter 2:5 “You also, as living
stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer
up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
Here is the principle then: having been saved, having
received righteousness by faith in Christ, I am transformed from a dead stone
to a living stone and now I live to offer up sacrifices to God through the
power of Christ who lives in me.
And Paul begins this passage by affirming first and foremost that our
attitude as a member of Christ’s church should be that of offering your body to
God as a living sacrifice in spiritual worship. And very briefly, that means that as we already stated in 1
Cor. 6:19 that since we are bought with a price we no longer consider our body
as our own.
We offer back this redeemed life to God to be used in
service of His will. Vs. 2, “that
we may do the will of God.” This
is our purpose. This is our
mission for the time left on this earth. So the attitude of the church towards
God should be to offer the service of their lives to God as a living sacrifice
to do the will of God. Not my will but His will be done.
Then secondly, Paul tells us what the attitude of the member
of the church towards the rest of the church should be, towards other
believers. And the first thing we
should notice is that God doesn’t call us to do something without providing the
means for us to do it. It doesn’t
mean that everything God calls us to do is going to be easy. No, far from it. It is usually going to take some
sacrifice. That’s why Paul’s first
point was that we offer ourselves as a sacrifice. Sacrifice is a hallmark of service. But the good news is that He will not
call you to do something that He doesn’t equip you to do. And in this passage, Paul lists seven
general gifts, or I think a better word would be empowerments, to enable us to
do what God has asked us to do.
Now we looked at this subject in great detail in our last couple
of studies, so I will not belabor the gifts again. But note just a couple of points. First of all, he says you need to exercise the gifts. Not only is our salvation based on
faith, but our gifts are based on faith as well. And remember we don’t want to confuse our natural talents
with spiritual gifts. They are not
necessarily the same thing. This
mistaking natural gifts for spiritual gifts is the origin of a lot of confusion
in the church today. We’ve got
people running around masquerading natural, fleshly talents as spiritual
gifts. They may be gifted at
attracting attention to themselves, but in most cases I believe natural talents
and spiritual gifts are diametrically opposed. God uses the weak things of the world to shame them that are
strong. 1Cr.1:27
What Paul is talking about is God giving you an opportunity,
such as service, and then God providing you the resources and strength to serve as He has given you
opportunity, provided you exercise it in faith. That’s why it says, Rom 12:6 “Since
we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to
exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his
faith; if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he
who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads,
with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” Notice the way Paul presents these
gifts, it’s all about practicality.
You have an opportunity to serve, then serve! You have an opportunity to give, then give! You have an opportunity to teach, then
teach! The emphasis is on doing
it. Just get on with it. God gives you the opportunity, then
trust Him to provide the ability to do what He has called you to do, and step
out in faith and do it.
Please understand something this morning that is fundamental
for the effectiveness of the church.
Gifts are not given to measure our spiritual significance or for our spiritual
security, but for spiritual service.
It’s the practical supply from God of the power to do what He wants you
to do in service to the church. No gift that is given in this list is something
that is to be used for yourself.
It is something that is to be used in service to other Christians.
And I’ll tell you another principle to remember in regards
to these gifts; they are all tied
back to sacrifice. That’s where it
starts and you never really get away from it in the Christian life. That’s why Paul chooses to continue in
this blueprint by using the word love, specifically agape love. And agape love is the most often used
word for Christian love, and it means a selfless, sacrificial love. Remember Ephesians 5:25? It says, “As Christ loved the church
and gave himself up for her.” That’s the short definition of agape love.
Sacrificial, serving love.
Listen, this goes right back to my original point about the
church’s ineffectiveness in the 21st century. We use the word love as a euphemism in
Christian circles today. It’s used
as a euphemism for God, or Jesus.
A lot of modern Christian songs today have substituted love for God, and
I believe it’s because they think that it will be less offensive to the world. But the problem with that is, Jesus
came to be offensive. Rom 9:33 “Just
as it is written, "BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK
OF OFFENSE, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED."
We think in our human reasoning that we need to help God
out. We need to make Him a little
less offensive. We need to soften
the tone of His word. If the
church is going to succeed, we say, we need to make it more inclusive. Stop talking about hell, for goodness
sake. We wouldn’t want to be
accused of scaring people. Stop
talking about judgment. And above
all, don’t talk about sin. Just
talk about love, love, love. And
the world, not knowing we’re talking about a different kind of love than John
Lennon was talking about, will somehow be drawn into the church.
The amazing thing to me is that God does actually want us to
help. He encourages us to help
establish the kingdom of God. He
asks us to be His ambassadors to the world. Knowing full well that our flesh is going to work against us.
Knowing full well our natural reasoning and wisdom is going to work contrary to
his wisdom. That’s why He says in
verse 2 that right after offering ourselves as a sacrifice we need to change
our way of thinking. “And do not
be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind.” In other words, don’t let
the wisdom of the world make the blueprint for the church. Don’t think according to human reason
and take a survey and plan according to what the best minds think, or try to
copy what the biggest churches are doing and hope that works. But instead we need our minds
transformed according to God’s will and His plan.
So the 2nd point,, which is the church’s attitude
to other Christians and the 3rd point, which is the church’s
attitude to the world, both flow out of agape love that is presented in the last
half of the chapter. And Paul
starts out by saying that love must be without hypocrisy. And this is probably the biggest
criticism that outsiders lodge against the church. We hear this all the time, don’t we? “I don’t want to go to church, it’s filled
with nothing but a bunch of hypocrites.”
And Paul knows that hypocrisy is one of the greatest detriments to an effective
church. Because too often, the
church is marked by selfishness rather than self sacrifice. See, we can’t get past that sacrifice
part, can we? The modern church is
all about me. We think of going to
church the same way we think about going out to dinner at a restaurant. “Where do you want to go this week,
honey?” How about Outback, or Ruby
Tuesdays, or this place or that place?
Hey, I heard they have an early bird special at that restaurant down at
the beach. Let’s try that this
week.”
But the church is not to be treated like going to a
restaurant, but rather like going to a pot luck supper. We used to have a lot of pot luck
suppers when I was a kid growing up in church. And everybody there would bring something. I remember there were always a lot of
deviled eggs. As a young boy I
really liked deviled eggs, and I always thought it was kind of sinful that they
called them deviled eggs and we ate them at church. And I always ate a lot of them, and they usually caused me a
lot of trouble later on, if you know what I mean. Maybe that’s why they are called deviled. But the bottom line is, pot luck
dinners were not just about eating, they were about serving others and
fellowship. And that was one of
the characteristics of the first church that we read about a few minutes ago in
Acts.
So we aren’t called to be spectators in church, but
participants. We are part of the
body, and we have a part to play.
We have a role to fill. So
Paul says, don’t say you love God with your mouth, but live like you
don’t. Let your actions speak
louder than your words. That’s the
problem with our children in a lot of cases, by the way. We tell them that God should be the
most important thing in their lives, and yet when they watch our lives they
don’t see that. We tell them they
should go to church, and yet they don’t see that commitment lived out in our
lives. And then we are surprised
when the grow up and leave the church.
But here is the amazing thing; God makes us holy and righteous by His grace in response to
our faith. And then He puts the
Holy Spirit to live inside these fleshly bodies, so that we might be the body
of Christ on the earth. And now as
the body of Christ we are to be about the Father’s business, just as Jesus
was. Jesus tried to hammer home
that point to Peter three times before He was taken up into heaven. Three times Jesus asked Peter, “Peter,
do you love Me?” And Peter
answered, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” And Jesus answered, “Feed my sheep.” “Tend My sheep.” “Feed My Sheep.” If we love God, then we will love His
sheep and feed and tend His sheep.
That is God’s definition of love.
Taking care of His sheep.
John Stott said that love is a servant of the will, not a
victim of emotion. We are called
to love the brethren whether we like them or not. Jesus said in John 13, “Love one another as I have loved
you. All men will know that you
are my disciples is you love one another.” Agape love is defined in the rest of the chapter starting in
verse 9 all the way to the end. And our first responsibility is to love the
brethren. 1Ti 5:8 tells us, “But if any provide not for his own,
and specially for those of his own house, he has denied the faith, and is worse
than an infidel.” So our
first responsibility is for the fellow believers, the other parts of the
body. And we are all dependent
upon each other, just as the physical body is dependent upon all the parts for
good health.
Life in the Christian church without this kind of love is
worthless. No matter how awe
inspiring you may think your spiritual gifts are, without a self less,
sacrificial love for the brethren your gift is worthless. I Cor. 13 tells us that without this
sacrificial love I am a noisy nuisance. “If I speak with the tongues of men and
of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all
knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have
love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I
surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not
arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in
unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there
are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will
cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.”
Without this
serving, self sacrificing love we are nothing. The biggest problem with the effectiveness of the local
church is the absence of agape love.
We’re not called to love people we like. We aren’t called to just love those of our social
strata. But the test of God is the
motivation of our hearts to serve Him, not the physical attraction to
others. I Cor. 13 tells us
that religious activity, without
agape love, is nothing.
So starting in vs. 9 then of Romans 12 we see another
description of love: without
hypocrisy love the fellowship, give honor to the other person, don’t look for
honor yourself, love by being diligent – don’t be a fair weather
Christian. Be diligent about the
things of God. B fervent in spirit.
Serving the Lord by serving the church. Rejoice in hope, no matter what the tribulation, but
becoming ever more devoted to prayer.
Share in the needs of other believers, practicing hospitality to those
who are hurting and in need. This
is agape love towards the believer in the church.
And then finally, the church’s attitude we should show to
the world. And guess what? We’re supposed to love them too. We may not like what they do, or like
what they stand for, but our attitude towards them is going to be marked by
love; in other words, willing to sacrifice our rights for their sake and the
sake of the gospel. Bless those
who persecute you. Don’t curse them.
Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Be above reproach in the sight of all men. Wasn’t that what they said about the
church in Acts? It said that everyone
spoke well of them. They had favor
with all the people in town.
Wow. Would that could be
said about the church. Would that could
be said about us. Then maybe we
would see the same results of the Lord adding to the number those that were
being saved as they did. It goes on to say don’t take your own revenge. Do not be overcome with evil, but
overcome evil with good.
I will close with this story I heard about President
Lincoln. When Abraham Lincoln was campaigning for the presidency, one of his
archenemies was Edwin Stanton. They were both lawyers and had been rivals in a
bitter trial. Consequently,
Stanton hated Lincoln, and used every ounce of his energy to degrade Lincoln in
the eyes of the public, often using the bitterest diatribes in an attempt to
embarrass him. He called him names, even describing him as a long armed
gorilla.
But after Lincoln was elected, in the process of choosing
his cabinet after his election, Lincoln selected Stanton for the important post
of Secretary of War. The president's inner circle erupted in an uproar when
they heard his choice. Numerous advisors came to Lincoln saying, "Mr.
President, you are making a mistake. Are you familiar with all the ugly things
he has said about you? He is your sworn enemy."
Lincoln replied, "Yes, I know. But I believe that Mr. Stanton is the best man for the
job."
As Secretary of War Stanton gave invaluable service to his
nation and his president. After Lincoln was assassinated, Stanton rushed to his
bedside and said through his tears, there lies one of the greatest men who ever
lived and said, "He now belongs to the ages." Lincoln won over his one of his sworn
enemies by showing him kindness.
Folks, God has called us to a higher purpose. If you have been born again, then
you’ve been born into the spiritual body of Jesus Christ. Your physical body houses the Spirit of
Christ who has equipped you for this great call to be about the Father’s
business; the business of tending
His sheep, feeding His sheep, serving His sheep. Church isn’t a spectator sport. Jesus said in Mat 16:24, “If any man will come after me, let
him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
Listen, when the world sees Christians acting like Christ,
and loving each other the way Christ loved the church, and then showing that
love even towards those that hate them, then the world will be drawn to Christ
through the church.
No comments:
Post a Comment