No images? Click here Gifts Through Grace Pt. 1 Romans 12:3-8 March 3, 2024 Romans chapters one through eleven Paul walks us through the power of God contained in the gospel, then in chapters twelve through sixteen he instructs us on how to live out the gospel. We often think of the gospel as the theology of salvation, but the gospel is far more than this. The gospel impacts every aspect of a believer’s life, every thought, and every decision.
The gospel is powerful; it makes us righteous, changing us from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive. It is only the power of God that can take the righteousness of Christ, apply it to a sinner, make that sinner righteous and a co-heir with Christ. Considering who God is and what He has done, our first obligation is to offer reasonable service to Him, and our second obligation is to serve other people. This is what walking by faith, worthy of the calling (Ephesians 4:1), laying our life on the altar looks like. Paul expressed it this way in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Then in Ephesians 2:4 he says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We don’t have to wonder what our good works are; they are serving other people.
Every person who trusts Christ, not only receives salvation and the blessings of salvation, but also receives specific gifts to be used for the benefit of the church. If you are not using your gift, you are living in disobedience and our fellowship is suffering. If you are wondering what the will of God is for you, His good, acceptable, and perfect will, it is to serve those people around you. In Romans 12:3-8, we see three foundational principles for serving one another in the church: humility, discernment and diversity. Understanding our spiritual gift(s) and how to use them are essential to serving God well.
I. Humility
The key to using your gifts for the Lord is a humble spirit. Pride and arrogance have no place. Meekness allows us to use our gift(s) effectively. We must have a humble spirit even before we try to determine what our gifts are. Jesus is the perfect model of humility and meekness as we see in Philippians 2:6-8, where we are told that Jesus, who is God incarnate, laid aside the privileges of His divinity, took the form of a servant, and humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death on a cross. In John 13 Jesus washed His disciple’s feet, the task normally assigned to the lowest servant. By His example, Jesus gives us a principle that we must be humble enough to wash one another’s feet. Paul characterized the godly widows of the church as those who washed the feet of the saints while caring for the afflicted and were devoted to good works (1 Timothy 5:10). False humility says I have no gifts, but true humility lays the gifts we have on the alter of service.
Meekness was modeled by Christ as well as by Paul. Paul acknowledged that it was only by the grace of God that allowed him to serve the Roman Church (Romans 12:3). Paul found that the weak vessel, the humble vessel, was a greater manifestation of the glory of God. In 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, Paul boasted about his weakness, a thorn in the flesh, so that the power of Christ might rest on him. The thorn kept him humble so that he might serve the church. Our basic nature is prideful, and it takes a great deal of power to pound through the stone barrier of our heart. But there is power in humility, in meekness and in weakness, and God’s power in us is necessary for us to accomplish His good, acceptable and perfect will.
In Ephesians 4:1-2, Paul urges us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling, “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.” If you are not humble, you cannot be gentle, you cannot bear one another’s burdens, and you cannot love others. It all starts with humility. Humility is the key that unlocks everything. In John 13:16 Jesus said, “A servant is not greater than his master.” Christ humbled Himself for us; He bore our burdens; He loved us when we were unlovable, then He told us to do the same. This requires a humble and contrite heart.
Paul also modeled meekness. He calls us to “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.” (Romans 12:3) Paul is telling us to not have an exaggerated worth of self, not to have a puffed-up mind. There was no word in the Greek language for humility, so the church would not have understood what humility of the mind meant. So, Paul, under divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit derived this word, which flies in the face of their nature when he says you need to serve one another. Realistically we understand what humility is, but there is no place for it in America today. As people we are anti-humble, self-worshippers; we like to dominate. There is such resistance to the gospel because we don’t like being told that we have sinned against a holy God, you worship yourself. He wants you to humble yourself before Him and worship Him alone. Most people feel that they don’t need God, they are sufficient on their own, so they reject the gospel.
God speaking through Paul in Chapter Twelve, tells us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. Then the first issue to be addressed, beginning in verse three, is pride. Pride doesn’t creep into our hearts; it is like an opened flood gate into our heart. We are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. Don’t be arrogant about who you are, of what you have, of who you know, of where you were born, of where you live now, of where you have served, or about anything else that would tend to puff you up. Do not think that your gifts are more valuable than the gifts of someone else. Paul wants us to understand that our life is not our own. All things are from God, through God, and to God. Every aspect of our life, every breath we take, is all by the grace of God through the power of God.
James 1:17 reminds us that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Humility is essential for service. With a spirit of pride, we will never find a place to serve, even if we have identified our gift. Pride hinders one hundred percent of all Christian activities.
Romans 12:16 tells us to “live in harmony with one another” for the way to live in harmony is to “not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.” The way we get to a place of arrogance is to listen to our heart, to be our biggest encourager, then you surround yourself with those who affirm your greatness. 1 Peter 1:5-6 says we “who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.” We forget that it is by God’s power that we are believers; we have gifts by God’s power, and we love other people by God’s power. It is by the power of God that we learn how to approach Him in humility. Isaiah 66:2 says, “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” This is the one who is crushed by the weight of his sin, who is crippled by his sin, who trembles at God’s Word. The person who opens God’s Word and has reverence and awe of Him and is in fear of Him and strives to obey it because they understand who God is – that’s the person who trembles at God’s Word, the person who recognizes God’s power to transform darkness to light, the person who identifies his/her gifts and is able to use them with humility, the person who has sound judgment.
II. Discernment
The first command in verse three is to not “think of himself more highly than he ought”, and the second is “to think with sober judgment”. There is a connection between humility and sober judgment or discernment. In 1 Peter 4:10-11, Peter reminds us to be humble because our gifts come from God: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace… in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” In verse 16, Peter says, “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.” Suffering comes into a Christian’s life because each has received a gift and uses it, thus representing God in the world. In verse 19 Peter tells us how to deal with suffering because we use our gift: “Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.”
Then Peter in Chapter Five pivots to the elders and exhorts them to manage the varied gifts for the benefit of the church. He says in verses two and three, “shepherd the flock of God … exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly … not for shameful gain … not domineering … but being examples to the flock.” It would be easy for a shepherd to manipulate the gifts for their own benefit rather than the benefit of the church. Verse four shows that Christ will judge elders according to the faithfulness of their service to the church. Verse five says, “Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’" Maturity in the believer is seen in his/her humility.
Peter continues: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” Verse seven is often taken out of context. The anxieties spoken of here are those that arise from your shepherd’s oversight, which are tied to you using your gifts in the service of the church. You become anxious when you are not using your gifts as you should. With humility fully developed, you can think with sober judgment. An example of pride blocking discernment is found in Matthew 7 where Jesus tells us to remove the log in our eye so that we can see how to remove the speck in another’s eye. Pride blinds us to the truth.
Humility ushers in our ability to discern truth vs. error, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc. Humility helps us resist the temptations of the flesh. Last week we learned that the mind of God in man is the intersection of the redeemed soul and the sinful flesh. Sound judgment focuses on the mind. The Greek word for sober mindedness has three aspects:
A sober minded person would see the truth in any situation; they would control their passions and desires, they would not be arrogant, and they would give the glory to God. Paul uses the same Greek word in Titus 2 where he commands us to be sober minded, reverent, self-controlled, and pure. The reason for doing these things is because “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.” (Titus 2:11) Remember what God has done for you, and allow that to temper you, to see truth, to keep your passions under control. Realistically, we have no reason whatsoever to be proud of anything we have done. We are out of our mind if we think that our upbringing, our training, the people we associate with, or our ability makes our gift better than that of someone else. When sharing the gospel, we cannot take credit when a person receives Christ, nor can we blame ourselves if the person rejects the gospel. God is sovereign over all things, including salvation. We can take no credit for anything we do because, as Paul says, “… by the grace of God I am what I am.” (1 Corinthians 15:10). First Corinthians 1:31 says, “Therefore, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’" God is to receive all the glory, in all things, and all the time.
Humility empowers us to use our good works for Him. God has allotted every believer a specific amount of faith for a gift to be used (Romans 12:3). God saves us, then He blesses us with inheritance, and He blesses us with a specific amount of faith so that we can live out the gift He has given to us. The faith that Paul is discussing here is not a saving faith, but a serving faith. Since every believer has a gift and faith sufficient to exercise the gift, no believer can say he can’t serve the church. To claim this is a great offense to God because He has gifted you and empowered you. The bottom line is that service is an issue of obedience, whether we will obey God or not.
In Romans 12:6-8 Paul tells us to use our gifts according to the grace given us: “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.” Every believer has one or more of these gifts, and every believer is required to use these gifts for the benefit of the church, and God has given us the faith that we need, the grace that we need to exercise our gifts.
There are three options to knowing we have gifts and are required to use them. One, you use your gift. If you don’t know your giftedness, you begin to serve an area that interests you. This may be your giftedness but, if not, you serve in other ways until you find the one that is the best fit. The process may require many trials, but God will meet your effort with increasing grace. Growing up in salvation comes about as we use our spiritual gifts.
The second option is to not use your gift at all. However, those who don’t use your gift, you will be stunted, and we will remain a spiritual infant; we won’t know how to apply the Word of God and we will lack discernment. However, using our gifts to serve the body results in a faith that “is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.” (2 Thessalonians 1:3)
The third option is that we use our gifts, but in the flesh. You may have a speaking gift, the gift of exhortation, but you are not humble, not relying on the Lord, so you are causing havoc wherever you go. Or you are not teaching correctly because you don’t understand the truth. We may keep striving harder and harder rather than asking God what He wants to do through us. We can discern the difference between striving in the flesh and relying on God by asking ourselves the following questions: Am I constantly aware of my need for God? Am I sensitive to the need for God to work through me? Am I aware of the need for God to work in the lives of those around me? If you can answer these questions in the affirmative, you are working in the Spirit, not the flesh. The secret to working in the Spirit is found in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” We rejoice in our salvation; we acknowledge our dependence on God by praying without ceasing and we give God thanks for allowing us to participate in Kingdom work. This is how we exercise our gifts.
III. Diversity
After exhorting us to be humble and exercise sober judgment in verse three, Paul explains in verse four that the church body has many members and a diversity of gifts. Your gift is not intended to be used in isolation or even in a small group of two or three people; it is to be used in the context of the whole church. In 1 Corinthians 12:14-26, Paul compares the human body to the church body. All parts of each body must be present and healthy, as they are essential for the proper functioning of that body. If the leadership is not using their gifts properly, it is as if a limb is missing; it is obvious to all.
Your gifts are to be seen as another person’s gift. You need to give your gift to them so that the body functions properly. We need to celebrate the variety of gifts and encourage others to use their gifts. We can’t isolate, we can’t dominate, and we can’t diminish the variety of gifts. Instead, we need to cherish and embrace this diversity. In our culture we have concluded that sameness is better than diversity because diversity can lead to conflict – and this is uncomfortable. However, God’s majesty is on display when the various gifts are employed in the church. When people from varied backgrounds, having different levels of spiritual maturity come together and serve one another by exercising their spiritual gifts, then this body at Southside Church can accomplish God’s will in Clayton.
Remember that our first obligation is to God, then to others. We approach our service with humility, with sober mindedness, temperedness, acknowledging of our weakness, evaluating our own giftedness, and not assigning a value to our giftedness or that of another. Instead, we need to see everyone as useful in the kingdom of God. We have many gifts by many people, and God is glorified as all these people come together in unity. Jesus said in John 17 that unity in the church proves that God exists. When the world looks at the church and sees a great diversity of people working in harmony, loving one another and serving one another, then they will believe that God sent Jesus. We must wrap our hearts and our minds first around humility and then diversity. Only then can we look at the list of gifts and ask God to show us our gifts and how He would have us use them.
Selah:
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