Ministry of Spiritual Gifts, Part 1

Romans 12:3‑5

     Let's open our Bibles to Romans chapter 12 verses 3 through 5 for tonight.  The passage which perhaps is not as familiar to us as the proceeding one in verses 1 and 2, but after tonight, I trust will be indelibly impressed upon all of our hearts.  Romans chapter 12...and in order for us to really understand the sense of verses 3 through 5 and even on into just the beginning of verse 6, I want us to begin at verse 1.  Follow as I read.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable unto God which is your spiritual worship.  And be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may approve what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.  For I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith; for as we have many members in one body and all members have not the same function, so we being many are one body in Christ and every one members one of another, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.

     We'll stop at that point.

     After World War II, some German students had volunteered to try to help rebuild a cathedral in England.  That cathedral had been a casualty of the bombings.  And as the work progressed, discussions arose about how they could best restore a statue in that cathedral that had been devastated in the attacks.  It was a very large statue of Jesus.  And underneath the statue it read, "Come unto Me," and Jesus stood with His arms outstretched.

     Careful patching could preserve what was cracked, some restoration could bring back some of the parts that had been damaged, but the difficulty would come in trying to restore the hands which had been actually shattered to bits.  And so they had a discussion as to what to do about the hands on the statue and how they would deal with that very difficult task.

     They reached a decision and the decision still stands today.  If you were to go to that cathedral and to see that statue, you would see Jesus with His arms outstretched but no hands. And at the base of the statue it reads, "Christ has no hands but ours."

     That's essentially what I believe the Apostle Paul wants to say to us in this chapter of Romans, that the work of Jesus Christ in the world is our work, that He has no hands but our hands, no feet but our feet, no voice but our voice.  The ministry is committed to us.  And the work of the Kingdom depends upon our usefulness, our faithfulness, our commitment.  We who are the redeemed, we who have received the mercies of God indicated to us in the first eleven chapters, we who have been captured out of darkness and brought into light, we who have been freed from the bondage of sin, we who have become the children of God and saints of the Most High, we who are the servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, to us is committed the task of being the hands and feet and voice of Jesus.

     Now in order for us to do that, we have to begin at verses 1 and 2, don't we?  First of all, we offer ourselves in the single supreme act of worship that any believer can do as a living sacrifice, offering to the Lord our whole soul, body, mind and will, as we discussed in our look at verses 1 and 2.  Now this is the basic requirement that God lays down for every believer.  It's no different for you than it is for me.  We're all in the same place when it comes to Romans 12:1 and 2.  God wants our life, as they sung so beautifully a moment ago, offered as a living sacrifice, holy acceptable unto Him, which is the basic act of spiritual worship.  That is the entrance into usefulness.  That's where we begin to be used by God.  It is worship, the offering of ourselves then it is service.  That's the divine order.

     Now when it comes to this service, as we read in the text from verses 3 through 5, we want to recognize that though there is unity at the level of commitment, there is tremendous diversity at the level of service.  And verse 4 and 5 emphasizes that like a body that has many members, so the body of Christ has many members, and verse 6, they have differing gifts.  We all stand on the same common ground in the unity of commitment.  But from there on out there is tremendous diversity...tremendous diversity.  We are as diverse in terms of our service as we are diverse in terms of our own personal identity.  There are no two Christians alike.  There are no two of us who can serve the Lord alike.  There's tremendous distinction and distinctiveness in all of us.

     And if you notice verse 3, it says the grace that was given to Paul that made him an Apostle, he now uses to speak to every man that is among us, not to think more highly than he ought to think but to think soberly according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith.  Now there's...there's the idea of diversity right there.  We are to think of ourselves according to how God has apportioned to us the measure of faith, and it's different for every one. 

     And then verse 5 reminds us that every one of us are distinct.  There is only one body but every one a different member.  And verse 6 again, we have differing gifts.  So the primary focus of these verses is to demonstrate to us that though we all enter the place of usefulness with the same utter and total self‑sacrifice and in that there is complete uniformity, from there on there is great diversity...great diversity.  And that's what the Apostle Paul wants to emphasize.

     Now let me just introduce our thinking from another angle.  There can be no genuinely effective service, genuinely reciprocated service, that is service in which we are blessed, unless we have first offered ourselves as a living sacrifice.  Now what this tells us is that the offering of living sacrifice kind of attitude to God, where I give up all that I am for His service, is not mystical, it is not falsely pious, it is not monastic, that is almost monkish, but it is tremendously pragmatic.  It is greatly practical because the intention of offering myself to God is so that I may become immediately useful to Him, that's the point.  And so we look at it then from both sides, offering yourself to God is not something so mystical it's unrelated to ministry. 

     In fact, let me say it as simply as I can, if you tell me you've given yourself wholly to God and I see no effective ministry, then I don't believe what you tell me.  On the other hand, if you tell me you're serving the Lord but I see no total commitment to Him, I don't believe that either.  It's an either/or proposition.  Service to God has meaning and reciprocal blessedness only when it is the outflow of total commitment.  And total commitment is only total commitment when it produces effective service.  The two go together.  There are a lot of people who would want to make themselves, along with everybody else, believe that they have made a whole life commitment to Christ but when you look at their life you don't see any fleshing out of that commitment, you don't see any ministry, any meaningful ministry, any God‑blessed ministry.  You don't see them driven with a passion to serve, but rather they appear to be driven with a passion to indulge their own needs and desires.

     On the other hand, you find people who are very, very busy, but when you get behind the scenes you find them very uncommitted to the realities of spiritual dedication.  I received a letter today from a man who said, "Please meet with me and please pray with me."  He said, "I've driven my wife away because I taught her by example how to be a Sunday saint and live any way you wanted all week long.  And then when things started to fall apart in our marriage and I tried to call us to prayer and Bible reading, she thought it was another one of my facades."  He said, "I have outwardly lived as a Christian, been active in the church, and the rest of the time lived a lie."

     Well, that's not acceptable to God.  That's not the kind of service He's looking for.  There can be results from...how can I say it?...there can be results from a carnal life.  It's true.  There can be results when you're serving God quote/unquote without really being committed to Him, when you're doing it because you like to see yourself doing it, or you feel good doing it, or others think well of you when you do it, or there's even a desire in your heart to do it.  There can be results.  And the reason is this, because the truth is so much more powerful than your limitations.  But the results are not going to accrue to you in terms of blessedness.  In other words, you can..you can be used by God even in the midst of your non‑commitment if you speak the truth because the truth is so much more powerful than your ability to limit it, but you will not receive the benefit.  You will not be blessed.  And furthermore, you will short‑circuit what could be done...what could be done.  I mean, the message is so powerful, God can get it through a clogged vessel but think how much more wonderful if the vessel was clean...was clean.

     I mean, I know there have been times in my life when I have taught the Word of God and maybe it's been a prideful motive, and the Word of God has accomplished great things, but not what it would accomplish...and I've learned this...when my life is as it ought to be and my motives are right.

     Now would you notice that nobody is left out of this.  Verse 3, "I say through the grace given to me to everyone...to everyone."  And then you notice in verse 4, "As we have many members in one body and all members have not the same function, so we being many are one body in Christ and everyone members one of another."  And again he doesn't let anybody out.  Every one of us who has come to Jesus Christ is called to make a supreme dedication to Him, as we saw in detail last week, out of which is to flow a life of service...unique to us.  If we say we're dedicated but there's not that life of service, our dedication is questionable.  If we...if we function on the outside but the dedication is on the inside, our service is very limited and accrues no blessing to us.

     Now we're talking to everybody here, me and you and everybody else.  We're all in the same situation.  And I hope that when we finish sort of looking at this text, and we'll take part of it tonight and part of it next time, but I hope that as we finish looking at this text, if we don't accomplish anything else, I would like to think that we will never be able again to successfully patronize ourselves with the idea that we are totally committed to God but there's not any meaningful service going on.  And I know that's true of our church and let me tell you something, folks, it's probably not the case of you who are faithful.  But I know there are people in this church who believe they're committed to the Lord but if you look at their life and try to see where that actually comes out into service, it just isn't there...it just isn't there.  And if we do nothing else but eliminate that illusion that you can be committed to Christ with no basic ministry, with no basic service, with no passion for using the gift God's given you, then we've done service to all of us. 

     People say, "Well, I realize that I'm really dedicated to the Lord but right for now I'm busy with my job, I'm busy working, I'm busy shopping, I'm busy hobbying, I'm busy recreating, I'm busy vacationing, I'm...I'm busy resting...or whatever."  And there is a time for all of that.  But dedication works out in service, that's what Paul is saying.  The person who is doing that kind of self‑deception, I hope, doesn't survive this passage.  I know it's really dragged me through.

     Now let me just go back to this thought that we saw in verses 1 and 2 for one more kind of initial concept.  You will never know your gift.  People always say, "Well, how can you know your gift?"  I get asked that question a lot.  How do you know your gift?  You will never know your gift and you will never really know its potential until you have lived out Romans 1 and 2.  Because if you're not at the point of total dedication, whatever you're doing in terms of function and whatever you're doing in terms of service is not revealing to you the full definition or potention of your gift.  You understand that?  Because you're not operating at the level of total commitment.

     I mean, it's sort of like the human brain.  They estimate that maximally people are using the maximum amount of their brain are functioning at about eleven percent of their brain capacity.  That means there's another 89 percent that isn't even being used.  And so when we say, well, we understand the limitations of the human mind or when we give certain tests to people and assume that that therefore gives us the final word on how much capacity they have, we're really far from being right.  The human mind has tremendous capacity beyond what we attain.  And a lot of that has to do with our approach to life and so forth.

     But in a spiritual dimension the same thing is true.  You have many Christians who are trying to define their gift while only having about an 11 percent performance capacity to decipher, to figure out what it is.  And if the truth were known, if they ever came to Romans 12:1 and 2 and lived out that life, they would probably totally redefine their gift because they would begin to see it in its fullness.

     I want to tell you just as a personal testimony, I don't like to do this but I reach back into my own life because I think you look at me and think that I'm some kind of other creature than you are because I get up here and do these things and you sit there and say, "I've read that chapter all my life and I didn't see that there."  And you think I've got some special input from heaven.  Let me tell you, I used to ask myself when I was in seminary how I could just get out of seminary, let alone ever spend my life teaching the Word of God, writing books and writing commentaries.  And when I came to Grace Church I came with fear and trepidation wondering how I could keep sermons going.  And I figured that I would surely run out of things.  It was difficult for me going through seminary because I would second guess my own capabilities.  But as I began to see God wanting more and more of my life and as I began to let go of things in my life and totally give over my life to Him then the expansion of the capability that the Spirit of God gave to me was ever increasing.  And I want you to know that it isn't that I have some great intellectual capability, it isn't that I'm some kind of unique creature that doesn't have all of the same factors that you do, it is simply the fact that once you make the commitment to be everything God wants you to be and once you say I'll do that whatever the cost, then you begin to see an expanding capability that the Spirit of God reveals in your life and now you begin to see your gift for what it really is.

     And I think a lot of folks have trouble trying to figure out what their gift and ministry is because they've never gone through Romans 12:1 and 2, right?  So they're struggling with a very limited amount of data to deal with.  So we start by the dedication of self.  And if you weren't here last week, you need to get that tape and think that one through.

     You know, the greatest saints in the church's history, I mean, you go to the bookstore and you buy their biographies.  And I buy their biographies and I read them and I pour over them.  And I've done it since I was a kid.  And I read the stories of these great men of God, great saints who changed the course of the world, who impacted the history of the church, who won, you know, cities and nations and continents for Christ and who build great institutions and great churches and schools and wrote great books.  And you read about them and you remember them and you honor them and you assume that they're in another category, that they're way out there somewhere.  And the truth of the matter is, the difference is they learned the meaning and the value of Romans 12:1 and 2.  They learned to live that way.

     I mean, you take, for example, a man like Jonathan Edwards.  I don't know if you know all of the factors of the life of Jonathan Edwards, a great man of God, used in this country to literally change the nation...profound preacher whose sermons were so powerful that he read them without inflection in his voice for fear that he might cause someone to come to Christ emotionally rather than really having thought through the message.  And so he just read it mechanically all the way through.  And it is said that sometimes when he read it people were screaming for mercy half way through because of the power.

     Now what is it about a man that makes the difference?  Well, maybe you don't know this but Jonathan Edwards made some resolves.  One of them was this, resolved...and he wrote this...to live with all my might while I do live.  Resolved, never to lose one moment of time, to improve it in the most profitable way I can.  Resolved, never to do anything which I should despise or think meanly of in another.  Resolved, never to do anything out of revenge.  Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.

     Now these were just a few of the things he resolved.  And they made the difference.

     If you were to attend a post‑communion service in a Church of England church, it would be very common for you to recite these words at the close of that communion with the people in the congregation.  They say this: "And here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable holy and living sacrifice unto Thee."  That's the distinction.  That's what makes the difference.

     Now having begun there, let's enter in to verse 3.  We said we want to commit ourselves and that's the key to being effective in our service.  Our usefulness now depends on three things.  And that's what we want to talk about tonight and next week.  Our usefulness depends on three things: proper attitude, proper relationship, proper service.  We have to have the right attitude, the right interaction or relationships, and the right service to be maximally useful to God.

     Now what is the proper attitude?  What is the attitude in the heart of one who is totally given over to God?  It's an attitude of humility.  That's the proper attitude, humility.  This is introduced in verse 3.  Let's follow it.  "For I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think soberly as according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."

     This is so rich, folks, I don't know if I can extract out of here all that is here by any means, but I want you to really grasp the tremendous statement that he makes.  For, he says, and the "for" there is a transition, only the dedication spoken of in verses 1 and 2 can lead to this proper attitude.  In other words, he's really moving through to service.  The whole issue here is if you have, verse 6, the gift of prophecy then prophesy.  If you have the gift of ministry, then minister...the gift of teaching, then teach...the gift of exhortation, then exhort...the gift of giving, do it with liberality.  Whatever it is, if you have it, do it.  All he's trying to do is work his way up to service.  Service begins with dedication for dedication is behind humility.  The right attitude is the result of a self‑surrender.  If I've given everything I am to God, then I'm nothing left.  That's the attitude of humility.  It flows out of selfless abandonment to the will of God.

     Now to make his point he warns against the wrong attitude.  I say through the grace given unto me, I love that statement, the grace given unto him.  What kind of grace is he talking about?  Well, he's not talking about saving grace, although he did receive that.  That was experienced by all believers.  All of us has received in Christ saving grace, no question about that.  That's not what he has in mind.  It is the grace specifically that called him to be an Apostle.  It is the grace of God that ordained him to a position of authority, the position of an Apostle.  He had received from God the call to preach.  He had received from God the Apostleship as Christ Himself had come to him and confronted him and called him into the ministry.  He repeats this over and over again.  So he was an Apostle by grace.  And that's what he's saying.  I'm saying this to you through grace given to me.

     Now why didn't he say I'm saying this to you as an Apostle of Jesus Christ?  The answer is, in a verse on humility you don't pull rank.  That's the point.  So what he says is, look, I want to pull rank but I want you to know that my rank has nothing to do with me, it has to do with God's...what?...God's grace.  So there's humility even in the way he refers to his Apostleship.  Very consistent.  It says, "I say to you now, I'm speaking to you as one who has authority and that authority given to me by Christ Himself was given not because I was worthy...O, far be it from that."  In fact, he says to Timothy, I was a blasphemer, a persecutor and injurious but I obtained mercy and the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.  And this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am...what?...chief.  So he says I was made an Apostle by mercy.  I was made an Apostle by love.  I was made an Apostle by grace.  But nonetheless I am an Apostle and I'm speaking to you as an Apostle.

     What is that to say?  That's to say this is authoritative.  I'm saying to you, I'm saying it as an Apostle by grace but I'm saying it as an Apostle with authority...here it comes...not to every one of you...rather, we need to look at that phrase...to every one that is among you, nobody gets off the hook, all professed Christians at Rome in the church and all professed Christians anywhere...I'm saying to all of you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think soberly.  Now that is an absolutely marvelous statement...marvelous statement.  It's an unforgettable statement. 

     There is a Greek verb "to think," it's the verb phroneo.  He uses a form of it four times in that one statement...four times the root of the verb he uses is phroneo.  Another way to translate it would be this, I say through the grace given unto me, and this will bring out the four uses of the word, to every man that is among yo