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