Living as a Community of Grace

Well, this September 29, 2013, in Romans chapter 12, I want to talk about verses 1 through 8. Last week I talked about, went over verses 12, verses 1 and 2 in chapter 12, but I've been reflecting on that this past week, and I think I didn't make a very good connection between what is preceded in chapter 1 through 11 and what we're going to do now, and I really think that's an important thing to see. When you're looking at the book of Romans, the first 11 chapters are pretty complex because of all the things he's doing, and what Paul is doing in those first 11 chapters is changing almost all the way that the Jewish people and Christian people had thought about themselves, and these were deeply entrenched ideas that Paul was dealing with, and so I went back to look at those key ingredients, and I found a list, a good list, that I thought was really helpful for what Paul did, and in the past, the Jews thought of themselves, and Gentiles thought of themselves as separate people. There's Jews and there's Gentiles, there's not together. What Paul does in this book is represented particularly in chapter 2, verse 17, chapter 3, verse 29, he says that there no longer are going to be these different distinctions, that no longer were Jews to think of themselves as different than Gentiles, no longer were Gentiles to think of themselves different than Jews, that now God sees everyone in the same way. This through everything that the Jews had ever thought in a whole different idea. We don't see this very much because it was so entrenched in them. A Jew couldn't even go in the house of a Gentile without being unclean and unable to go into the temple as a result of it, and now Paul is saying to them, there is no distinction like this anymore, you're no longer to think about that. The second thing he says is that the covenant promise in the Old Testament was primarily focused on God giving them the land of Israel, the physical land of Israel, and now he says that no longer are they to think of the covenant promise in terms of that land, but they're to think of the covenant promise not in terms of physical things, but in terms of God giving this to all of Abraham's seed, or all of Abraham's descendants, which means that all the promises in the Old Testament are now opened up to all Gentiles also, so that whenever we think back about all the stuff in the Old Testament, and the Jews thought of it, this is just our story, and this is our part, and now we're sitting here as Gentiles reading this Old Testament story, saying it is our story. Paul has developed this idea that allows us to see this whole picture differently than they'd ever seen it before, and Paul set aside the works of the law, of the written law, and he said at the heart of it is there are no social boundaries with the works of the law, so that the law as it was given in the Old Testament was focused only on the Jewish community. He talks about this extensively in chapter 2, verse 15, and verse 28 and 29, verses 30, chapter 9, verse 12, and chapter 11, verse 6. The works of the law, I'm not going to read all those, but it's a long list of these places where he talks about the Jewish people thought if I can do the works of the law, that would be everything that pleased God, and Paul talks about the fact that these works of the law that they put so much benefit, or they put so much promise to, are set aside for the words of the law written on the heart. No longer is it just what's in the book, but because of the presence of the Holy Spirit, the works, the law is now written on the hearts of people. He indicated that God's gospel is open to all people, Jews first and then Gentiles, so that there was an order to it, but there was also a community of this. He wrote that mercy embraces both the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews thought of the mercy of God coming to them, and the judgment of God coming to all the rest of the world, which are Gentiles, and Paul indicates in what he's writing that the mercy of God now is open to all people, regardless of their race. Paul talked about in here that we're not to do the works of the law, but we're to walk in a newness of life as against the ordinances. The Spirit comes into our life, and we walk with the newness of life, and the old ordinances that control so much of the behavior of the Jewish people were no longer of value. Paul talked about service to God was a service in the newness of the Spirit, not the letter of the law. Jesus illustrated this in his own life when he talked about the Sabbath law. The Spirit of the law was to do good, so that the law that bound them to do nothing good for a person who was ill, he let them know that this was not what God intended. So Paul makes a point of this in what he's trying to say. Obedience of faith fulfills all of the law's requirements. So if you're obedient to God and faithful to God, you fulfill all the requirements. They thought you had to make sure you did all of these laws and make sure that every one of them was finished. All of these revolutionized all Jewish thinking as to what was taking place, opened the door to the Gentile community in a way that they'd never had this before. Now that's what he's talking about in chapter 1 through 11. And when he starts with chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, he is making a capsule statement that sort of reads all of these past ideas into one single phrase or one paragraph. I urge you therefore brothers, verse 1 in chapter 12, I urge you therefore brothers, in view of God's mercy. Now see he's talking about now, in view of the fact that God's mercy is now no longer just to the Gentiles, just to the Jews, but now it's spread to the Gentiles. In view of this, you are to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, not simply doing the works of the law and the ordinances that are written, all of the laws that are done. But instead, the new way of thinking about this is you're to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice to God. So that that is the requirement God has for us. It's not keeping all the details of the law, all the rituals that they had, even all the sacrifices they had. There is one thing God wants, and that is to you give your life sacrificially in obedience to Him. And this is to be holy, that is your life is to be set apart to serve Him, and it's to be focused on pleasing God. This is in place of all of the laws that they looked at. This is in place of all the ritual that they had to go through. Paul was freeing them from being tied to all of that. Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world. You're not to look around you and see the things that are around you and try to shape your life into that. But instead, you're to be transformed. The grace of God and the mercy of God comes to your life, and it transforms you so that you now think a different way. What is the gospel supposed to do? It's to cause you to think about life differently, to think about the choices you face differently, to think about the things that you do differently. Now you will be able to test, see what he's saying is all the things that you've looked at in the past, like the numerous laws that the Jews had about every detail of life, the clothes that you wear, the food that you eat. All these burdensome laws that you're to have are now done away with. What you're instead looking at is to say, all that God wants is you to present your life as a living sacrifice to him. I'm going to live in obedience to you. And you need to learn to think a new way, a different way about all of these things. And your mind will be transformed as you do this. And the transformation of your mind, set free from all these rules, it looks like you could say, okay, now we don't have to follow all these rules, we can do whatever we want. Well that's not true. He said you'll be able to test and approve what is God's will. The will of God now is a controlling factor. We're used to talking about this. But all you need to do is surrender your life to Christ, and it doesn't matter about all those other details. If Christ is in control of your life, that's all that matters. But when you look around, there's still a lot of religious groups that are tied to certain rules and regulations. You have to do this, this, this, this, this, and this before you can be acceptable to God. Paul freed us from all of that. And the freedom does not mean that you're free to do whatever you want, but you're free to determine the will of God for yourself. And you're now free to do the will of God in a substitute for all of this legalistic obedience to rituals and regulations. It's so easy for that to slip back into our mind. It's so easy for it to slip back into our life. When we identify things that we think are right or wrong, and to make those laws and rules for ourselves, Paul's wanting us to learn trusting the Spirit of God is all that you have to do. I give my life to Christ, I receive the Spirit of God inside of me, I can ask for His direction in my life, and I can check that by the will of God that I discover. God's will is good, it's pleasing, and it's perfect. So there's no other standard that you need but to know what God wants and to live that out in your life. As conservative Christians, Southern Baptists are, it's awfully easy for us to slip back into these things that mark righteousness and holiness, whether it's even church attendance or whether it's even behavior to think that we have attained something. What Paul is emphasizing is that this new spiritual life and the new covenant we have depends on really only one thing, trusting God and living in obedience to the Spirit's direction. Now, starting with verse 3 of chapter 12, Paul now begins to put into practice or call to our attention the very things that he's been talking about. For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith God has given to you. Now, in the Old Testament, there were the rituals within the temple. You had the high priest, you had the other priest that did the work of the temple, and there was an order or structure to all of that. And Paul is saying, in the Christian community, God is in charge of everybody and all of the rest of us are on the same level. We have an inclination to try, in terms of our own spiritual world, to build hierarchies of people who are in the Christian community. You see, the Catholic Church has the Pope who's in charge of everything that goes on. Other churches have bishops, and you have ranks by which you can climb up that pattern until you get to be the top. Paul describes the church community as a group of people with one level, everyone on the same level, so that there should not be an element in which people see one person having a spiritual standing above another. There is a tendency to think that the pastor has a standing that's above everybody else. People oftentimes say to me, well, I want you to pray for me because you have God's attention or ear. This is not biblical, not at all. Every one of us, every one of us has the same Spirit of God within us, every one of us. I've resisted, as a pastor, using the title or the position or standing that would put myself at a place where I would be different than you, because the Bible indicates that that's not what God wanted. We are all the same. By grace given to me, and Paul is not intending to say, I have more grace than you do, he's saying, God has given me this message, and I am to share it with you. So the grace that God has given me has prompted me to say, this is the way God wants his community to be. Now, what Paul is saying as he starts this is, the Christian life is to be lived in community. There are a lot of people who think, and I hear this a lot of times, I can go out in nature and I feel closer to God than anywhere else. People say I can go on the lake and I can feel closer to God than anywhere else. What Paul is telling us is the Christian life is to be lived in community, in our relationships with each other. In this relationship with each other, we are not to choose to say one person is higher spiritually than another, because every single one of us have the same relationship with God. I give my life to him, he places his spirit within me. Every one of you have access to the Spirit of God as the other person does, and as much as I. What Paul is talking about here is, no longer is the Old Testament structure significant to us, because in the Old Testament, the Spirit was not poured out on everybody. So you had prophets and you had priests, and you had people who were in the temple, the high priest, and God spoke through just like Moses one person, but that is no longer true. Now every one of you have the same Spirit of God inside of you that Moses had. You have the same Spirit inside of you that Jesus had. There is no longer a structure. By the grace of God, I can say this to you, do not think of yourself more highly than you should. Don't elevate yourself to a position where your standing is above another person, or to demote yourself to a place where it's not as important as another person. Rather you should think of yourself with sober judgment. Look at yourself seriously. We mean sober judgment, he's talking about rational reflection on who you are based on what God says is the right thing. Don't take the world's way of seeing ranks and hierarchy. You know what the world does, whenever they want to get some information about what happens in the Christian community, they go to the Pope. They go to whoever is elected the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, or they'll go to someone who has the biggest church. Because of the way the world thinks is, if a guy has a business that's bigger than anybody else's, he has to be more important than anybody else. In the kingdom of God, it is not that way. Every person has a direct contact with God, and the presence of the spirit that created the world, that guided Jesus, that communicated to the prophets, now resides within you. You're to think about this. Who are you? You're a person in whom God is living, and reflect on the reality of what God has done in your life. So you're to think of yourself in sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. The faith that we have to trust God, consider what that means. What does it mean to place your life in God's hands? And you're to reflect on your life as God's plan for trusting Him. So when you trust Him, He comes into your life, He takes possession of you, His Holy Spirit resides in you, and you're to think of yourself as God says you are. In verse 4, just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. Now he focuses directly on the issue of how do you live the Christian life. When you commit your life to Christ, and you say to Christ, I give myself to you, He forms you, joins you to a body of believers. There is no Christian life spelled out in the Bible for someone out there by themselves being a Christian. There's no place for that in the scriptures. When you have this experience of receiving Christ, He forms you into a body. You become one member of a body, the body of Christ. As each one of us has a body with many members, you are to think of yourself as a part of a family, a group of people who are under the control of Christ drawn together. See many people think of the church like they think of the Kiwanis Club, or like they think of another earthly organization, where I can come and join, and if I join, then I'm a member, and I can be a part if I want to, or not be a part if I don't want to. I can decide if I don't like the people or not. I can decide if I don't like the music, and quit, or go to the place where I like it. I can decide if I don't like the preacher, or the sermon, or whatever else it is. And I am free to make those changes because it's just an organization like some club in the community. Paul paints a different picture of this. When you receive Christ, he joins you to a body, like your physical body. What would you think if one morning you got up and one of your fingers just went off and connected itself to your next door neighbor? Absurd, isn't it? He's trying to say that this new life that God has called us to has its demands on us. So when you come to know Christ, he forms you as a part of a body. Any of you ever look at parts of your body and not like them? Too much stomach? You don't cut it off. You didn't have to put yours, did you? You don't cut off your fingers just because you think it looks a little funny. What he's trying to talk about is that God's method of building the Christian life is in community. Living the Christian life means you get joined to a group of people and you have to learn to live with them. Just like your body, you have to learn to live with your skills and your abilities and your mind and your functions. He uses this image of the body to describe what it is that God is doing. He takes us and he pulls us together and says, this is your body. I want you to learn to get along with each other. I want you to learn to value each other. I want you to learn to put up with each other. I want you to learn to live together supportively even when you don't like what's going on. Because I have connected you together. What the Christian life is, is learning to live in relationships. Relationship with God and relationships with each other. And people don't see the church the way God sees it. They think of it as an organization you might join, the Kiwanis or any other club and you go a little while and then you don't like this or that or the other so you get out or you quit going or you stop doing it. God does not see it this way. I have placed you here for a purpose. I want you to learn how to live with other people. Each of us now has God's spirit inside of us to guide us and direct us. Jesus showed us that you can live with someone who is your worst enemy and get along with them. Judas planned to leave Jesus, abandon Him, turn against Him, but you will not see one word or action of Jesus that ever showed that he was tired of Judas or wanted him out. There are a lot of faults and flaws that we all have, but having Christ in charge of our lives and being a part of the body of Christ causes us, forces us, to learn to accept each other. This is why it is so important that the church be a regenerate group. Now Baptists believe that church members can only be people who have committed their lives to Christ. In that way, all the other people in the church are guided by Christ. And so we can look at another brother or sister who is guided by Christ and say, well, I don't like the things they have done, but Christ is inside their lives and He is going to guide and direct them. He is going to work this out. If we are not careful and we receive people into the church who do not have the spirit of God, it is deadly to the body. God's intention is that the church be a place where we learn how to live together in community, trusting each other, depending on each other, supporting each other. This is preparation for heaven, where forever we are going to be together, learning how to be able to live with other people who are part of the kingdom of God. It is different than living in relationship with people who are outside the kingdom of God. If Christ guided all of our lives, and any kind of issue came up, and Christ is in control of your life, and you started asking God what you should do about this, and I started asking God what we should do about it, if we really were submissive to Him, we would both come to the same conclusion. The great tragedy for so many churches is that they are divided because people operate based on their own ideas, their own values, their own choices. Whenever we come to talk about the pews and chairs in the church, the very first thing you hear people say is, well, I don't like chairs, or I don't like pews. It really doesn't matter about that. We have to say to God, why did God bring this to Bud Allen's mind? What is he trying to say to us? What does he want us to do? How can we find what God wants in all of this? Because God has no two ideas about what we should do, He has one. In so much of the church life that you see, people can't get past their own interest. The picture Paul draws of the church are people whose lives are sacrificial. I do not care what they sing as long as the director says, God, tell me what to choose. Because if they've chosen what God wants, then it is compelling to me to do it, even though I may not know it, even though I may not like it, I am compelled to do it because I am under God's control. And he doesn't tell part of the church to do one thing and another part to ignore it. We're all in this together. You can't get up in the morning and your legs say, I'm going to stay in bed, the rest of you just go about your business. We're connected to each other. The picture he uses is vital for us to understand what the church is. I would say this in reference to it too, and when you see churches of 4, 5, 6, or 15,000, it's kind of like seeing a body with 75 arms and legs. Something odd about that. Because you're in a large group where relationships are not possible. I don't think that's what God intended the church to be. The church is to be a place where relationships are built. Now you can have a big church like that broken up into a lot of little churches where there are relationships being built. But that is the church, not the big crowd that gathers. The place where relationships are built and people have to learn to live together. That is what Paul sees the church to be. In Rome, there were several house churches, groups that met in homes, but he expected all of them to be in relationship with each other in their small groups, in their homes that they met in, building relationships with one another. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body. That's the unity. And each member belongs all to the others. We are really belonging to each other. Just like your arm belongs to the torso and the legs and every other part. We belong to each other. So when you commit to say I'm a part of this church, you're saying I'm going to join you as a part of this. We had Jody Beckham and the family stood the other day and I asked you as a congregation to hold your hands up if you would make a commitment to them in times of need to have help and promise that you're going to be a church where the Bible is taught and preached and lived and whatever needs would come in their life we would meet them as best we can. She said when I stood there and saw all those hands go up, I just had chills in my body. That's what's supposed to happen. It's supposed to be that every person who comes feels that they're embraced in the body of Christ. There is a oneness. She said to think of all those people who accept us. That's what it's supposed to be. We on the other hand are trying to make sure that we live a way that's accepting of everybody around us. Now there may be some people you don't like, but if you're honest sometimes you don't even like yourself and your own behavior. So we just get used to it. You say okay God, I don't like what that person's doing, but I know you live in them and I know you have a plan for them and I'm going to pray for them so they will learn to fulfill the plan you have. And as they grow in you, we're going to grow together. That's God's intention. So all of these members do not have the same function. Every one of us have a different role to play in the body of Christ. Each one of us looking for the function that God has given us. So in Christ, we who are many form one body. Each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to its faith. Prophesying the Bible is what we would call teaching or preaching. It means telling the message of God to people, helping them understand it. If it's serving, let him serve. If it's teaching, let him teach. If it's encouraging, let him encourage. If it's contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it's leadership, let him govern diligently. If it's showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. Now he lists all these different functions in the body of Christ. Not any of these have a position that is more significant or important than another. All of them have one thing in common, they all belong to God. They have another thing in common, God's Holy Spirit has come into each of their lives. They have another thing in common, is that each of them have been assigned a responsibility in the body of Christ. With no one having more significance or importance than the other, because all are significant. They are doing the work of God. He makes a distinction here that every person in the church is a spirit-filled person. Sometimes in denominations here people talk about they get saved and then they get the Holy Spirit. He's talking about all the church members have the Spirit of God. These spiritual gifts are given to everybody. He's not listing here a long list of all the spiritual gifts that are coming to the world because the spiritual gifts are simply something that you have that when you use that, it communicates the grace of God to another person. There could be hundreds of gifts that you might have. But when they're used, they communicate the saving grace of God to another person. That's what that gift is. We kind of look at this list and we write these down and try to say which one of these do we fit in. That's the wrong thing to do. What you do is you say to God, I want you to show me what I can do for you, for other people, that I can show them your love and your grace. And whatever it is that you do that communicates the grace of God is a gift of the Spirit. Because you're communicating the grace of God to other people. Now the ones that are listed here are doing that, but there could be many different ways by which it's happening. What God expects of the church is that every single member of the church is doing something that is communicating the grace of God to another person. That's what he says. We have different gifts according to the grace given to us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him prophesy in proportion to his faith. He is to do some action as a result of that. If it's serving, then he's to serve. The gift, it makes action take place. Something happens when the gift comes to you. It's not simply to make you feel good or to make you feel better or to make you more holy. Every one of those gifts prompt you to do something that brings something from God to another person. The gifts that God gives us start with the Spirit. Our eyes are open to the world around us, and the thought will occur to you, this person needs this kind of help. This person needs this to happen in their life. And I could do it. When you do that, you are communicating God's love and grace to that person. And you're only able to do that because you have received the gift of God's grace yourself. So you're passing on to another person what God has given to you. We're to do this in proportion to the faith that we've received. Now even our faith and trust in God is a gift. The Spirit is a gift, and the grace is a gift, and we're trying to pass on to others our faith and our grace that God wants to be able to hand to them. God's picture of the church is not people with a leader who everybody listens to and does exactly what they tell them. It's not a group of people who each one stand individually before God. It's not a group of people who have decided that some of them can work and some of them not, just watch. It's a body, like a body, where every part of the body is important. It's a body controlled by the head, where Christ is the head of the church. It's a body that does something. If you have a body and you have an arm that doesn't function anymore, you're not formed well. Every member of the church is to be on mission, looking for people, opportunities, and situations in which you can communicate the grace of God to that person. And when you have the thought that this person needs something, that is a call and an assignment. And when you do whatever God's asked you to do for them, you have been gifted by the Spirit, and the Spirit is moving you, and now you're doing the work of the church. Never does God intend for there to be members in a church who are not functioning in communicating the grace of God to others around them. The picture he has of the church is so different than what the picture of the old Jewish faith was, and I'm afraid it's so different than what most people today even think it is. God has called you into his body. He has given you the Spirit of God. He has given you a job, and through you, the world around you will be changed. That's what the church is to be about. Father, teach us to be the church. Teach us to listen to you and you alone. Teach us to love each other regardless of the difficulties that come up, regardless of our personalities, regardless if things go the way we want or don't want. Teach us to love each other with the kind of love you've given us. Teach us, Father, to open our eyes to the world to which you've sent us, that we might be channels of grace and mercy to every person we know, and that being the church, as you promised, even the gates of hell can't stop us. In the name of Christ, we ask for this, to be your church. Amen. Amen.