In this lesson, the Apostle Paul is showing us how to serve God using the gifts we’ve received from Him. But before we can put those gifts into service, as a foundation, we have to be transformed into something that is pleasing and useful to Him. So, Paul starts out by showing us how to become acceptable to God and to live our lives in the right way and then we can serve.
Jesus told about building a house and he said it starts with a foundation. Jesus said that if we build our house on a foundation of rock and not sand, we will persevere when the storms (of life) come. That storm is the present world system controlled by Satan and it is all around us through those separated from God, living their lives through their own fleshly desires like we once did. That old life is a constant push against our new selves like a strong wind in a storm. God wants us to be equipped to weather it.
Now let’s see how Paul lays the foundation for us in Romans 12 so that we might receive the gifts of serving from God and then use them for His Glory.
Romans 12:1-8
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
2 And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
3 For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith.
4 For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office:
5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
6 And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith;
7 or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth, to his teaching;
8 or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting: he that giveth, let him do it with liberality; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness.
What is the first thing foundational thing Paul is asking us to do?
We are to be a living sacrifice set apart for God and (not fashioned according to the present age). This seems to be a little scary since in the temple, sacrifices to God are killed and their blood laid upon an altar so what Paul is alluding to is a metaphor with deep meaning, especially for the Jewish believers in Rome who knew about temple worship from their training in synagogues. The Gentile believers probably didn’t understand what Paul is talking about at all so their Jewish Christian brothers needed to explain it to them.
An animal sacrifice was used in the temple for God’s people to obtain forgiveness for their sins both daily and yearly and they did this by substituting an animal’s blood for their own. Remember that blood is God’s Word means “life” and the sacrifice is a payment of sin by life for life.
An unblemished animal was first selected out of the flock or herd and set apart as God’s property and then presented alive in the temple and then killed to shed its life-blood upon the altar. By setting apart an unblemished lamb, the sacrifice became Holy to God. When Paul uses the word “Holy” with respect to us though, he means being set apart for God’s Work.
Paul spent a great deal of time writing about Believers “dying to ourselves” in earlier chapters of Romans and he taught us that like Christ, we are to voluntarily die (in our case die to our sins and to our former ways). Thus, in Romans 12, the living sacrifice on sacrificial altar at the Holy Temple is the backdrop for Paul’s concept as the place where Believers are to set themselves apart from the world and die to themselves, but only after presenting themselves to God holy and living, just as with any temple sacrifice.
We can think of our service in this respect as giving the gift of our ourselves in service to God.
Following the call to make a “living sacrifice” of our bodies, in verse 2, Paul continues with the concept of our minds being the location where spiritual renewal takes place. If we want to please Him, we must turn our minds and bodies away from the standards and culture of this world that is of “self” – self-love, self-centeredness, self-serving, self-gratification, etc.
Here’s the point Paul is making: since spiritual renewal begins in your mind, you must make the correct mental decisions. Now that we are saved and have the Holy Spirit in us, it is our responsibility to consciously make different choices than we used to make before we knew Jesus. We must think before we act and cease acting instinctively, because our base instincts are of this world.
As Paul pointed out in Romans chapter 7, we humans are caught in a conundrum when it comes to choices and our behaviors: We are struggling with our old selves even after we are saved. I would imagine we have two thoughts that come to mind when we have to make a decision – one is thought about our will and the other God’s will.
Romans 7:15-20
15 I don’t understand my own behavior- I don’t do what I want to do; instead, I do the very thing I hate! 16 Now if I am doing what I don’t want to do, I am agreeing that the Law of God is good. 17 But now it is no longer “the real me” doing it, but the sin housed inside me. 18 For I know that there is nothing good housed inside me- that is, inside my old nature. I can want what is good, but I can’t do it! 19 For I don’t do the good I want; instead, the evil that I don’t want is what I do! 20 But if I am doing what “the real me” doesn’t want, it is no longer “the real me” doing it but the sin housed inside me.
Here, Paul is showing how easy to fall back into our old way of thinking especially when we are out in the world and interacting with those without God so this then necessitates the daily renewal of our mind to refocus on God’s Will for us and it is the Holy Spirit in us that renews us and must let Him do it.
2 Corinthians 4:16
16 Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward
man is renewed day by day.
Ephesians 4:22,23
22 then, so far as your former way of life is concerned, you must strip off your old
nature, because your old nature is thoroughly rotted by its deceptive desires;
23 and you must let your spirits and minds keep being renewed,
So this is the kind of a bad news/good news situation for us Believers. The bad news is that although we are saved, we still live in the world with all its pulls and temptations and reminders of our past life. The good news is that we are no longer helpless victims of our evil inclinations that keep us bound to this world. There is now the power of the Holy Spirit, to help us overcome by renewing us daily.
However, we can’t go take a mental nap and leave it to the Holy Spirit to do all the heavy lifting. We have to put this new reality into practice, being aware that it will be hard and not easy and it begins with our conscious choices. It means fighting our knee-jerk reactions. It’s human nature to want approval from our peers and there is an instinctual feeling of safety in numbers so there will be constant pressure on us to conform to whatever the social norms might be to fit in.
Now, in verse 3 Paul commands that no one should exaggerate their own importance but rather should view oneself by the standard that God uses; and that standard is trust in His Son Jesus. When Paul says, “Through the grace that has been given to me” he is speaking about grace as his position of authority as an Apostle to the Gentiles that the Lord has graciously given him. He’s asking us to think deliberately so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.
What does the phrase “measure of faith” mean to tell us? If we take the way most interpret it, it means measure in the sense of “amount” or “quantity”. That is, God has allotted to each of us a certain amount of faith. And since what a Believer can do is based on the quantity of faith he or she has, then those whom God has given a large amount of faith can do miracles, and those whom God has given a tiny bit of faith can do next to nothing.
If this is the case, brotherly unity among Believers becomes nearly impossible, especially in light of what is being said in the following verses about how we are each a different part of the same body, and we must not think that our part is any better than another and different part. So this idea of faith being measured in terms of quantity or amount cannot be what Paul has in mind.
Rather, the term “measure of faith” is better expressed as “standard of faith”. One legitimate definition of the word measure is “standard”; but we don’t use the word measure that way very much. The standard of faith that God measures us by is trust. So, we need to evaluate ourselves honestly to see where we are on God’s trust scale.
We might have faith that some platform will hold our weight after considering the strength of the materials used to build it but it is in trust that we climb the steps and stand on it. Likewise, if we have faith in God through Jesus Christ, in trust, we will do what He’s asked us to do.
We shouldn’t deceive ourselves about ourselves. Make no misstate, our trust in believing in Jesus for our salvation is the measure by which God views and deals with us.
Consider that even the demons believe there is God and tremble in fear but for us, believing in God and in His Son’s finished work means in trust that we follow Him in the way he said we must live. There’s no other way without Jesus, no, not even good works.
This idea of trust has much bearing on what Paul writes next seeing that we are in the community of the Body of Christ, the Church.
So the first community principle that Paul must establish is that while everyone is equal spiritually in God’s eyes, not everyone has been given the same abilities or purpose for his or her service. Thus using the metaphor of the human body there is not one part of the body that can say it is more valuable than another; all parts of a body are needed to achieve wholeness. Even so, each part is for a different purpose; they cannot all be the same or perform the same function. All the many parts must understand that they are there for the well-being of the entire body. Some parts may have more visibility and so get more attention and more credit than the others. Some parts may get to do the dirty work while other parts seem to get the glory (honor) but not before God!
However if community unity is Christ-centered, and not self-centered, then it can and will work properly. If we see ourselves as belonging to the others of our community, then our function will not develop a prideful sense of importance but rather on how well we achieve our particular purpose for the good of the entire body.
The final part of this lesson regards gifts of specific aptitudes and abilities given to each Believer by God for service within the Body of Christ; these are considered spiritual gifts. They are: prophecy, serving, teaching, counseling, giving, leading, and doing acts of mercy. They had to be presented in some order or another and he says nothing about the first gift listed (prophecy) being greater than any of the following gifts, nor that the last gift listed (doing acts of mercy) is the least of them.
If one gift was indeed greater or better than the others, then Paul’s entire message about parts of the body all being different yet needed for their own purposes would be false. So it seems to me that the spiritual gifts all have approximately equal value and importance in God’s Kingdom so that no one should boast about which one they might have received or envious about others gifts.