Romans No.28 Body Life

Our little computer is having hiccups today, and what you've got in front of you is a draft of the notes. They really need just to be tidied up in the editing a little, so if you're scrupulous about saving notes and you want a real McCoy copy, then I suggest that on Sunday you replace the one that you've got. There are only slight embellishments that need to be taken out, and the English just tidied up on one or two sentences.

Let's read together from where Tim took you last time. That was the twelfth chapter of Romans, and we're going to go on from the third verse. He only took you to the first two verses.

I want to attempt to expound, in some measure at any rate, the remaining fifteen or sixteen verses. No, there's nineteen verses, aren't there, in this chapter. Actually, there are twenty.

My eyes are getting worse. There are twenty-one. Romans 12.

I'll read fairly rapidly. Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. 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 you.

Just as each one of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same functions, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and 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 his faith.

If it is serving, let him serve. If it is teaching, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let him encourage.

If it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it is leadership, let him govern diligently. If it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor.

Serving the Lord, be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice.

Mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.

Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, It is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord.

On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heat burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. We were glad to have the ministry of Ray Steadman, a great preacher from the United States, in this church a couple of years ago. He wrote a book entitled Body Ministry, and it wasn't to do with holistic medicine, nor spiritual jerks that Christians ought to do to ensure that their body is healthy.

You know, the apostles' little bit of advice, bodily exercise profits a little. Some people think the emphasis should be on the word little. He really was dealing with wanting to encourage within the body of the people of God those gifts to come to the forefront, so that when one is together in a local church situation, then all will enjoy contributing what God has given to them in terms of the overall pattern of worship.

And within that book, and indeed within this chapter that the Apostle Paul brings to our attention, is the emphasis on relationships. If you were to ask me, what is the greatest weakness of the Church of Jesus Christ in the 20th century? What is the greatest weakness of the missionary task force in the present day and age? I would not say it's lack of personnel, neither would I say it's lack of finance. I would say the greatest weakness and the greatest challenge is for Christian people to get on with one another.

Fellowship is a good word. It's easier to talk about it than to practice it. Now the Apostle Paul has just completed one of the greatest epistles that you find in the New Testament.

He's got more to say, but he's completed at least his basic theological argument, and if you've stayed the course with him for those 11 chapters, then you've done very well, because he plums great depths and he scales great heights, and sometimes he just leads us floundering as we try to comprehend the whole viscera of God's plan of salvation and his purposes for the Jewish people and the Gentile people. But the Apostle Paul is nothing if he's not a pastor. He's not just a theologian.

I don't believe, actually, that theology should just be an academic pursuit that one engages in as you take down book after book after book and as people add to the stock of books in libraries by telling us more about theological conclusions and so on and so forth. Now you will have had sufficient experience of my ministry here to know that in no way would I ever deprecate Bible study. I've always taught you that your mind is the most important thing and that Christians should be outthinking non-Christian people.

But if your theology isn't passed through into life, if it doesn't affect the way that you and I live, if the unity, the harmony, the fellowship that we have here is not better than the unity and harmony and fellowship of Freemasonry or the local golf club, then it seems to me that all our theologizing is in vain. And this is basically what the Apostle Paul is saying. And Brother Tim Saunders, I believe, gave you an excellent address on the last time when we met together as he introduced this practical application of the Apostle Paul's ministries to his readers and by extension to you and I who have the privilege of reading this epistle today.

He's concerned, I say, with how we hang in together as brothers and sisters. I do believe in the communion of the saints. And you'll have noticed in a cursory reading, and many of you have perhaps gone through this with a sieve on several occasions, but you will realize that the Apostle, writing after he compiled the Corinthian letter, dips into what he was teaching the Corinthians in the 12th and 14th chapter of the first letter, and he reemphasizes some of that practical teaching as he brings out this whole concept of the body of Jesus Christ.

You know what your body's like at a literal level. You've got many members, and each part of your body contributes to the well-being of the rest. And the smallest part of the body, if it's an ingrowing toenail, can affect the total body.

If you can't sleep at night, it's no use saying, well, you're an absurd little toe. Why should I take any notice of the discomfiture that you're bringing to the rest of my body? You jolly well do take notice when you can't sleep day after day or night after night. Now the Apostle Paul is saying that each of us, verse 4, each of us are part of the body of our Lord Jesus.

There are many members in a local church, and all these members don't have the same function, but the great challenge is for each member to do his part and to do his part in such a way that he's not an irritant to the rest of the membership. In other words, there is to be smoothness within the church of Jesus Christ. Some of you know what it is when your car runs out of oil.

It doesn't do your engine much good. Oil has this propensity. It smooths things.

It allows steel to meet with steel, and for there not to be a grinding. And so it is that the body of Christ, when she comes together, when each individual member is interacting with the other, there needs to be oil, there needs to be love, so that the total body of Christ can continue its ministry unimpeded, with complete unity. Now the Apostle, when he teaches this in these opening verses, at least opening as far as our study is concerned, from 3 down to the 8th verse, when the Apostle emphasizes this, and I say he's reaffirmed it in the Corinthian letter, he's not really trading in novelty in the New Testament, because the Old Testament will tell you this also, won't it? The psalmist says it's good for brothers to dwell together in unity, because there the Lord commands the blessing.

There the Lord commands the blessing. So it's with unity as our objective that we come together to serve the Lord. And the Lord has then gifted us in ministries.

You see, when the Lord saves you, He doesn't just save you full stop. He doesn't just give you the Bible to read full stop. He does that, but He does more.

He saves and He suckers. He educates and He empowers. He grants to the Church an ability to perform the ministries that He wants the Church to successfully achieve.

That's why on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came, the disciples were filled with power, and Peter, a fairly inarticulate man, makes his debut as a preacher, and there along, by the time you get into the 4th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, you find that his adversaries are saying, how is it that this man can handle words so well? And the answer is he can do so because he's been engifted by the Holy Spirit. Now, not everyone within the body of Christ is engifted as a teacher, but the apostle is making plain here, as he does with the Corinthians, that there are gifts that are given to each member of the body of Christ, and each one is to use those gifts for the advantage of the other, and more precisely, for the glory of Christ. Verse 6, we have different gifts according to the grace given us.

Now, when a man has a gift from the Lord, he exercises this in a fashion which bespeaks humility. Do not think of yourselves, says the apostle, I'm backtracking to verse 3, do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. The first thing that you and I are called to do, in terms of the Christian church and its ministries, I was emphasizing this at a conference that I was addressing in Kent yesterday, he first of all calls us to be foot-washers.

If you ever go beyond in your estimate being a foot-washer, then you've betrayed your ministry, because any furthering gifting which the Lord has granted to you must be in the context of being a servant of the Lord. Jesus said, if I, your Lord and Master, as he was addressing his immediate disciples, if I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, I've therefore given you a lesson that you are to follow. The way up in the kingdom is the way down, and you can never be effective, however much you feel gifted, if you have left the first principle that you are called within the body of Christ to serve your brothers and sisters, and thus to glorify the Lord.

Now, as you recognize the very department, the very mindset that is yours, then you enter into the particular gifts that God has given you, and you use them from the perspective of one who is a servant called to minister to other people. Now, isn't it interesting that if I were to have put a question to you, where does the Apostle Paul speak about charismatic gifts, you would probably have answered in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. In one sense, you would be right, but it's not the whole story.

The gifts which the Holy Spirit gives us are not only referred to in one of Paul's epistles, they are actually referred to in several of his epistles. And the charismatic gifts which the Apostle here makes mention of in Romans have a delightful variety in the way that he defines and delineates them. For instance, when you go on from the sixth verse towards the end, you pick up the sentence, If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.

If it is in serving, let him serve. If it is in teaching, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let him encourage.

If it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it is to leadership, let him govern diligently. If it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

You see, very often, because of the contentious debate that there has been in Christendom, particularly over the past three decades, when you refer to charismatic gifts, one always has, or some people have very much in their mind, the more sensational gifts of tongues and prophecy and miracles and interpretation and so forth. Now the Apostle, he is prepared, because he is led by the Holy Spirit, to see that the so-called ordinary gifts, as well as the extraordinary gifts, are actually all from the Holy Spirit and all are to be esteemed. Which is really a very exciting statement, if you follow him through, and if you apply it to yourself.

What the Apostle is here saying, speaking classically, speaking using the word in its New Testament setting, is that every Christian called into the body of Christ is charismatic, because all have been given a gift. We have one gift that is completely in common, the gift of salvation. For by grace are you saved through faith.

It is a charisma, one of the charismata of God. You can't really get into the body of Christ unless you come in by having been engifted with salvation. But there are more gifts that God in His grace might gift to you.

It seems to me that some are special endowments that come down from above, and some are the outworkings of potentials that are already there within the human personality, but are made that much more wonderful by the effects of the Holy Spirit upon the individual, bringing these potentialities to the forefront. So the man who serves, as he ministers to the needs of other brothers and sisters, the man who is gifted in this area in a special fashion, is to be esteemed, and he is to esteem his gift also highly, as highly as the man who brings the prophetic ministry, a word directly from the Lord. There is a charismatic gift.

Have you ever thought of this? There is a charismatic gift, a charism, that actually is to be understood as a special enabling to be a successful businessman. The Word of God tells us here that there are those who are especially gifted to contribute to the needs of others. Now, you can't gift to the needs of others unless you have largesse in the area of financial gain yourself.

Philip Henman was a great man of God. I can speak of him because he's now gone to be with the Lord. He was born here.

Well, I don't know about born, but he spent many years of his life in the High Street Church just down the road, the church that used to be there in the High Street. And I was told by Principal E.F. Kevin, who was my principal at London Bible College during the days I was a student, that Mr. Henman felt that he had a call to the ministry. Now, he wasn't really a public speaker.

He could hold his own in speaking, but he wasn't that gifted or so I'm led to understand. But he came out of the business realm and tried for a while to exercise a ministry in a more specialized fashion as a preacher. But he came to a realization that this wasn't really his gifting.

His gifting was, as a businessman, to make an impact upon the city of London. And as a result of his success, his expertise in this whole area of business, God blessed him munificently. And he used the largesse that came in terms of finance for the advance of the kingdom of God.

John Lang is another man who did the same. Most remarkable man whose business expanded and expanded and still remains. So he's gone to be with the Lord.

But it was incredible the way that he lived, the lifestyle that he adopted over against what he could have been and how he could have spent his money. But he believed that God hadn't gifted him in such a fashion as this. I've got a brother who I meet with regularly two or three times a year who's exactly in the same situation God has granted him blessings in this area and he uses his business for the advance of the gospel.

I've gone down a tangent here or gone off on a tangent, but it's so necessary because, you see, these whole gifts of the Spirit are not just to be seen in terms of the more sensational nor, incidentally, are you to under-evaluate yourself the more extraordinary gifts of the Spirit. The apostle doesn't make any real distinction but he esteems each gift that the Lord gives. Not just twelve gifts of the Spirit, twenty-one gifts of the Spirit.

John Stott, I think, made thirty-one when he checked them up and he reckoned that the Spirit was still giving because there are ministries that are specialised in the twentieth century that you couldn't have anticipated in the first like being able to communicate the gospel through radio and through television and so forth. The Spirit is still giving his gifts and we are to come to the Holy Spirit and ask in the proportion of faith that we have that the Lord will deepen the gifts that we already are exercising and if he puts this within the compass of our thinking we are to ask him for even more gifts that we can use for the advance of the body of Christ. Never despise the Martha ministry.

The apostle Paul says that there are those who are gifted to showing hospitality showing acts of mercy and so on and so forth. Thank God for people who do that in the tab. I think that the tab desperately needs even more people in this area.

Do you see the point? The apostle here is telling us that within the body of Christ there are gifts and gifts which are to be used gifts which are granted by the Holy Spirit and increasingly so in accordance with the faith that we have to receive them. Now the ungifted person as he is ministering before the Lord starts to show more of the character of the Lord Jesus. Now that's pretty obvious.

The apostle in the 9th verse again it seems to me dipping into what he's already shared with the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 13 starts to talk about the characteristics of our Lord Jesus. After all he was a man who had love in sincerity. He was a man, verse 10, who was devoted to his disciples.

He was a man who never lacked, verse 11, zeal. And as our minds, to go back to the first two verses of this chapter, as our minds are constantly being transformed, as our whole personality is being renewed by the Holy Spirit, what is the consequence of that? Well, it makes us more like Jesus. You see, this is God's sole purpose for you and for me, my brothers and sisters.

He wants us to be like the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he saves us. And he engifts us.

And the apostle, you remember, when he's writing to the Corinthians in that lovely sonnet in the 13th chapter, he defines our Lord Jesus. He tells us all about the Savior in those middle verses. Well, similarly, here I suggest he has our Lord in mind as he takes some characteristics which are dominant in the personality of our Lord Jesus, and he encourages us to reproduce them.

The apostle wants us to imitate Jesus. And yet, and yet I back off in the notes that I published in using the word imitation because I don't think you can really mimic Jesus. We are not folk who copy the Lord Jesus simply by, well, you know how some comedians, to use a secular illustration, can take off politicians and so on and so forth and you close your eyes and you might think you've got Harold Wilson speaking or Edward Heath speaking or even Margaret Thatcher speaking.

Not that sort of aping. Not that sort of reproduction. That's artificial.

But actually entering into the very life of Jesus, so the life of Jesus by the Holy Spirit continues to transform you and you become not so much an imitator of Him but a participant in His life so it can be said, Christ lives in me. Isn't that a mind-blowing statement? That Christ can live in you? That you can be an extension of the Lord Jesus and His ministries to the secular world which so desperately needs to have some insights into what Jesus came to perform in our world. So the apostle talks of the disciplines that we must exercise in cooperation with the Holy Spirit for this participation in the life of Christ to become more and more real.

There are certain things that we ought to do. We're to hate what is evil. Do you hate sin? The apostle speaks to the Ephesians about the exceeding sinfulness of sin.

And then he tells us, and once more I suggest to you, he has the Lord very much in mind, we're to be devoted to one another. That's very strong language, isn't it? Does it describe you? Could you honestly say that of your brothers and sisters here at the tabernacle, you're devoted to them? Now, don't mince words. Don't in any way neutralize what the Bible is saying.

Don't water it down. Take the apostle Paul because he never minced words. And let this particular verse test your allegiance one to another.

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. And he's back again at the servanthood concept. Honor one another above yourselves.

And always keep your zeal. Don't let it lack. What's the way in which spiritual fervor is maintained? How do you go about it? Well, he puts in a little clause there, serving the Lord.

The man who remains spiritually zealous is always the man or the woman who's got some active ministry in which they're engaging. This is why you see passive study of theology. It's a deadly pursuit.

It's when you're working for the Lord that your zeal is maintained and increased. You know, to use an illustration from the tab and to dip into what I was saying on Sunday night, it was so wonderful to be on the Logos and to see these fellows last Wednesday night. Although they look very jaded and absolutely exhausted, it was great to be with them and to catch something of the enthusiasms that were theirs as they had increasingly discovered what this ship and its acquisition by O.M. was all about.

I think that one of the strongest, one of the high watermarks that there was in this church is when we had the premises next door almost presented to us on our lap. Well, it was not quite as easy as that. We did pay $40,000 for them, but then we all got stuck in and we got an objective.

We were practically involved in doing things. Now, my brothers and sisters, do a test in your own mind. I wouldn't be so personal as to do it for you.

Ask yourself within our fellowship, who are those who seem to have a zeal and a joy and a glory about them? And the answer invariably is those who are engaged in doing things, in serving the Lord. Not necessarily physical activity, although I think for a lot of us it involves that, but some of our friends are older. But they've never lost these aged friends.

They've never lost their spiritual concerns for the advance of the Gospel. And you find them in prayer bringing before the Lord the needs of our church and the needs of our world. The discipline that we need within us helps to keep us white hot in the kingdom of God, serving the Lord with zeal.

You can be as zealous and as white hot for the Lord as you want to be. You call the stakes as far as God is concerned. Any man can have as much as he wants of God and of His Spirit.

All that God asks is for hunger and obedience to His will and His purposes. So the apostle speaks of the discipline within us. He also, in I Heston, speaks of the behavior that we ought to exercise externally, the behavior to our friends.

And Paul, as I've mentioned, he uses powerful language. There's no way that you can go through these little injunctions in order. I've just tried to group them round headings because they're really quite a miscellany of things that he states from the 9th verse right through to the 20th verse or so.

Behavior to our friends. The way that we empathize with people. Verse 15, Rejoice with those who rejoice.

Mourn with those who mourn. Do you really try to enter into the extremes that other brothers and sisters may be going through? I remember once in my own life, it was the greatest challenge in terms of a variation in mood that I've had as a pastor. I was called to take the communion service at St. Barnabas Nursing Home.

And there was one dear man who couldn't come into the lounge area there because he was so advanced in his cancerous condition. And I was asked if I'd take the bread and wine to him. The cancer had hit his face and his face was so distorted I couldn't even find his mouth.

And I ministered to that man and committed him to the Lord. I don't imagine he got long to live. And then from that pastoral situation, I had to travel a mile to be with a young mum and a proud father who were celebrating the birth of their first child.

Now that took some doing to drop the sort of empathy and the feeling that one had for the first pastoral situation. And to move into and not to carry something of the sorrow of that into the next situation. Well, this is what the apostle has in mind.

I give you a stark example. It's rarely like that. I can only think of that one.

But here is the principle. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Mourn with those who mourn.

But always, verse 16, live in harmony with one another. Now the apostle Paul is not a fuddy-duddy theologian, is he? He's a very practical man. And in his concerns for other people, he emphasizes afresh, as he does on several occasions, our need to be giving hospitality to others.

Do not be proud in your hospitality also. Be willing to associate with people of low position. Do you do that, my friends? I have to ask myself.

There are some people who we're attracted to more readily than others, aren't we? Well, as Christian people, we have to temper that so that we give our affections and our interests large scale across the total body of Christ so that those folk who don't have the attractive magnetic personalities that maybe you have, they're not missed in this whole area of showing Christian love and agape. This is part of imitating our Lord Jesus, part of participating in the sensitivities that were his. And then the apostle, he really stretches us as we respond to his teaching because he speaks not only about our internal disciplines and our behavior to our friends but also our conduct with our enemies, those who don't get on with us very well.

And he says, verse 17, don't repay evil for evil. Our Lord Jesus was like that, wasn't he? He never repaid people in the currency, those who were against him, in the currency that they used. When he was railed against, when he was blasphemed, when he was libeled, he didn't take that same that he had received and throw it back in the faces of those people.

No, says the apostle, we are to follow our Lord Jesus. You see, his is the shadow, his is the example that falls across this page. And the apostle realizes that this is difficult.

It's not always easy to get on with people, is it? I mean, you can perhaps do your work, you can do your bit and not get the relationship right. Well, he says, if it is possible, verse 18, he knows that there will be occasions when it's not, but if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Blessed are the peacemakers.

I say in my notes, it's very difficult to translate that word, blessed, makarios, in the Greek language straight into English. It means have a happy demon. It's an extraordinary bit of etymology.

Etymology is a word that means the study of words. It's an extraordinary word in the Greek language. You see, the Christian is someone who in following the Lord Jesus has such objectives that he can be as happy as a happy demon.

And really, you're into the area where it's very difficult to quite understand where the metaphor is going to lead you. But there is a humor, sometimes an unconscious humor in Scripture. Well, you're blessed if you live with this sort of attitude.

You don't take revenge, verse 19. You leave for God to balance the inequalities. You're like the Lord Jesus.

You don't defend yourself. Rather, you're prepared. You're prepared to smile on your enemies and turn the other cheek when you are rebuked.

Not easy to do this, but this is what the Apostle Paul says is part of the body life to which you and I are called. Judgment is to be left to the Lord. And here is the ethic of Christianity which is so different from secular lifestyles.

Verse 20, On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, says the Apostle, clinching the argument.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. If you want a summary of what Paul is teaching there, let your eyes drop down to the 8th verse of the 13th chapter. Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another.

For he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. Paul has taught us here that in the body of Christ there are gifts and graces which we are to increasingly use and have deepened by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are corporately to minister Christ to one another.

And he's taught us that we are to so participate in the very personality of our Lord Jesus by the power of the Spirit that those dominant characteristics which graced his life may be reproduced in ours. Happy is the church that can live by the dictates which Paul sets down here in Romans 12. Let's pray.

Loving God, we've done a tour de force of this glorious chapter. And we're all saying amen to it. There's not one of us here who come out on a Wednesday night like this and take exception to straight teaching from Your Word.

There's no theological problem in our understanding. There's no quibble. We see there set down in black and white what we ought to be.

And Lord, we're trying to measure ourselves over against what we are. We ask that where there is a gap, You'll bridge that gap. Lord, where we're not as encouraging to people as we ought to be, help us to be encouraging.

Help us, Father, to be those folk who come alongside our brothers and sisters and give them a stimulus as we try to show them the impact that they're making upon us. Forgive us, Father, for some of us You've graced us with good homes. And on Sundays we sit down to good meals and it would be easy to squeeze someone else in at our table.

Forgive us when we don't do that because we believe that You've given us homes to use. Father, when You've given us gifts and we're not bringing them to the forefront, we just ask that You will enable us to do this. Not to be shying away from the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit or to be in any way denigrating the more ordinary ones.

Help us not to call common what You call special. Lord, we just pray that we shall take everything that You have for us here in this church and seize it for Your honor and for Your glory. We pray that more and more we might imitate and participate in the life of our Lord Jesus for His name's sake.

Amen.