Romans 12:4-5

We're not doing that one even though I just said it's the most important because I preached five sermons on it just a few months ago. But tonight we'll be looking at Romans 12. The primary text I'm looking at is verses four to five. Romans 12 verses four to five.

For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

One body in Christ

Here we're looking at the very nature of who we are in that one another relationship, and then we'll think about what we do. If you're looking for a one-sentence summary, we worship God as one body in Christ and individually as members of one another. First thing I want us to see in looking at this text and, well, just looking at the text in its structure, verse four is speaking of our actual body and the different members. But the key there is verse five, he's making that metaphor land. All of us are members of the one body. And the significant phrase, in Christ.

If you underline, if you mark up your Bible, that has to be one of those phrases you're looking for and you want to highlight. That little phrase, in Christ, in him, through him, it captures what I think is the foundational principle of salvation. Your covenant union with Christ gives you all the blessings from the heavenly places They are yours in Christ, and they're only yours in Christ, and they're all yours in Christ.

Significant, the word individual is in this text, but I want to highlight this because we have to stop thinking about ourselves as mere individuals. Individualism, as our culture and society emphasizes, is antithetical to who we are as image bearers, and is antithetical to who we are as those united with Christ. The most important thing about you is your union with Christ. So church, we all depend on Christ. In order to depend there, we can just swap out faith. Faith is dependence on Christ. We are many, there's many image bearers who have been united with Christ, and we're all united with Christ by faith. It's significant that he is the head of the body. He's ordained the church, he's created the church, he purchased each member with his blood, he seals each one with a spirit, he unites us together in the one spirit, he calls us to be one body in him, under him, and for him.

Again, the key there is in Christ, that new covenant relationship that has renewed with God, It is the most significant thing and important thing about you. It gives you all the heavenly blessings. It gives you all of the benefits of salvation that we then learn to walk in and enjoy as we're more obedient. So the most important thing is that you are united with Christ, which then necessarily means you have a whole new relationship with other believers. If you are united with Christ, you necessarily are then united with other believers.

Again, verse five,

we are one body in Christ

, so that's speaking of the collective whole,

and individually members of one another.

We're called to depend upon Christ and one another. We have a new identity and a new relationship, not just with Christ, but also with one another.

There's two real dangerous pictures that we could play around with this body head. I feel there's a lot of headless churches, which makes them not churches. Gatherings of people who want to come together in Christ, but they're not seeking to submit to Christ. They're not united with them. They're religious social groups that end up being anarchy. Just a picture of judges when there is no King, everyone does what's right in their own eyes.

The other danger is a bodiless member. A bodiless member. Someone who is seeking to only be united with Christ and not the body. If you think about this picture, the metaphor referring to our body of many members and we're all a different kind of body and a metaphor of many members, well, we all know the knee bone is connected to the leg bone. Yeah. Not even a doctor. There's an interdependence to this metaphor. Paul makes it very clear in Ephesians 2 that we're all knit together.

But we need to think about how the body works. The whole body must be united and knit together all under Christ for it to really work. There's a wonderful cooperation and dependence we have as members who are by definition united with Christ and then necessarily united and dependent upon one another. Christian, you are going to learn who you truly are only when you are rejoicing in Christ with his body. We are designed to be relational. We are designed to be in a covenant relationship. And we learn how to live that out as members of the body.

We worship with one another

So verse five really tells us who we are. And I want to look at the context and then to think about what it means. We're gonna go all the way back to verse one. Verse one and two, we worship with one another. We worship with one another.

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

" Romans is the grand theological book of the New Testament. Chapters 1 to 3, roughly, are talking about sin and the depravity of man and how God has given us over to our sin, how even those who have the law have used it against God, how we all have fallen short of the glory of God. Chapters 4 through 8 then is the great doctrines of grace. We're justified by faith. We're adopted. We're renewed. We've been restored. We're new creations. There's no condemnation. And then 9 to 11 is this picture of how powerful and sovereign and glorious God is.

Kind of getting up on the mountaintop to the glory of God after we've seen how sinful we are and how great His salvation is, then we get to the place where it's the glory of God on the mountaintop, and then you start being taught how to live, being redeemed in the glory of God. And that's where verse chapter 12, that significant therefore transition in Paul's letters. Because of all the mercies of God, We present our bodies as living sacrifices. We seek to be transformed.

Significant, verse one is about what you do with your physical, real body. And verse two is about what's supposed to happen to your minds. We have our material and our immaterial aspects of who we are. By definition, you actually are always presenting your bodies to worship somewhere, somehow, in some way. We're natural-born worshipers. And apart from Christ, we're natural-born idolaters. And the call here is to be redeemed and renewed, to now present your life, your body matters, where you are matters in worship.

I encourage you, one of the ways we learn how to be members of one another is simply being present with one another. There's no way to learn how to worship God unless we're actually present with him and present with one another. We're worshipping someone with our presence, we're worshipping something with who we're participating in. We hear the call of the church, and the emphasis in verses four to five are clearly worshipping as a church. So I ask you, how do you come to what are our corporate gatherings, or your home groups, or your Bible studies? There's nothing important about the way you come expectantly, or come reluctantly, or come out of duty. And I think coming out of duty is great. There's things you're supposed to do that you do because they're the right thing to do.

But to truly come eager, here's what I would encourage you to do when you come to our gatherings or a Bible study, praying, God, transform the way I think. Help me think about you more clearly. Help me think about Christ more. Help me actually have a bigger vision of who Christ is and his grace and his glory. Be transformed knowing what's acceptable and perfect. How to live that godly life. When you come as a church, the goal is you're also helping each other worship. We're not a hierarchical church. It's not your priest up there and I'm going to get all the grace God's given me and I'm going to bless you with it. That's not what we believe the Bible teaches. You should be grateful that's not how it even works or that would not be helpful for anybody.

No, we're all members of the same body seeking to be blessed by Christ, seeking to be a blessing of Christ to each other. When you come, you can't come as a consumer and practice this. That individualism comes with a consumerism. We become eager to seek to encourage others, pray for someone, find someone you haven't met before. Here's something I want to put on your radar. If you see someone sitting by themselves at one of our corporate gatherings, that should be code orange, code red, I need to go talk to that person. Raise your hand how often you've been in a room full of people you don't know and enjoyed sitting by yourself. I kind of enjoy it because I'm awkward and I've had to learn to embrace awkward, but most people don't want to be by themselves around people they don't know. So be looking for ways of just being a blessing to other folks. You might have an opportunity to share the gospel with somebody.

Think sanely about yourself

The significant thing here is we are called to present ourselves, and that is our individual action, our way of thinking, but it incorporates where we are regularly present. Verse three, think sanely about yourself.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think himself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

That idea of sober judgment, it's not, don't think highly, you know, beat yourself up, which is usually what we think humility is. No, the gospel of Jesus Christ actually brings you to a right self-understanding. The gospel of Jesus Christ actually brings you to a sanity. Think about yourself according to God and his word. I don't know if people still talk this way. When I was a young man, people talked about going out and trying to find themselves. I don't think anybody ever finds themselves in that way. The only way to really know who you are is by definition relationally as you're relating to other people. And the only way to know who you truly are is to know yourself according to God. The only way to know who you are in Christ is properly with his people.

Now the warning there is not to think too highly of yourself, but really it's also people who think too lowly of themselves that God doesn't have enough grace for them. or to lowly souls, I can never serve and I can never be a blessing. The same power of the Holy Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is in you and can bless you and use you as a blessing.

Church, we're called to be a gathering of all kinds of redeemed rascals, learning how to think of each other, think of ourselves, and think of God together in the right way. There's a way in which, again, this covenant relationship, this new covenant identity, it has to overcome our individualism. It has to be the way we learn to think about who we are rightly in Christ that overcomes our individualism.

Steward God's blessing

The third way in which we think about being that one body and many members is how we are present bodily and how we worship where we are and how we worship the way we think and the way we think about ourselves. Well, the last thing is verse six.

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

So finally, steward God's blessing. Steward God's blessing. I appreciate how scripture just presents things so simply and wonderfully. You have gifts, use them. That's how simple that is. If you are united with Christ, what is most important about you is true of all of us. We are redeemed, we're adopted, we're the beloved bride, but then each one of us also has different unique gifts. And when God gives you a gift, he says, use it. If you have a gift, it's meant to be practiced and exercised. God has blessed you with gifts. And those gifts are for you to see how God would use you. And those gifts are given to you so that you would help other believers rejoice in Christ and grow in sanctification. I have a philosophy when it comes to gifts. If you are a redeemed believer and you see a need, there's a good chance God in his grace is going to give you the gift to meet that need. I like to keep things simple.

Because those gifts aren't always permanent. They're by God's will. And so when there's a need, like nursery coordinator, it might be God is going to gift you as you step into that terrifying role of nursery coordinator. It's incredible. If we are faithful where God has us, God will bless us to be fruitful.

One of my favorite fruits actually of our summer internship, what we seek to do there is take young adults, and we try to make them serve in every possible capacity we can have them do in the church. And one of the great feedbacks we get regularly is,

I never have done this in a church, and I'm glad you made me work with children or whoever it may be. I actually learned I really like it, and I want to do it when I go home to my church, or I want to stay here and do it more.

There's a way in which it is terrifying. We want to make sure folks have opportunity to do things in a way that isn't terrifying of failing, but learning how to walk. When I was in college, I took a college professor out for lunch, and I asked him just life advice. And he gave me this. I'll share it with you, and you can do whatever you want with it. He said,

do everything you can in ministry until you're 50, and then do what you're best at.

I'm a 20-year-old. And he said,

do everything you can until you're 50, and then do what you're best at.

I'm thinking, 50? That's like dead. All right, I'm only a couple years from 50. That was really good advice.

Seek to put yourself in every opportunity you can to see how God might use you, bless you, to learn gifts that you won't realize unless you actually try to use them. We want to make it clear to young folks, we want you to have opportunities where you might think you fail, but you're doing it with us, and we're going to care for you. Gifts are learned by practicing life together.

Faithfully be present and known and available

The places we serve, they need organization, they need facilitators. There's all different kinds of ways of serving with your gifts. He lists one of the many lists of different ways you're gifted. I'm going to conclude with a pressing thing with the Mount View revitalization. We have identified some areas that we know we're going to need help and we're also not aware of other areas that we know we're gonna learn, that we don't yet know.

I am convinced that God is faithful to his promise that he gives his church everything she needs. It doesn't mean we have everything we need for every possible ministry we can dream of, but anything we need, God will give us. But that also means every member when doing their work, and this is from Ephesians 4, when each member does their work, the whole body flourishes.

My encouragement, church, new member candidates having shared testimonies, consider and pray what ways God might be asking you to step into different roles. We don't know what many of those might be yet. But here's my, I'm convinced of this. Very little work that's lasting in a church is done by random acts of kindness. It's the regular route. If it's worth doing once, it's worth doing a thousand times for Christ. It's what we do regularly and faithfully. I fear because we have meaningful membership, it's kind of hard and confusing to know how you get involved in service at our church. Waiting for an amen. Here's how? Faithfully be present and known and available. There's all kinds of opportunities. What we need are folks who are gonna be dependable, faithful, and regular. And then that allows others to start serving and learning how to serve. We need faithful, regular, dependable. Those who are following Christ, faithful to Christ, seeking to use their gifts, and helping others.

Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you have not left us alone in our folly, darkness, death, alone. Without you hating each other and being hated, you've called us to be a new people. Thank you that we can be united with Christ because of his death and resurrection in your Holy Spirit. Thank you that we can now be united with each other and growing up to gather in Christ. Pray that we would know how to set aside our sinful individualism, our consumerism. Pray that we would be filled with your grace, rejoicing and grateful, and ever flowing to bless others. I pray that you would continue to help us know who we are as we know more of who Christ is. In his name we pray, amen.