Unity In Christ's Body

That was Facebook. You may have heard of it. As of the most recent official stats, Facebook claims to have 2.8 billion active users every month. So if Facebook were a country, it would be the largest in the world, nearly twice the population of China, which is extra remarkable since you can't even get to it in China. Facebook says that its mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Other social networks have appeared in recent years, each with its own distinctive flavor or niche. All of these web services tend to be free. And as the saying goes, if you can't tell what they're selling, they're selling you. In exchange for a ton of information about you, internet companies offer to make advertising target you more specifically, increasing the likely return on some other company's advertising budget. The result is this odd mix of two features across much of our online life. On the one hand, Facebook and other networks like it offer community and relationships, enabling social interactions and making it possible to stay in touch with people who are great distances away. On the other hand, they try to personalize everything about your experience. They curate content for you based on what they think you will like. So there's a kind of paradox here, right? Social media tries to make things both personalized and extensively connected at the same time. Now, my aim today is not to put you off social media, although it's likely that some of us would find our lives going much better if we were on it less. Instead, I want to consider why social media is so attractive to people. It seems like its product is paradoxical. It blends individuality and community. It's hard to dispute how incredibly successful this has been. How do they work so well? Well, all these companies target their content in roughly similar ways. So based on information that you've shared with them, whether intentionally or not, the services will categorize your profile according to a variety of different features. Then they sort all of their users into these overlapping buckets and then use the huge number of profiles they have to predict what kinds of things you will like and will want to see based on what other people who are similar to you also like. Now Facebook and other social networks go a step further and look at the actual community that you have created, assuming that you and your friends will like similar things. So these companies take a lot of demographic facts and blend them together into something that looks tailored or personalized. It's actually kind of amazing how good they are at it. And the stupendous wealth of these companies demonstrates just how well it works. But the whole approach is just slightly off. Because it assumes that because you share some feature with somebody else or enough features, that you have some kind of predictable relationship with them. And so you will like the things that they like and think the way they think. This is in fact Facebook's great advantage. It actually knows who your relationships are. But a social network company doesn't know you. It knows a lot about you. It doesn't know you in a way that it could make it love you or care for you. If you go online, it's easy to find stories of where tech companies have made huge mistakes in predicting what their users would like to see. Sometimes the results are very comic. And other times they're tragic. But it all works because some enterprising people have correctly realized that human beings desire both individuality and community. We want to be part of a group, but we also want to be free to do the things that we see fit and to be welcomed into that group for who we are. Social media tries to meet both of these needs, but it can't quite do it. So we end up with a society that is more connected than any other in history, and also an epidemic of loneliness. It's easy to get in touch with somebody else, but it's hard to develop a relationship with them. So we end up relating to each other in the way that tech companies relate to us. We know a lot about each other, but we don't really know each other. Now look, there's a ton of issues with all these new online technologies. It can be hard for us to see the downsides, especially early on, because the advantages are right there. That's why you signed up in the first place, right? Only now are we starting to see why sometimes these aren't going quite so well. But look, we don't have time to get into all that today, and it's not the point. I'm also not trying to issue a broadside against Facebook, or Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat, or whatever your favorite tech platform is. Often the customizations they offer us are actually kind of useful, right? If maybe a little creepy at times. But the reason they work is because they mimic something real and substantial. Their creators have caught on to the idea that people want to be treated as individuals and also want to be in groups. They offer their technology as a way to meet these deep human desires and sometimes they even use religious sounding language to sell their product. As Christians, we can enjoy and use these tools without being seduced by their extravagant religion-like claims because we already know a way to satisfy our desires for individuality and for relationships. God cares for us personally and individually, thereby proving our individual worth and importance. But God also made us to want fellowship and community, having relationships not just with him, but with each other. And the most remarkable of these relationships form the community we call the church. So what I want you to see today is that the way God relates to us, especially in salvation, makes church unity possible and also exactly meets the desires he placed in us for both individuality and for community. If you want it in a single sentence, God chooses individuals in order to make them into a church. One of Paul's concerns in writing 1 Corinthians is the disunity of the Corinthian church. They're divided over everything, it seems. In 1 Corinthians 12, in particular, Paul seems to be confronting those who are proud about having the important spiritual gifts. The chapter is thus about what spiritual gifts are for. We're gonna pay special attention to how Paul argues in this chapter. Perhaps counterintuitively, Paul argues for the unity of the church by emphasizing the individuality of its members. The metaphor that you heard Dare read as we went through it, the metaphor here is that the church is like a body. We never see a metaphor in the Bible as with any other literature. We need to think about what it's supposed to say. Metaphor says that two things are alike in some important way. They are not alike in every way. If two things were alike in every way, there's only one thing there. So you have to be able to tell them apart, but then they have something in common. And so when we're thinking about how to understand a metaphor, we need to think about what they have in common and why it matters. So how's a church like a body? Paul's point is that a church is like a body because it's a bunch of individual parts that have been unified into a single organism. So when we consider the unity of the church, we should first see that God creates diversity by selecting and gifting many kinds of individuals. Paul points out God's free choice and the individual significance of each member. Look at verse 11, all these gifts are empowered by one in the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills. Or verse 18, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose. Or 27, you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. This isn't a doctrine we see only here. In general, God relates to us individually. Not only in the gifts that he gives, even in God's most basic and important actions toward us, he treats us as individuals. We've already heard this morning from when Ben read in Psalm 139 how God creates us individually. And he also saves us as individuals. And this truth is in fact a central feature of our salvation. God, by his own sovereign will, and for the sake of his own glory, in eternity past, chose individuals to save without any regard to their merits or works, and solely by his own will, grants them all they need to be reconciled to him. Now, God doesn't save everyone. But he does save some, individually selecting them to be his own by his own free choice, and not because they in any way deserve his favor. Now, you might think, it's obvious, of course God saves individuals rather than groups. But if it seems obvious to you that God saves individuals and not groups, it's probably because you're a modern American. If a Jewish person living in Jesus' time would probably not have thought that God saves individuals. He would say God chose the nation of Israel. He chose this entire people. Similarly, a Christian living in the Middle Ages might have thought that God chooses a nation or a civilization or a church or something like this. That is, you're a Christian just because you were born one. In fact, all other religions are going to say that God or the gods favor people because of something about the people. This is what it means for a religion to be based on works. Something that you do or some characteristic you have is what makes God like you. Christianity does not say that. We actually should be careful here though because the actual language of the Bible often fits with this group-like way of thinking of our salvation. So the Bible often talks about our salvation or the things that God has done for us. What I'm saying is that the Bible teaches more than that. It teaches that God actually chooses specific people and not nations or churches or some other kind of group. However, this teaching isn't always on the surface, and we need to think about some key passages here in a minute, and be aware that there are godly people who have disagreed with us. But I'm going to try to convince you that the Bible teaches that God saves us as individuals. So let's consider some relevant scriptures. I'll read these, and if you want to try and turn to them, you're more than welcome, but good luck keeping up. Ephesians 1 and verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. So here you see the fact that God chose in eternity past without any regard to the works and for his own glory, but notice that in each case, it's plural, it's us and we, right? But compare that to Galatians 2.20, where Paul, same person who wrote Ephesians, so it's the same guy here, he says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That's not us anymore. And later in Galatians, Paul continues the same idea. He says, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. Now we're back to the we there, but notice that what's happening is that we are becoming sons. One does not become a son in a group. A sonship is a one-to-one relationship between a father and a son. And so it isn't like a father can adopt a whole bunch of people and all these people collectively become the sons, but no single one of them is a son. Adoption happens one-to-one. Weibel also frequently talks about how God saves different kinds of people. So consider Revelation chapter five and verse nine and following. It says, and they sang a new song saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on the earth. Notice here that the people God has ransomed still have personal characteristics. They're from every tribe and language and so forth. And so we can look at this great multitude singing to the lamb and see that they all still are individuals and we can tell them apart. Apostle John is especially clear on God's particular care. In John 10 in verse 3, it says, the sheep hear the good shepherd's voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. Later on in the same chapter, you get the other kinds idea again. So John 10, 15 and following, the father knows me and I know the father and I lay down my life for the sheep and I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd. And then later on in John chapter 17, this high priestly prayer that Jesus prays with his disciples, he says, I am praying for them. I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. And then later on in that same chapter, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. So Jesus, even in this prayer to his father, is distinguishing not only between his own and the rest of the world who will not come to him, but between different ones whom he has chosen, not just the 12 in that room, or at that point the 11 in that room, but also for anyone who would believe on their testimony, including us. This is true of a lot of Bible, the way that the New Testament talks about our salvation. Jesus and the Apostles regularly mentioned that God saves different kinds of people, and they have to be different kinds of individuals because there is no distinction between how they are saved. And not everyone in each of these kinds is saved. You cannot divide up the world into the saved and the not saved in any way other than God chose, God did not choose. That's the only division that tracks. Now, theologians sometimes debate about what is sometimes called the extent of the atonement. They're trying to answer this question. For whom did Jesus die? The Reformed view is that Jesus died only for the elect. And the alternative is that Jesus died for everyone equally. And look, good Bible-believing people disagree about this question. But all careful Orthodox theologians agree that Jesus' salvation doesn't work for everyone, for not everyone is saved. So the question ends up being about what God intended to do by sending Jesus. The Reformed view, which is one that I'm holding, I'm going to try and defend to you for just a minute, says that God sincerely offers salvation to everyone, but if God had intended to save everyone, then everyone would be saved. Therefore, God did not intend to save everyone. The alternative view, you might say that God desired to save everyone, which is true, but some people refuse to hear his voice and obey his call. But they refused because God did not choose them. In John 6, I think we have about as clear a statement of this as we get. Jesus says, all that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. So I think this passage is powerful evidence in favor of the Reformed view. The Father has already given to the Son the ones whom he came to save. So when Jesus came, he knew who he was coming to save. It was these particular people that the Father had already given to him. Now look, as I said, people disagree about this, and it would take way too long to try and defend this view thoroughly. Instead, what I want to do today is show you that even if you aren't sure that the Bible teaches this exactly, you should want it to. What God accomplishes by this particular redemption, by saving you as an individual, is something we should find very attractive. because it reveals God's matchless wisdom in planning not just to save us, but to do it in a way that fits the nature that he gave us. Now look, we usually want to be treated as individuals and not merely as members of groups. Here's an example of what I mean. Think about trying to buy a gift for somebody that you don't really know. Or maybe think about getting gifts from people who don't really know you. So if you're married, think of maybe some wedding gifts you got or maybe something that your office gets you for your birthday or something like that. It could be nice, but the wedding gift from somebody who doesn't really know you, it's pretty generic, right? It doesn't really reflect any kind of understanding of you beyond, hey, you're getting married, let's get you something that married people get, right? So, compare that instead to getting a gift from somebody who really knows you and picks the perfect item. It might be something small and inexpensive, but because the giver knows you really well, it's perfectly suited. Now consider how you feel in these two cases. Now you can be genuinely grateful for both gifts. You know, you get all these wedding gifts and it's like this, you know, generic tea cloth with your monogrammed initials. You know, it's kind of them, right? But that personal gift, the one that sees you as an individual and knows you instead of just seeing you as part of a group, that's so much better because it reflects that relationship that you have. We'd like to be seen as individuals and not just as members of groups. Another example, consider how annoying it can be to be treated as a token member of a group. Now look, I'm a pretty ordinary white guy. I'm not gonna be a token member of pretty much any group, right? It's not gonna happen. But some of you, perhaps many of you have had this experience. You get asked to participate in something because we need a woman. or we need a minority, or we need this thing, or this other kind of person, or whatever it is. You might say, oh yeah, it's sort of gratifying to be asked to participate, but it's like it's the wrong reason. That's, you know, you want to be asked because the group clearly wants you, not because they want somebody kind of generically like you. From the other direction, think about how you get to be a part of a group. You could be grouped by your physical characteristics. You could be male or female. You could be tall or short, old or young, white, non-white. You don't have any control over these. Neither does anyone else in the group. You're just kind of being sorted across these demographic facts. You could also be grouped by your family. You could say, I am so-and-so's son or daughter or brother or sister, aunt or uncle, whatever it is. You don't have any control over who your family is either. But it can also be frustrating sometimes to be always just so-and-so's kid, right? It's going to be pretty weird if you're 60 years old and everybody still refers to you as your dad's son. Like, seriously, did I not do anything for the last 60 years? I mean, what's the deal here, right? So, and even if you're a teenager, you might already start to feel this a little bit. You know, sometimes being so-and-so's son or daughter gets you into things that you wouldn't get into otherwise. But sometimes it's kind of annoying to be thought of as, I mean, you know, look at me, not at my dad or my mom or my grandparents or whoever it is. You can be a member of a group based on where you live or where you are. So being an American citizen is like this. Most of us are Americans and this is where we are. Or you can be a Virginian or you can be a native of Charlottesville or whatever it is. You can sort the world in this way. Each of these cases and many more make it so that membership in a group involves being like people in the group in some important way. Everyone in the group is alike in some relevant way, and that's why you're members. You have something in common. There's another kind of membership in a group that is a lot harder to get. You can be part of a group when you and the others in the group mutually approve of each other, where you all like each other in some way. These kinds of groups are really attractive, but they're also really hard to get into. Think of a group of artists, for example, who admire each other's work. They all get along super well, but you're not gonna break into that group. It's not going to happen. Academics are notorious for doing this. All of these people who like each other's work and they sort of scratch each other's back and if you try to get in, it's not going to go anywhere. They develop these little clicks. And I use the word click very carefully because this is how a group of this sort gets perceived from the outside. Sometimes we might call it the good old boys club. Right? That's not usually a compliment. But if you're in it, it's really good. And people, though they might not like the good old boys club, spend an enormous amount of time trying to get into it. Right? Because what these groups have in common is that everyone in them approves of everybody else. The mutual approval is really, really attractive. We want people to like us. And so people do all kinds of silly and terrible things in order to get in. Because we want people whom we admire to admire us. This is the kind of stuff that fuels school age drama. But honestly, it doesn't go away with older people. The kinds of things that people will do to be part of the in crowd are mind boggling. And of all the groups that I've mentioned so far, this one is probably the most powerful and the most dangerous. Last way you might be part of a group is that you can volunteer for it. But then everyone else can too, and you can't control who's in or out. I suspect we've all been part of a group like this where we wish there could be some more quality control on the members, if you will, right? What's amazing about the church is that we don't join it by any of these methods. We don't get in because of some characteristic we have, like our ethnicity or where we live. We don't get in because of who our family is. We don't get in just because we like each other. We don't get in just because we want to. Instead, we get in because God chooses us merely because he wants us to be in. And thereby, we preserve our individuality. God makes these individuals into a church. How does this matter, this individuality matter for a church? God saves us as individuals with our individual histories and personalities, our distinct beliefs, abilities, and all this other stuff. Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 12 here depends on the fact that the individuals are different. Look at verses 19 and 20. It says, If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. So we often talk about church members. We use this term all the time. But the word here in 1 Corinthians is just the ordinary word for a part. We say that we're members of the church, we're emphasizing that we're part of a larger whole. In one sense, membership is just an ordinary concept. It's just what it is for something to be part of a bigger thing. But to think of ourselves as members of a church is not at all ordinary, because what's amazing about the church is the diversity of its parts. Diversity isn't just a matter of the different kinds of people that God saves or the gifts God gives. God also requires different things of different people. Paul teaches in Romans, some people think they can eat certain things and others don't. Some people respect particular days and others don't, and so on and so on. God gave you your personal history and convictions, both about what you should do and what you should believe. Perhaps you have the conviction that you shouldn't watch sports on Sundays, or maybe you won't drink alcohol, or maybe you won't wear certain kinds of clothes to church, or you won't listen to certain kinds of music, won't read certain kinds of books, or watch certain kinds of TV shows. But you know people, perhaps friends in this room, who would disagree with you about those things. And yet, these various parts are unified into a single whole made one by God's sovereign action. Verses 4 through 6 in 1 Corinthians 12 make the case that this unity that we enjoy comes from the fact that there is one spirit that has given all of these gifts, instructed us, and then unified us together. I've spent the time to say that God chooses us individually without any regard for our worthiness for a couple of reasons. One is that God saving us in this way demonstrates his sovereign unmerited grace toward us. There is nothing that we who are saved have in common except that God chose us. Second, it's God's kindness to choose us before and apart from our choice. In our depravity, we would not pursue God. So he has to be the one to initiate our reconciliation. And in our weakness, even if we could choose God, we would not do so. We could not do enough to earn our salvation. So God accomplishes that too. And yet, because God chooses us as individuals, He can require things of specific church members that He does not require of all of them. You don't have to be the same as everybody else because there is nothing about you that God needs. God can command individuals within a church in different ways, calling them to different tasks, gifting them with different abilities, teaching them different truths, and none of this will compromise the unity of the church because our unity does not depend on our being like each other or any kind of prior agreement amongst the members. Our unity depends on God giving us his spirit and choosing to put us in this place together. It's good because many of the characteristics we have will change over time, right? We will grow older, we will lose some of our physical ability. Hopefully we will gain some wisdom in exchange. We'll learn new things, we'll acquire new skills, we'll enter new stages of life. You may finish school, you get a new job, you lose the one you have, you get married, you have kids, you have grandkids, all this stuff. God does not need any of these things. And he does not save us because we have any of them. God does not save you because you grew up in a Christian home, or because you're an American, or because you're white, or young, or smart, or rich, or male, or poor, or strong-willed, or extroverted, or anything. He didn't save you because you're the opposite of any of these either. God saved you because he wanted to. And since God picked you, With your own history and abilities and desires and ambitions and all that, you can use those things he has given to you in the church without thinking that everyone else needs to do the same. Healthy churches, we see this. Different folks believe that they don't have to do certain things in order to please God. Or they think they do have to do things in order to please God, but don't think that everyone else has to do the same. Think of some of the ways we might believe and act differently within our own congregation here. We might have different views with other people here about how you should educate your kids. Should you homeschool them? Should you send them to a private school, a public school? Which one? You could disagree about whether women should cover their head here in the church. You could disagree about what women can do in the church. How can they serve? What offices can they hold? What kinds of responsibilities can they take? You could disagree about whether you can consume alcohol or caffeine or various kinds of foods or other kinds of substances, whether you can watch movies, what kinds of movies you can watch, TV shows, other sorts of entertainment, how you should raise your kids. We definitely have different people, different folks who have different opinions on this. Whether you should date or court or dort or something in between. what your political views are. I certainly would not ask for a show of hands, but I know in this congregation there are people who occupy all sorts of places on the political spectrum. We even have some people who have different theological views and associations. So some of you, I mean, there are things that are sort of important, it'd be hard to work together if we didn't agree on, but there are a lot of things where we can have useful and edifying discussions and debates over matters that are about God. What I'm saying is that this diversity is not just an okay thing for the church, but it's a positive good. God shows us his wisdom in all this diversity, but he actually does it for our good. God can even give you a spiritual gift that you don't think you had so that you can serve the church for a season. You are not part of the body because of what you're like. As Paul says in verses six and seven, the various gifts that God gives to the members are for the common good. Your abilities, your history, your desires, your ambitions, your beliefs, all this are not for you. Therefore, the rest of us. The result of all this is that the body is unified, but it's unity in the way that a body is unified. So a body is not unified by having all the parts doing the same thing, okay? So a body that is unified and working well together is, we might say, coordinated. But coordinated bodies don't necessarily do exactly the same, not all the parts do the same thing. In fact, the more coordinated you are, the more different things you can do with different parts of your body. So if you like sports as I do, you can watch elite athletes who can do really amazing stuff with their body. So they can be coordinated and get all their different body parts to do things together. so that they accomplish what they want. So, I like baseball. If you actually work through all of the different things your body has to do in order to throw a baseball as a pitcher, it's kind of amazing. Every last little part of your body is doing something, and it's all doing something just slightly different. Or maybe you think of someone who's a really good musician. So if you play piano, for example, you'll appreciate this. If you don't play piano, what I'm about to describe is going to sound like craziness. All right. So a pianist can play one melody with this hand and a different melody with this hand at the same time. A really good one can play a melody with this hand, a melody with this hand, a different melody with their foot, and a different melody with their other foot. That's what an organist does when they're really good. Like, wait a second, how does that work? I don't know. Okay, I can't do it. But that's coordination. And it all sounds great together. It isn't like they're playing some random melody by each hand and foot. They're playing something that all fits together. But they can control all these different parts of their body to do this one thing all at the same time. That's what I mean by the unity of the body. It doesn't mean that everyone is doing the same thing. It means we're all coordinated. So what I'm saying is that God creates unity in the church, not uniformity. And this is good for the whole group. Groups that have nothing in common are barely groups. At best, they're mobs, and they rarely stay together for very long. You've got to have something that gets you together. On the other hand, groups where everyone is too much alike tend to develop blind spots, they tend to fall into routines that exclude new members, and they lose their ability to adapt to new situations. Groups that are like this tend to die out as their members die out. But God did not make the church like that. We can rejoice when we have people who are not like most of us and still want to be part of our church body. People who are obviously different from us and yet still want to worship and serve with us are a great gift for they help us to avoid the error of thinking that God cares only for people who look and act like most of us. Further, when diverse individuals come together into a single thing, it changes the individuals. A part of something becomes what it is because of how it's related to the whole. Think about a house. When it's part of a whole, a piece of wood can become a beam. A piece of glass becomes a window. A piece of fabric can become a curtain, and so on. What these things are depends on their function, and their function depends on the whole thing that they're a part of. The same is true of a team. You know, think of sports again. A shortstop is just a guy standing in a field unless there are people in corresponding roles out in the same place. You know, someone becomes a linebacker when they're playing football, and hopefully not when they're playing golf, right? If you're playing one-on-one basketball, nobody's playing the post, right? Nobody's the point guard. It doesn't make sense. You don't have a team. There aren't different roles with different activities. Now even further, especially over time, a part that has played its role well will start to change as it matures with the group. Individuals will specialize. Parts of things get characteristic worn spots, for example. So, you know, think of your house again. You've got this piece of fabric. It's a curtain now. After time, the curtain will have this faded thing that's shaped just like the window it's covering, right? It's kind of become part of the house in a way that it wasn't before. Being united into a group changes you. And this is part of what God intends by uniting us into a church body. Something isn't part of your physical body by simply having a tag that says, this is mine, right? Becoming a member of a church isn't just a label that puts you in yet another demographic group. Being a part of a church body means having a certain kind of relationship with some specific other people. Now, that does not mean that you need to have the same depth or type of relationship with everyone in our church. you can't have a deep relationship with everyone. And to try to do so ends up sort of perversely contradicting the idea of unity. If you're always relating to everyone exactly the same way, you're treating them as if what makes you unified is this single way to relate to them. So the whole point of unity is that everyone isn't the same. And so if you're relating to everyone as if they were the exact same kind of person, you're missing the unity. And there's something that's similar about your relationship with everyone else in the church, but that similarity is created and maintained by God and not by you. It's his spirit that keeps us together. So although God saves you as an individual, he doesn't leave you as you are. He makes you a part of the church. And these new relationships affect who you are. Look, if you would be exactly the same whether or not you attend this or some other church, then you're not really a member. If this particular congregation is interchangeable in your life with any other Christian group, then you're not a member in the way that Paul is talking about in this chapter. Now quickly, some applications. Paul draws two basic applications from the body metaphor, dealing with two characteristic ways in which members can misunderstand the role. First, starting in verse 14, a member might say, I'm not like that person, so I'm not really part of the body. And I think this can show up in two ways. It could show up when you think that you should be doing something different from what the church is asking of you. So you think, maybe, I'm really good at doing this thing, so the church should ask me to do it. And if the church doesn't ask me to, then I just won't do anything. This is seeing a role or a part, parthood in the body as beneath you. It could also show up when you look around and think, man, everybody around here is so different from me. They're, I don't know, richer, smarter, whiter, younger, prettier, more articulate, more talented, whatever. So I must not belong here. This is seeing a role as above you. Remember, God didn't pick you because you're like those other people. He chose you because he wanted you, and he wanted you here and now. The second application that Paul draws is that members of the body can say, what amounts to, I don't think we need those kind of people around here. Now look, I suspect we would rarely be so crude. Right? Instead, we would probably say something like, it would probably be hard for someone like you to fit in here. Or maybe there's a church down the road that you would like better. Or thinking about people who are already here, you might say, that person, man, they are always needing the church's help. Can't they just get their act together? Which is often code for, why can't he be more like me? But remember, God didn't choose you because you were worth choosing. He didn't require the same things of every church member. It could be that that member that you don't think fits in, God put here to remind you about who he cares about and to challenge you to treat others in the way that he does. There's some more applications to consider. First, God makes you part of the church, but not because of any merits you have, and also not quite just as you are. When you say that God welcomes us just as we are, I know what you mean by that. It means that God doesn't require you to clean yourself up before you come to him, and that's true. but I think it can bend our minds to think about our relationships in the church badly. God saves you knowing who you really are and as you are, but not to remain as you are. God's gracious and free choice to save you does not imply that he approves of everything that you do or that he will permit you to remain the same. If you are not growing in holiness, the Bible questions whether you've really been saved, because salvation is a conversion. And if being part of your church, whether this one or some other one, isn't spurring you on to be a better church member, then you should stop and think. So consider, are you becoming a better church member? And if not, why not? Second, God calls different kinds of people, so affirm the goodness of his gifts in others. This is especially hard when you want those gifts. So for example, God gives some people lots of material possessions. He gives some people abilities to teach or to lead or to be musical or be good with their hands and so forth. If you want those things, it can be hard to thank God for someone else who has them. It can be hard to be happy for someone else's success or privilege. Make sure you affirm the goodness of his gifts, especially when you're not disposed to appreciate that kind of gift. So someone else has the ability to teach children really well. You're like, I don't have kids. Great, I think. Or someone who says, hey, you know, it's cool that you're really good at hospitality, but what's the big deal with that? Or someone who, some of you in this room who are really good at knowing what's going on in other people's lives. You say, hey, you know, what's the big deal? Why is that useful? Or maybe someone's like an introvert or an extrovert or something like that. It can be hard to affirm the goodness of God's gifts to those people when you don't see what's good about them. And yet, it's still a good thing to do. Affirm the gifts when those gifts seem more or less important than yours. So don't go to someone and say, well, you know, anyone could do that. Or, I could never do that. It's probably not true. Encourage others to obey God's particular demands on their lives. Paul writes elsewhere to not put an occasion to fall in a brother's way. So when I was talking about all the different things we might disagree about, all the ways in which we might obey God in slightly different ways as he requires of us, if you know that a fellow member here has a particular conviction about something, be very careful about trying to change their mind and even more careful to accommodate them whenever you can. They do not serve you. They do not answer to you, though they serve you. They do not answer to you. They answer to God. Do not try to be God to them. And look, if someone thinks that they perhaps ought to be serving in some way, encourage him or her to do it. So right now we're in this sort of transition stage in the church. We're looking for new leaders. If there's someone who looks like they're on this path and you know that they're there, go to them and tell them, yes, this is a good thing. The church needs you to serve in this way. Encourage them to obey the call of God on them. Third, use the gifts that God gave you in ways the church needs. It isn't necessarily in the ways that you want, nor is it necessarily in the ways that you think you're good at. God may give you a clue as to what the church needs by making you good at something or making you want to do something, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that God could make you want something different, or God could make you good at something different. Indeed, God must give you the grace to serve the church. You cannot do any of it on your own. Also, be coordinated with the rest of the body. So it's interesting here in 1 Corinthians 12, if you look at 27, or really 28 and following, it talks about gifts that God has given to the church, and the specific ones that he mentioned are gifts of leadership and instruction. So the body, your body, has a part that sort of decides where the rest of it's going to go, right? That's your head. It can be really hard to not be the head and to just go along with what the rest of the body is doing, to fit yourself into the rest of the body's activity so that it all works as a unified whole. Sometimes that means you're going to do things in ways that you would not prefer. Or you might come along and say, man, we could do this better if we did it my way. You know what? You might be right. But serving with the body, being coordinated, sometimes means doing it in the other way so that everyone can do it together. Use God's gifts in obedience to Him even when others don't obey. Don't look around and say, well, nobody else is doing this, I don't think I have to. Not the case. And obey Him even when others haven't been commanded to do the same thing. Some of you are perhaps being called to be elders in this church. Some of you I know are not going to be called to be elders in this church, namely all of you who are female, right? You're not going to be called to be an elder, but you can still obey in particular ways for you. Some of you men will not be called to be elders, and you can obey in particular ways for you. And some of you men are going to be called to be elders, and you need to obey. A speech a couple years ago, Mark Zuckerberg, who's the founder and CEO of Facebook, said this about the kind of community he wants to cultivate on his platform. Quote, we all get meaning from our communities. Whether they're churches, sports teams, or neighborhood groups, they give us the strength to expand our horizons and care about broader issues. People who go to church are more likely to volunteer and give to charity, not just because they're religious, but because they're part of a community, unquote. He goes on to say that because church attendance and other kinds of social participation have waned in recent years, quote, a lot of people now need to find a sense of purpose and support somewhere else. This is our challenge. We have to build a world where every single person has a sense of purpose and community, unquote. Now, naturally, Mr. Zuckerberg would like this to happen on Facebook or some other online community, presumably one he can sell. But as I said at the beginning, all this will be at best only a poor imitation of the real thing. It rightly sees that there is something we want very badly that is disappearing from modern American life, but it cannot replace the way the church satisfies our desire to be treated as an individual and to have important, diverse relationships in a community. So let's praise God that he has given us something more substantial and has qualified us to be part of it by his wisdom and grace. And let us further renew our commitment to this unique body. Let's pray. Our Father, you know us, having made us and knowing all things about us, and you have supplied us with everything we need to flourish as your creatures, both now and for eternity. And so we ask that you would keep us committed to your church, not only because of our duty to you, but because of how you have made it to care for us. Grant us the grace to obey you and to genuinely care for one another. In Jesus' name, amen.