Romans 12

Thank you for the opportunity to come up here and practice one of the gifts I believe the Lord has

given me and allowed me to serve you.

Brothers and sisters, think on your life

for a moment with me.

Think on what a life in full service

to God looks like.

Picture that life and, if you will, contrast it with me to the lives we

live.

I myself, and hopefully all of you, thought of a life that is

different than the life we live.

Hopefully we recognize that the lives we live as believers is not always the

life we're called to, and there is room for Christ to move within us and

to make correction for us.

So, before I get into Romans 12, which I'll be preaching on today, pray

with me.

Dear Lord, we thank you.

We come before you humbly and we graciously thank you

for the body that you have given us, the church, and we thank you

that, although we are unworthy to come into your presence of our own accord,

that your son's righteousness is imparted to us so that we may boldly come before you

and we may boldly proclaim your word.

And I thank you for the understanding that you give us, that apart from you is

something we are incapable of.

I thank you and I praise you, in Jesus' name, amen.

Now if you'll turn in your Bibles, we'll be in Romans 12 today.

And originally, when I was thinking of what to teach on,

I was scrolling through and looking for verses that would

admittedly be easy to preach.

I didn't want to set myself a hurdle too high.

And in doing so, I decided to preach on Romans 12,

9 through 21.

And upon further study, I was distracted originally by

these subtitles that were given in our Bibles.

If you've got an ESV Bible, you probably have the same subtitles as me.

So I was originally going to preach on the marks of a true Christian.

But as I studied, I recalled

that lessons we learned back in Sunday school on Sola Scriptura, it is only the word of God

that holds the final authority.

And so when we read our Bibles, we can see these subtitles, these chapter numbers, these verse

numbers, and we can get distracted from what is really there.

If we look into chapter 12, we see one continuous message that I would argue is

semi -needlessly broken up into different sections.

And it is helpful.

Those subsections are helpful to help us find things.

However, we want to make sure we approach God's word as intended, as the

word of God, and we cast off anything that we as man have added to it.

And so I just want to remember that as we go into chapter 12.

Chapter 12, we see Paul's letter to the Romans, and we see this

message of what Christian life looks like

once we have been granted this mercy from God.

What do our lives look like?

Because as Christians, we are Christians in three ways.

We are Christians within ourselves.

We have a personal relationship, a private relationship with God that we do not share with

others in the sense that we cannot, by our own faith, bring others into our

relationship.

Others cannot bring us into their relationship with God, and we cannot find ourselves secure

in our salvation through others.

Our relationship with God is originally, not

primarily, a private relationship between us and God.

But secondly, our relationship with God, and I would say this is one of the

primary ways we have our relationship with God, is our relationship with God within

a body of believers.

That is, within the local church, within the Catholic church, the global church,

the invisible church that is all believers.

We have a relationship with God that we share with our fellow brothers

in celebration and in learning, and as we strive to be conformed

to the image of Christ, we do that as a community.

So we cannot treat our salvation and our walk with the Lord as

if it is entirely separate from the church.

We need the church.

We are commanded to be a part of the church for ourselves and for others.

And finally, we are believers who exist in a sinful world,

a world that is in need of Christ's saving blood, a sinful world

that we are commanded to be in, but not a part of.

And that's what Romans 12 really encompasses when we look at it.

How to be believers within ourselves, how to be believers within a body of

other believers, and how to be believers who live in a

world where we communicate and where we interact with non -believers and sinful man.

So, if we will, we'll start in Romans chapter 12 in verse one, and we'll

just read the words of Paul and see what he says.

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, but be transformed by the resurrection of Christ and 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.

So, verse one, although brief, does a few things

for us.

It tells us the nature with which Paul is writing this message.

This isn't Corinthians in which Paul is admonishing a body of

believers.

He has done that, and we have seen examples of Paul doing that.

This is Paul writing a letter to brothers, and he appeals to his

brothers.

And in that appeal, we see Paul bring forth this humility.

I appeal to you, brothers, and he doesn't say, I appeal to you to do as I have.

I appeal to you to be like me.

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God.

So everything Paul is about to tell us on how we should

live, he comes right out and says, it is only by the mercy of God by which I can

tell you these things.

It is only by the mercy of God I can live this way or that we could ever hope to live this way.

There is no other way by which we can obey the commands given here.

It is only through the mercy of God.

And Paul establishes that first because we'll see shortly

that the way we think about the Bible and the way we think about each other will

frame how we act toward one another.

Now, I want to highlight for you here the first

command that's given here.

Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your

spiritual worship.

This idea of a living sacrifice being that

we as believers,

first, we are no longer dead to our sins.

We are alive in Christ.

Therefore, as believers, this living sacrifice that we are to live as

will continue through the rest of our mortal lives.

Until we die, we are not released from this commands.

But also, this is a command for believers.

We cannot expect a sinful world to live by the commands given in the

Bible if they do not recognize them.

We recognize that this command here applies to the believers,

to us in our private and communal walk with Christ

as believers.

The sacrifice portion of that, that living sacrifice that

brings forth to mind images of the sacrifices of the Old Testament,

that these animals that were slain, their blood was spread or their blood was

spilled to point toward Christ and his blood being spilled.

We no longer are required to give these sacrifices,

but we are commanded to be a living sacrifice.

And that means we are not like the Old Testament animals whose blood is required to be spilled

to point toward the future blood being spilled of Christ.

But we are to live our lives in such a way that is pleasing and glorifies God.

And that is how we sacrifice of ourselves.

It's not being told here that this life is

going to be easy.

This living sacrifice, we are giving something up.

What are we giving up?

The easy life that is casting our cares aside and living according to the flesh.

That's that living sacrifice, that continuing lifelong, removing

ourselves from our sins, the struggle that conforms us to Christ.

This is your spiritual worship.

That life that glorifies God, praising him, obeying him

in everything we do, that is our form of spiritual worship.

It's not our form of physical worship.

We can sing songs and proclaim the glory of God as physical worship.

We are commanded to do this as our spiritual worship.

We can worship God in everything we do by living our lives as a living sacrifice.

That's what's being told here.

Verse two, do not be conformed to the world, but 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.

Do not be conformed to the world.

It's easy to just say that and gloss over it.

It's easy to take that and run too far with it.

We need to approach this, do not be conformed to the world, within the context that is

given.

This do not be conformed to the world.

When we boil it down, what is being conformed to the world?

That is something we can't separate ourselves from,

living within the world.

So we start from there.

We cannot take ourselves out of this world and still go on living.

As long as we are living, we are in the world.

So how do we not be conformed to the world?

Well, I would define being conformed to the world as thinking,

acting, and desiring the things the sinful world wants.

When I say the world, I don't mean just people and the earth in general.

I mean the totality of all of sinful man.

That is how I would define the world in this context.

Do not think, act, and desire what sinful man desires, what sinful man thinks,

and what sinful man does.

We are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

What are we renewing our mind to?

What is, what does that renewal look like?

As believers, we want to renew our minds in such a way

that we are continually walking toward becoming more Christ -like.

Not in a sense of look at me in what I have done, but that we have our

eyes fixed on Christ and we are continually progressing towards Him

in everything we do, in our thoughts, our actions, our desires.

We want to be conformed to Christ, not to the world.

We want, at the end of our walk with Christ, at the end of our lives, we want

to look more like that image of God

than we did when we started.

Not because that proves we're saved, not because that is

the metric by which we enter heaven one day.

God doesn't place ourself on a scale against our previous self and say, you

progressed, you're good.

That's not the metric.

It is Christ's righteousness, and we simply strive for that because we are commanded to and because that should

be our desire.

That should be the desire with which we live our lives, that when we see

ourselves straying from the path that leads toward Christ -likeness, that

we are disgusted with it, that we are,

we recognize the shamefulness of it, but not so that we can get ourselves buried in

self -pity, but so that we can return our eyes to Christ and continue to

progress forward to be more like Him.

But 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.

So, we want to be able to discern the will of God, and that is why we want

to renew our minds, to be able to discern what is God's

will.

And so first, what is God's will?

Well, Paul says it right here.

It is what is good, what is acceptable, and what is perfect.

We cannot hope to understand God's will

if we cannot become more like Him.

In saying that, our will, when

we, before Christ intervenes, our will is sinful, our will is

deceitful, our will is crooked, and we have no hope of doing anything

that is good, perfect, or even acceptable to God.

We have no hope of doing those things under the power of our own will.

It is only by God's will that we become capable of doing

things in the eyes of God that are good, acceptable, and perfect.

That's not to say that our will will become so perfect that we will only be able to

do what is good, acceptable, and perfect, but that

it is what we strive for, knowing that we will never reach that goal.

Seeing the infinite chasm that separates us in God and how unworthy we are,

but walking towards it, trusting that Christ's righteousness will get us the rest

of the way, that Christ's righteousness will get us across that cavern when it comes to time to be

judged.

We strive to walk towards God and godliness, but we

trust that Christ's righteousness is what, in the end,

will be imparted to us.

Verse three, we start to see

gears shifting towards how we do this as a body of believers

rather than just within ourselves.

For by grace, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you,

not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each

according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

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 of another.

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

If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving,

the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one

who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does

acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

All of these gifts that we see Paul lay out here, although it is not all the gifts we have

seen laid out in the entirety of scripture, Paul is simply giving a shortlist.

Paul here is saying, within the body of believers, we all have gifts.

We are all different from one another.

We all serve different roles.

We all have different talents and abilities.

We all have different tolerances to the negative things in

different areas.

Some of us have the patience to deal with people in

mourning, people in need.

Some of us have the patience to sit through and look at numbers

and figure out what the body needs that way.

But no matter what the gift given, we are commanded to use that gift

in accordance to how it's been given to us.

Again, Paul highlights, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among

you, it is only by the grace of God

that we even have these gifts.

And so furthermore, I say to every one of you not to think of himself more

highly than we ought to think, but think with sober judgment, each

according to the measure of faith God has assigned.

Remove your ego from the equation is essentially what Paul has said here in

such kind words.

But so often we get caught up in this self -glorification of

my gifts are this.

So that makes me have some worth.

My gifts allow me to prepare food for the

people.

That is a gift.

To prepare food for the fellowship is a gift of God.

And one that we are all grateful for.

And it is an area like any other gift.

Like teaching, like standing up here and presenting the word.

No matter how good at it.

No matter how talented we are in this area.

It is a gift from God.

So be it your cooking, be it your service to a brother, be it your generosity.

Do not let that be a source for pride.

We are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.

So let's examine that.

So if I'm not to think of myself more highly than I ought to think, how should I think of myself?

Well, let's give a frame of reference.

I'm not to compare my teaching ability to that of Jeff.

I'm not to compare my ability to cook with that of Mary and Gail.

I am not to compare my gifts to others.

And that's a start.

But who should I compare myself to then?

Because if I am to examine myself with sober judgment, who is the metric by

which I should examine myself?

And that is Christ.

And that when we think of ourselves in reference to Christ, we

realize that there is no way we can think highly of ourselves.

We see just how lowly we are.

We cannot hope to live a life

that is as perfect as Christ.

We cannot hope to teach the word as perfectly as Christ taught it.

That's why he taught it for us.

Because Christ took the Old Testament and taught it.

And his apostles heard that teaching.

And from that teaching, we get the New Testament.

And we recognize that we couldn't have done that.

We couldn't have taken the Old Testament and extrapolated the new.

Even though the information's there.

The Old Testament is what Jesus taught from.

But we don't think we have the arrogance to say that we could

teach the entirety of the New Testament based on what we see in the Old.

We have the benefit of looking back at the Old Testament through the framework and lens of the

New Testament in seeing the teaching that Christ expounded upon

and simplified for us.

It is only by God's grace that we can understand the gospel.

So, if that's how we think of ourselves, then

we can still recognize the gifts we have been given.

Because even in comparing ourselves to Christ and seeing that my teaching ability is not when compared

to Christ, I can see that that is an area in

which I have been graced with ability more so than in others.

I find it interesting that Paul here goes through and he lists

out some.

And some of these you might not have originally noticed as gifts.

Especially with these last two.

The one who contributes in generosity.

The gift is contributing.

How are we to contribute?

With generosity.

That in itself is a gift.

The mindset to remove yourself from your earthly possessions and

freely give to others some people are better at than others.

That's not to say we should not all strive to be generous.

However, when we see people giving in generosity, we can recognize that that is a gift

they have been given from God.

We don't need to put plaques on things that have been donated.

We don't need to do all these things that we have so often seen done in the church when people

give exorbitant sums or long terms of service.

It's not our place to recognize those individuals.

Because those individuals are not the source of those gifts.

We praise God first and foremost because without him, the most generous person

is greedy and selfish.

I further think to things I have personally seen in the church.

And I know a lot of you have probably seen these things.

Where we, in an effort to glorify God by thanking others

for their service, in turn, return the glory to ourselves.

In everything we do, we want to make sure the glory is given to God and

that we do not usurp that glory.

By taking just a sample of it for ourselves.

By taking it from God and sprinkling it to someone else.

That's not why we have these gifts.

These gifts allow us to function as one body.

No matter the gifts we have been given, we are all essential

to the functioning of our church body.

That's not just our local church.

That is the global church.

It is easier to see in the local church because you have more interactions with another.

But this applies to the entirety of the church that God has established on earth.

That no matter the gift, the members are needed.

And in that message, we can go further.

And we can see that every member

of the body is an essential member.

We are all needed.

When you hurt your arm, you see it in other ways.

When you hurt your leg, you notice it in other ways.

One of the things I think most recently applied to me,

I felt a popping in my ear and I had ear pain.

And for the next two days, I couldn't walk straight.

I was dizzy.

One small little part of me was injured.

But my whole body suffered as a result.

And so, as believers, we need to see that

us giving of our gifts, us using these gifts that God has graciously

given us, it's not optional.

It is necessary for the body to function.

When one member of the body is hurting, we all feel it.

In some way, we feel that hurt from another.

And to extrapolate further from that, it gives us even more

reason to take care of one another in the body.

Because we will notice if those gifts are lost,

even if they're gifts that we went any period of time

without noticing, be it setting out the chairs,

be it having the food ready, be it the

teaching of the word.

Everything that we do in service to the body, even if

people don't even know we're doing it, that's okay.

Because do you know what will be noticed?

The second it stops.

That is so obvious in our functional

bodies.

But when we look at the church body, it becomes clear that those gifts are

noticed and missed when members are not present or members are not giving of themselves, or

even when members can't give of themselves.

Because we are not perfect.

We can fall into trouble.

And those gifts that we might have taken so much pride in, we no longer have the ability

to give of.

Because we ourselves are in need of someone else's gifts of service, of someone else's gifts of care.

So let us use these gifts we have been given.

And let that be the way we as believers

interact with one another.

In using these gifts God has given in the entirety of it,

directing that glory to God and not to ourselves.

That's not to say you can't say thank you, that meal was great when someone presents you with a

meal.

Because gratitude is also important.

In a church body, absent of gratitude, it

will surely be noticed.

People won't be so inclined to give of themselves.

Not because we need gratitude to do these things,

but because we are all inherently selfish, prideful people.

And we are prone to wonder if our gifts make a difference.

So while giving glory to God, thank your brothers and sisters for what they do.

Do not mistake that for stealing glory from God.

Show gratitude and in doing so glorify God with your thankfulness.

When you say thank you for that meal, it was wonderful.

Also realize that in thanking that person, you are thanking God for giving them the

gifts they have been given.

Going back to that, this is your spiritual worship.

When we live our lives according

to this word, by glorifying God and praising him, that is spiritual worship.

That is how we worship Christ every moment of the day.

That is why that is, well, not perfectly possible.

Why that is possible at all.

That we can, in actions that have no inherent

worth, by walking, we can glorify God.

That is our spiritual worship.

Moving on from the gifts, we get to what mine and a lot of your

Bibles marks at, or establishes as the marks of a true Christian.

Let love be genuine.

Abhor what is evil.

Hold fast to what is good.

Love one another with brotherly affection.

Outdo one another in showing honor.

Do not be slothful in zeal.

Be fervent in spirit.

Serve the Lord.

Rejoice in hope.

Be patient in tribulation.

Be constant in prayer.

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you.

Bless and do not curse them.

Rejoice with those who rejoice.

Weep with those who weep.

Live in harmony with one another.

Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.

Never be wise in your own sight.

Repay no evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God for it is written, vengeance

is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord.

To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

For by so doing, you will keep burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

So we see the shift, the marks of a true Christian.

This is how the world should see us.

This is how we as believers in a sinful world should stand set apart

from the world by acting according to the word.

This is where we see a shift.

Not just how we treat our brothers and sisters in Christ, but how we treat

every single person we interact with.

Let love be genuine.

People know when your love is genuine for them.

When you love someone, you don't treat them certain ways.

And when you do treat someone you love in a way that it is not loving, it hurts.

When we as husbands act unloving toward our wives,

it should break our hearts.

We should see the effects of our actions and our hearts should be broken by

it.

We should abhor what is evil.

That admonishment toward husbands that I just gave also works

in the other way.

We should abhor when we act evilly towards our wives,

towards our children, towards anyone.

When we see evil in the world, we should not just flee from it.

We should abhor it.

We should hate it and stand against it.

That's what sets us apart as believers.

Two simple things.

Letting our love be genuine.

In the love, in what is included in that is showing Christ's

love to others.

In abhorring what is evil, abhor the sinful nature in

all the things that that produces in us

and in others.

Love one another with brotherly affection.

Outdo one another in showing honor.

Cast our minds back to when this was written.

Believers often traveled to areas in which

they were called to spread the gospel.

And it wasn't like today where you can

go onto your phone, find a nice comfy bed to sleep in at a four -star hotel

and show up and everything is ready for you.

These believers depended on one another to show hospitality,

and that furthered their ability to share the gospel and spread the word as they

were commanded.

If believers were to go out and share the gospel, they wouldn't be able to

get far if they didn't have a bed to return to.

But by showing each other hospitality,

the early church enabled itself to spread.

These things, our actions, these commands and our responses to them have consequences, and

that is merely one of many that could be given.

The result of their hospitality was the spread of the word.

The result of honoring, showing honor to one another was

people were willing to listen.

The result of them not being slothful in their zeal,

they were willing to go out and actually spread the word.

And in the same way, those effects continue onto us.

We are to show one another honor and love, and in doing so,

Christ uses us as his tools to spread the word.

We are to be zealous in our spread of the word, not slothful,

meaning we actually go out and we do it regardless of

yesterday was tough.

Maybe I'll just leave it for another day.

There's a difference between slothfulness

and recognizing that we as humans have limits.

If you wake up and decide, I'm not going to spread the word today

because I could get another hour of sleep, that is slothfulness.

Now, if you wake up and I cannot stand up, my back is in pain,

and that is the reason for not spreading, that's not slothfulness.

Seek out healing.

Seek out the gifts of other members so that you may be healed and continue on in

showing zeal for spreading the word.

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, and be constant in prayer.

When we see our brothers succeeding and

riding high, when we see our brothers progressing in their walk with Christ, we rejoice in

that, and thus we encourage one another to continue in that walk with

Christ.

But we also need to be patient in tribulation.

When things are hard, we can't just turn our backs on one another and walk away.

We have to endure through these tribulations

and be constant in prayer.

Prayer doesn't have to look like us putting together

some elegant soliloquy and presenting it to the Lord as

our finest work.

Prayer is something we can do in every moment.

When we think, when we see a brother or a sister in need, we can look at them and say,

Lord, only you are able to intervene.

And that doesn't mean, that doesn't even require that we state that out loud.

We can go about our day and constantly be reminded of the needs of others

and in that moment, we can thank God for that reminder of the

needs of our brothers and we can thank Him that He is sufficient.

And that can be just as simple as our prayer needs to be.

And prayer itself can be a gift.

Some of us get so busy with our days that we forget

to pray.

I know I am guilty of that on many occasions where I will get

so wrapped up in my work, so wrapped up in my leisure that I don't

remember to pray.

But some people have that gift and we should all strive to honor God

by recognizing His glory in prayer.

Again, Paul says, do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.

Never be wise in your own sight.

Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought to.

It goes back to, even when we're dealing with the world, the sinful

world, we could be dealing with the worst sinner and it's not ours

to compare ourselves to them and think highly of ourselves.

We are to recognize that we are in need of the same salvation that they are in need of.

We are saved in the same way that they are, no matter

what their level of sin.

It doesn't matter to compare.

There's no point in comparing because Christ's blood is sufficient to cover all sin

and that's the only metric we need.

So why compare?

Why bother lifting ourselves up?

In spite of a brother or in spite of someone who needs to hear the word because without

that word, we are just as lowly as the rest of the world.

Repay no evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Do not strive to make contention.

Do not strive to stir up troubles in strife.

It may, for some of us, even be fun to stir up an

argument and win that argument, to stir up a fight even with our spouses

because we're bored, because we are sinful.

That is ultimately what it boils down to.

We are to strive to live peaceably with one another.

With believers, that looks like us bringing our hurts

before one another and hashing it out and dealing with it there and then, forgiving one another.

That is how we live peaceably.

We don't hold grudges against other believers and we shouldn't hold grudges against

a sinful world that does not know better.

Never avenge yourselves.

Believe it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

For by so doing, you will heat burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And I'll start wrapping it up here.

But if you will look with me quickly to James

chapter one.

In James chapter one, look to verses 19 and 20.

And we see, knowing this, my beloved, let every

person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.

For the anger of man does not produce righteousness of God.

That applies to both believers and non -believers.

Be slow to anger, be quick to listen.

When you are hurt, when you hurt your spouse, when you are hurt by your spouse,

be quick to listen, slow to react,

be quick to ask forgiveness,

because in the anger that results from us being wronged,

it is very often not a righteous anger.

It is a sinful anger.

And we must be careful about acting on that sinful anger.

Do not search for revenge.

Do not be the vessel of your own vengeance.

This is an especially important one because vengeance is often so

reactive and so fast.

It is often in our minds and deep into our hearts before we even realize it is there.

I know I struggle with quick reactions.

That is a sin in my life

that must be addressed.

We cannot let our anger drive us.

Do not seek revenge.

Leave it to the wrath of God for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

In seeking our own vengeance, in seeking to right the wrongs that are done

to us, I'm sure there are more, but I could think of three

areas in which we have fallen heavily into sin when we take vengeance into our own hands.

First, let's look at it logically.

If I am wronged and I seek out my own justice,

I have, if unknowingly declared that Christ's sacrifice is not enough to forgive that person of

their sins, that my justice needs to be added on top of it.

How arrogant can we be that

Christ's justice might not be enough for us, that we must add our own retribution on top

of, or maybe that we're satisfied with our own retribution in spite of Christ's sacrifice that

we don't even allow or consider that Christ's sacrifice might be on them.

And we, in doing so, are satisfied with our own vengeance,

with our own revenge.

When, if they have truly sinned against us, eternal punishment

is the requirement.

Christ's punishment is the only payment for their

actions if they have truly sinned against us.

Secondly, we elevate ourselves to the position of Christ when we seek out

our own vengeance in that, if we consider their sin

against us heinous enough to deserve punishment, then we

must be righteous enough to be sinned against.

And finally, we are so quick to forget when we are

wronged that we are in need of just as much forgiveness as

the person who has wronged us.

We, like the ungrateful debtor who has been freed of

his debt, forget that we have been freed of a greater debt, that

we have been granted Christ's righteousness in spite of our

sinfulness.

And we should allow what we often forget to allow, and that is

that Christ's blood is sufficient to save

them.

But all of this, to say,

as believers, whenever we act against these commands,

we paint ourselves in opposition to Christ, a position we should fear

because Christ is our only salvation.

Christ is the only way we can hope to have forgiveness of our sins.

And if we paint ourselves in opposition to him, we are in a dangerous spot.

But also, we need, as believers, to be able to see

our lives through the lens that Christ sees our lives, through the lens that God judges us by looking

through Christ's redemptive death, burial, and resurrection and applying that to our

lives.

And if we can show the world that as believers we are

set apart we can have that testimony

that we proclaim Christ's death, burial, and resurrection without even using words,

not that the words are not important because only faith comes by hearing the word,

but we need to walk the faith that we proclaim so that

we don't become a stumbling block for others looking for answers that are only found in Christ.

But I thank you for listening to me today and allowing me to

teach and forgive me for any errors I might have made,

knowledge that I may not even be knowledgeable of.

And I thank you for that.

And I ask that we, in our lives, strive to give that same grace to

those who have wronged us, to ourselves when we wrong others, and that we

ultimately reflect Christ in all we do so that we can further

the kingdom that we are the inheritance of.

Let us pray.

Dear Lord, I thank you today for allowing me,

someone so unworthy of handling your word, to sit under its teaching and to share that teaching

that I was given the grace to learn with the body that I am a part of.

And I thank you for the grace that you have given us.

And I thank you for the lessons that we need so plainly laid out for us

that you have laid them out in such a way that we can understand.

I thank you for that.

And I thank you for the sacrifice of your son.

In Jesus' name, amen.