WWUTT 1332 Many Members, One Body (Romans 12:4-5)

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If you are a Christian, you have certain responsibilities. To repent of sin. No one can do that for you.

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To grow in your faith. To pray. To read your Bible. You are also a member of a larger body when we understand the text.

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This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. We come back to our study in the book of Romans chapter 12 and I'll start off here by reading verses 3 through 8.

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The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. For by the grace given to me,

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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.

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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 one another.

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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.

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And I said yesterday we'd pick up in verse 4, as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, verse 5, so we though many are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.

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When Paul says in the previous verse that you ought to think of yourself with sober judgment, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, he's calling for humility here.

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The gifting of faith that you have received by God is not for your glory.

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It is for God's glory. So you have not been called into his body to elevate yourself or benefit yourself, although you do receive significant benefit for being a follower of Christ.

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Your sins are forgiven. You have fellowship with God. You have everlasting life with him in glory.

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Yes, you benefit by faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, but your call as a part of the body of Christ is not to benefit yourself, but to actually be a benefit to the members of his body.

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So Paul comes to, or he calls us to, humility, the spirit calling us to humility here.

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Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. Have sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

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Now when we're talking here about a measure of faith, we're not talking about maturity, and I think that's the way that I hear this interpreted most often.

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Romans 12, three, the measure of faith that God has assigned will be like one person has a lot of faith and another person doesn't have as much faith or one person's been in the faith for 20 years and that by the grace of God, and then another person just became a believer.

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So they need to learn from those who are more mature. I don't think that's what we're talking about here. Paul definitely gets to that later.

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Chapter 14 in particular, and then you have a summing that up in Romans 15, one and two.

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We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.

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Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.

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So there we talk about maturity. There's definitely those who are stronger in the faith than others, and they have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, to help to elevate the person who is weaker in their faith, to grow them up.

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So even when it comes to the level of maturity of our faith that we have, there's still a call for us to be a servant that we may be a benefit to the body of Christ.

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But maturity is not what I think Paul is talking about here in Romans 12, three, the measure of faith that God has assigned.

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The interpretation to this is going, it finds its application in, in spiritual giftings because that's where Paul goes.

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He doesn't go here it right into what I just read in Romans chapter 15. You've got those who are really mature who need to help those who are less mature, where he goes next is spiritual gifts.

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So the spiritual gifts here are what he means by the measure of faith.

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It's not, I don't think measure of faith here even is meant for us to receive it as like a lot of faith or a little faith.

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After all, Jesus said that with the faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. That's a little faith that can still do amazing things because it is

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God working through that faith. The credit doesn't go to us. It is the work of God.

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So we're not, we're not talking about like measuring out faith in a person's life. And in, in those cases, appearances can be pretty deceiving.

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We're pretty bad at gauging that anyway. Consider that a person who has a lot of book smarts, like it is really knowledgeable theologically.

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They're generally seen by other people in the church as being really mature.

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Wow. That guy knows a lot. He has deep spiritual insights. He could write a systematic theology book.

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Therefore he must be really mature. And it's actually a dangerous approach because I've seen people with a lot of head knowledge that were really immature.

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So knowledge does not translate to maturity. And I've even made the mistake in the past as a pastor,

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I've made the mistake of giving too much to a person that I thought was ready for it simply because they had the theological knowledge to do it.

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And they needed a lot more training and discipline first before they were handed that much responsibility.

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So anyway, all of that to come back to where we're not talking about like levels of faith, because we're really bad at determining that anyway, where Paul is talking about a measure of faith.

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It is that that God has gifted you through his spirit to do a particular thing that is a benefit to the rest of the church.

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This is not to benefit you. It's to benefit others. Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.

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But think according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. See, the emphasis here really is not measure of faith, though that's where we might get hung up.

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We're talking about God. God is the one who has done this work. So whatever work that you do, do it to the glory of God.

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The measure of faith that you have been given, the spiritual gifting that you have, even that has been appointed to you by God.

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So do it to his glory. And in the process of that, we're building up the church.

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We are benefiting one another by strengthening each other as we are being sanctified, grown in holiness and righteousness, in godliness and Christ likeness.

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So verse four, as in one body, we have many members and the members do not all have the same function.

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So we, though we are many, are one body in Christ and individually, we are members, one of another.

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So we do have some individualness in the church. Not everybody is supposed to be the same.

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Then you get into more cult -like behavior when everybody is exactly the same. Or we're less like sheep in the flock of God and we become more like lemmings, just going along with what everybody else is supposed to do.

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But we can get so caught up on the individualness of members of the body of Christ that we lose the fact that we're supposed to be one body.

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We're not respective individual members that are autonomous, going off and doing your own thing, and the church therefore benefits you, because that's what happens when the focus becomes too much on individuality and we lose that sense of being one body in Christ.

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Then your mindset becomes that the church exists for me. But you are to benefit the entire body.

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As Peter puts it in 1 Peter 2, you are a living stone.

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So you yourself are not the church. You are a part of the church that is being built up as a spiritual house unto

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God. You're a brick that is being built up into this. The foundation, as Peter talks about it there,

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Paul talks about it in Ephesians, it's mentioned in Acts, and Jesus talked about it even in Matthew 16.

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The foundation of the church is going to be the apostles, because that's who

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Jesus had appointed to go out and share the gospel. We talked about that a little bit yesterday, with Paul having a certain grace that's been given to him to be an apostle of Jesus Christ.

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That is not a calling that you or I have. The apostles have already been appointed. They've done their work.

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We still submit to their authority in the sense that the work that the apostles did resulted in the New Testament. So when you are reading the

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New Testament, you are reading the testimony of the apostles whom God had appointed to go out and share the gospel.

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That's what it is that we have here. So they're the foundation of the church. The cornerstone is

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Christ. Every other stone in the building is set according to Christ, because that's how the cornerstone works.

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The foundation is the apostles, and then you have every other brick that's been built up into this spiritual house unto

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God. Down at the bottom, those first bricks, that would be the early church fathers and the others that have been influenced by their ministry, that have come to Christ and known the gospel, and you go up about midway up, you have the reformers, and then even higher up than that, you have

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Christians of today. The building is still being added to. If the Lord tarries and Jesus is not returning tomorrow, then as the gospel continues to spread, those bricks are being added to, and this building just keeps on growing.

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Every person who hears the gospel of Jesus Christ and comes to faith makes this building get bigger until that last brick is laid.

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The plan that God had set forth from before the foundation of the world, when that last brick is put into this building that he is building up, then

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Christ returns and we all join him together in glory. In the meantime, we are building each other up into the head who is

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Christ. There are individual things that you have a responsibility to. No one can repent of your sins for you.

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You must repent. You must believe in Jesus. You must be disciplined to pray, to read your

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Bible, to go to church, to love one another, to grow in that love and affection that you have for the body of Christ.

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There are individual responsibilities. As I mentioned yesterday from Philippians chapter two, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is

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God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. While you have individual responsibilities and an individual gifting that you've been given, as we're going to talk about tomorrow, don't lose the picture of the church.

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All of this is for the church. We are individually members of one another.

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We are one body in Christ. And America, the church in America and probably in the

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Western world in general, is really losing that sense of what it means to be the church.

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Everything is individualistic right now. And this has been going on for a long time, but Covid just kind of exacerbated it.

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And before this year, already there was this emphasis on creating a church experience for a particular kind of a person.

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So, yeah, there was that emphasis on the individual that was already there. But with Covid, we're actually shutting churches down.

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We're telling people to go home. Don't come to church. It's not safe for you. Love your neighbor. It's not safe for your neighbor either.

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So go home. Just turn on your computer and we'll provide a church service for you.

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When you're not interacting with people, when there is no chance to grow in maturity in your love for one another, you're not working with each other.

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You're not sharing one another's lives, building each other up, talking about Christ together, demonstrating the love of Christ toward one another.

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When you're not doing that, then the church is just all about you. And you're attending, quote unquote, attending church on Sunday just by opening up your computer and watching a service.

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You're basically just ticking off a a religion box ticking off.

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You're checking a religion box like I've done my religious duty this week, I guess, so that you can be sure you go to heaven.

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Is that the reason why you're doing that? That is not church, though. Watching church online is not church.

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I do this all the time. I've been doing this for years. Watching messages online. I'll be alphabetizing my books or cleaning up my study.

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And I got a sermon on in the background or I just want to watch a Votie Bockham sermon. So I sit down and I pull it up on YouTube and I sit there and watch it for an hour.

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I've done that every other day of the week. But Sunday, Sunday is for church. I'm going to church.

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I'm preaching. I'm singing with the with the saints. I'm even listening to good teaching because I attend churches that have plurality eldership.

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So I'm receiving that education from others. I'm learning about others.

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I'm encouraging others. I'm maturing others. They are maturing me. We're loving one another.

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We're building each other up. We're helping to show Christ to one another. We're disciplining each other.

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That's another thing you can't do unless you're with the body of Christ is discipline others and be disciplined by them.

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That's another mark of the church. And when we're not meeting together, we're not doing that. Not being together is not the church.

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So pushing the church out of meeting spaces and now going to online places has created this individualistic mindset where it's exacerbated it worse than it already was.

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Russell Moore, who's the president of the ERLC, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the

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Southern Baptist Convention. He just wrote an article earlier this week that very much was in the mindset of don't go to church right now.

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When will this end? We don't know. I mean, there are churches meeting in person, but he was writing that article from the perspective of we can't be meeting right now.

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It's not a good idea to meet right now. It's not even loving to go to church right now. That's absurd. Tom Rainer, who works for Lifeway, they were suing each other at one point.

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So maybe he doesn't work for Lifeway anymore. I don't know. Anyway. Tom Rainer just wrote an article this week to talking about why members in your congregation are leaving your online church.

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You can't leave an online church because it's not even church anyway. But you've got members of your church not coming to church.

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They're staying at home and they're watching it online. And at first, that number was really high. But now you're watching that number dwindle down.

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Not as many people are watching your services this week as they were before. Why? Tom Rainer has some answers there.

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None of which are we're not supposed to worship this way anyway. This isn't the way we worship together.

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We don't worship sitting at home and watching our computer screens. We're supposed to be lifting songs and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your hearts unto the

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Lord together. That's the instruction in Ephesians five and in Colossians three.

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Can't do that unless we're meeting together, growing each other up, building each other up into the head who is

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Christ. Ephesians four can't do that unless you're meeting together, disciplining one another that we may walk together in righteousness.

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Matthew chapter 18, first Corinthians five and six, Galatians chapter six, second

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Thessalonians three. We can't do those things together unless we're meeting together.

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We are supposed to be members of one another. You are individual parts, but you are members of one another.

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The individual parts are to benefit the rest of the members. You have your left hand to benefit your right hand and those hands benefit the rest of the body.

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Why do you have your hands to grasp things, to pick up stuff, to do the things that you need to do for the benefit of your body?

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Yes, there are people out there who don't have hands. I get that, but then they have to figure out how to use other parts of their body to do what their hands are supposed to do.

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You just take, for example, Johnny Erickson Tata, who has been a quadriplegic for most of her life and actually gained a level of fame for herself very early on when she became a paralytic by creating such beautiful artistic photos and paintings by putting a paintbrush in her mouth and painting with her mouth rather than her hands.

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Cause she couldn't use her hands. That's a job that your hands are for. But since she doesn't have hands to do that, it has to be given to another part of the body to do something that the hands were meant to do all of this to say that the hands are meant to serve the body.

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So likewise, you've been given a particular gifting that's supposed to be for the benefit of the body.

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If you don't use that gift, if you don't become a benefit to the body of Christ, then somebody else has to do that.

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And they may not even have the gifting for it. They may be called to do something else, but now they've got to do your job because you're not doing what you're supposed to do for the benefit of the body of Christ, we are called to be members of a body where individual members of one another.

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And as in one body, we have many members and the members do not all have the same function.

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So we, though many are one body in Christ and individually, we are members.

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One of another, maybe in the body of Christ, you're supposed to be a hand. You're not going to do the job that the feet do, but you do the job that the hands do so that the feet can do the job that they're supposed to do.

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Maybe you are a torso. Maybe you're that person who holds everything together.

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Maybe you are a mouth or an eye. Maybe you have a gift of teaching.

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Maybe as an eye, you have a gift of discernment. You can see those things that are right and wrong, those things that are right and almost right, or maybe you have an eye in the sense that you can tell when something is wrong with another person a little bit better than maybe others have that gift.

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Maybe you're an ear, you're a good listener. You know how to sit and listen to somebody else, or you know how to hear and assess certain things that need to be addressed within the church.

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You know, whatever it might happen to be. Different people have different giftings and all of these giftings are going to be for the benefit of the body.

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You are individually given individual gifts, but we're members of one another.

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That gift is worth nothing unless it is used for the benefit of everybody. If you're using that spiritual gift on yourself, then you're missing the point.

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A left hand can't exist by itself. And so what's happening now with this individualism that has so plagued especially the

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Western church, it's almost like parts of the body have been amputated and they're being kept on ice and they're not growing.

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You can't grow that way. If you're not attached to the body, you don't grow. You what you wither away and die.

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And even a part of the body that's left on ice, that's not good for that part of the body. It doesn't stay good.

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Eventually it goes bad. We have to be part of this body.

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This is the life of the church. This is your spiritual life. It is what God has called you to.

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When you came to Christ, you were reconciled to God. You were also reconciled to one another.

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You became part of the body of Christ when you became a follower of Jesus Christ. And so you're supposed to attend church.

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That is a requirement as a follower of Jesus Christ. Just like baptism is a requirement.

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Baptism doesn't save you. But if you're a follower of Jesus, you're going to obey his commandments. And that means getting baptized.

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If you're a follower of Jesus, you're going to obey his commandments. And that means loving one another as Christ has loved you being a part of his church, individually members of one another growing together into the head.

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Who is Christ? We can't survive like this folks. It is not loving your neighbor to not go to church.

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You have to go to church. This is the way that we exercise that love within the body that God has shown to us through the giving of his body,

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Jesus Christ, who gave his body as a sacrifice so that we who are in Christ might be a new body being sanctified.

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The body of Christ holding fast to the head, who is Christ our Lord. And just as the head nourishes the body.

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So Christ nourishes us. We hold fast to one another as we are holding fast to Christ.

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We're going to talk more about these individual spiritual gifts tomorrow. Looking at verses six through eight, let's conclude with prayer.

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Heavenly father, we thank you for the goodness that you show to us, the grace that has been given us in Christ, the measure of faith that you have assigned.

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And so, as we have been called to be part of the body individuals, but members of one another, may we continue to show this love to each other, to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, but to put the needs of others ahead of our own, help us to do that together in one body, in Christ Jesus, make the church strong, grow us in your spirit, convict our hearts that we may meet together and praise

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God together and grow in the Lord together, according to your word, which sanctifies us.

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It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues, you can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt

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.com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word, when we understand the text.