Romans Chapters 12 through 16
unveils to us Paul’s vision of the practical living out of the Body of Christ
in a local church. Today, we will once
again consider some crucial points in Chapter 12.
For us to enjoy the life that
God has ordained for us to have, the first thing we must do is to present our
bodies as one living sacrifice (v.1).
You and I must make ourselves available physically, in time, to the Lord
and to each other.
Next, we must be transformed by
the renewing of our mind (v.2). Our mind
is old and fallen. It needs to be
renewed to understand and practice the Body-life in reality. Our old thinking is self-centered and we are
drawn naturally to others who “match” us.
We consider ourselves to be unique and somewhat special. However, the Body-life is
practiced in mutuality and diversity.
The diversity is clearly seen in
the different gifts given as seen in verses 6-8. The diversity is also seen in creation as
seen in our human bodies. There are
many, many differences, but all the differences express oneness in a most
profound way. Please refer to the
previous messages for more details on what we mean by this.
Our burden today is to help us understand how the
functioning of the gifts takes place.
First, we see that the diversity of the gifts is according to the grace given to us (v.6). Grace is
our capital. Grace is given to us to “spend.” God never intended to bestow grace upon us to
enjoy it just for ourselves. It was
bestowed upon us to spend on our God-ordained function. Grace is for supply. As we enjoy this supply, we spend it or apply
it by faith. By faith we take the
necessary action to function according to God’s plan for us.
Our experience goes something
like this. God grants us grace to supply
us. We have two options: to spend it, or
to hoard it. In order to spend it, we
must exercise faith. When we exercise
our faith, we begin to function and the Body is realized. However, it is necessary for us to continue to enjoy grace for more supply so that we
can exercise our faith to keep
functioning according to our portion. If
we don’t keep this cycle going, we will eventually burn out!
When we hoard grace, we become
stagnant and even begin to ask ourselves, “What are we here for?” The result may be that we become elitists who
feel that we are special, eventually criticizing and condemning others because
they are not as “rich” as we are. To
this kind of person, grace was given in vain (2 Cor.
6:1) and serves no purpose in God’s goal to have a practical expression of the
Body for Christ.
We must make it our aim to
experience this cycle:
·
Enjoy Grace
·
Spend this grace by faith
·
Allow our God-given function to come out
·
Enjoy more grace to keep the cycle going
Continue
for the Body of Christ to be seen and realized
If we do this, we will have the rich experiences of the
following verses (9-21). May the Lord
open our eyes and cause us to spend the grace that He has given to us for the
realization of the Body-life in