Published: June 8, 2025 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Romans - Part 68 | Scripture: Romans 12:3-5
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12 this morning we'll be moving on from the first two verses I just wanted to pause there in in case there was an amen or a hallelujah. Nothing. Okay. Well, we're
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going to go on to verses 3 through 5. Read that passage. And uh I'd like to ask Jonathan if you pray for the ministry of the word this morning.
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Romans chapter 12 beginning in verse three. For through the grace given to me, I say to every man among you, not to think more highly of himself than he ought to
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think, but to think so as to have a sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. For just as we have many members in one body, and all
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the members do not have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually members one of
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one of another. Let us pray.
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together in the word today. Our life may be renewed in the word that comes over
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us together as one body function that we may do all things to glorify you to death to new life in you. We gather in your name. We praise your
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As I said, we are moving on, but I do ask that you keep verses one and two firmly in view. And I think we will probably return to them. But just by way of um settling the importance of what
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Paul says there in verse one when he tells us to present our body as a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice, we ought to also keep in mind what Paul
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writes in vers 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 10 where he says we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for the deeds
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done in the body. And so this is a serious matter. There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But make no mistake, there will
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be a judgment. What was called in the the Middle Ages and the early modern era an a size where we will be measured according to the deeds done in the body.
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And so we do need to keep in mind that what Paul is is admonishing us to here in this chapter and on in chapters 13 and 14 really are all built on verses 1
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and two. And we should not lose sight of that. But in this section verses 3-5 he begins to explain what it is that will come under
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the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ in that day. The deeds done in the body are not the the the medieval self- flagagillation or isolation or anything
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like that. They are the living out of what God by his holy spirit has poured in to each of us in Christ. Some ex exogetical notes that I
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want to bring to your attention before we dig into the the meaning of this passage. First of all, in the New American Standard, I read, "For through the grace given to me, I say to every man among
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you." That's a really bad translation of the text and a very dangerous one as well. I want to point out that the word man is actually not in the text or in
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any variant of the text. And the phrase that is used there is so broad as to include every being among you or
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everyone among you who has being or every being one or and this is a place where where southern English actually captures the Greek best all
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y'all. That's what he's saying here. He's not referring to men and women. He's he's using a term uh that is ontological meaning having being and he
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says everyone among you and so I don't know why the translators of the New American Standard did this but I I need to point out that he's not just talking
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to the men he's talking to everyone who is there Thomas Shriner writes in his commentary the first notable element in the exhortation is that it is addressed
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to every member of the community in an emphatic way. And I think he's right. If you again looking at the text, he is not
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letting any one of us off the hook. And that will make more sense as we go into the meat of what he is telling us the church is and what it means to live
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according to a renewed mind within the body of Christ. That it applies to every one of us.
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point, Paul shifts word groups in this passage verses passage verses 3-5. He moves from the word group that means the mind to a word group that means thinking or the act of thinking or
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we might say the activity of the renewed mind. And the word that he uses here in the Greek is actually very common in his
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letters more so even than the word mind but it is translated in different ways in the in the English. He uses the verb to
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think with and without prefixes four times in verse three. So he he's actually saying if we we
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translate it literally he's saying do not overthink above what you ought to think but think as wide think wise thinking people. So he keeps repeating
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this one word that is the activity of the renewed mind but he focuses on two opposite poles. One of which is again a
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prefixed verb and that's common in the Greek and even more so in Paul. You take a preposition and tack it on the beginning of a of a verb and it it
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emphasizes and intensifies the act. And he does that twice. first to tell us not to overthink or not to think too highly, but then also to think wisely or wise
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thinking. Third note, this same word group is the word group he uses in Philippians chapter 2 verse 5. There the New American Standard at least translated as have this attitude which
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was in Christ Jesus who did not consider himself and it goes on to show how Christ humbled himself as a servant humbled himself before God the father
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but that word attitude is the exact same word he's using here and the context of Philippians 2 is the same as Romans 12 and that is the interactive life of the
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body of Christ, the congregation. So literally what he's saying in Philippians 2:5 is to have the same pattern of thinking that is found in
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Christ Jesus. It is a thought paradigm. It is a pattern of thought that comes from the renewed mind. So in chapter 12:es 1 and two, he talks about
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that transformation that comes from the renewing of your mind. Now he's describing what it looks like. And as I've said before, the rest of chapter 12, chapter 13, chapter 14, and really
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all of his letters, describe the activity of that renewed mind. And and several things that can be pointed out. First of all, it's not done
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in the in the study. It's not done in a closet. It's it's not done individually. In every case, Paul places the the
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outworking of the renewed mind within the life of the congregation of Christ's people. This is a corporate activity, not an individual one. So, you can't
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come away from verses 1 and two thinking, "Oh, well, I'm going to study the Bible more and I'm going to buy myself some commentaries and listen to some uh whatever they call them now." No, that that's not it. You you can't
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just dedicate yourself as Paul as we read in Philippians 3 did dedicating himself as a Pharisee to the study of Torah. No, he's come to realize that
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that's not where it was all at. In fact, he counts all of that as as garbage compared to knowing Jesus Christ. And to know Jesus Christ is to know his body
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and to know our place in his body. That that's true knowledge. It's also true service that is living, holy, acceptable
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to God. And so the setting of Romans is the same. As I said in Philippians, we read, "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind,"
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there's that first word group, "A humility of humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourself." See, in Romans 12:13 and 14, Paul shows
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us how this is to be done in the church because it truly is not done outside the church. What we see outside the church
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is a at best a counterfeit of coinia, a counterfeit of fellowship. What we see inside the church is the renewed life of
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a new humanity born again in Jesus Christ. That that is the importance of the church. And I would challenge you as you read through the New Testament,
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especially Paul's letters, maybe take a a notebook and and divide it into two columns and on one column note how many places Paul talks about the individual
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believer in and of himself or herself and not in relation to the corporate body. And then in the other column, note all of the places where he
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speaks about the individual believer as related to the corporate body or the corporate body itself. I will tell you you will need one sheet for the first
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column and you will not fill it up. You will need a notebook for the second column and you will fill it up. So it's not really about me and me getting to
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heaven when I die. It's about Christ's body or the body on earth of which Christ is the head because it's through that phenomenon
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that God has wrought through the cross and the resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that God is glorified and that really is the primary
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function of what we do. One author says this this admonition in verse three stresses the role of disciplined thinking as being at the
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very root of basic Christian living. That's not taught very much in modern evangelicalism. As I've said many times
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and and firmly believe that in the last several hundred years, we have turned Christianity into a moral activity. Moralism, what you do and what you don't
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do, where you go and where you don't go, what you wear and what you don't wear, has become the basic element of true Christian living. That is
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heresy. That is putting the cart in front of the horse. Certainly we are called to be holy. But have you ever noticed that in many instances that
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holiness is not defined by God's word but rather defined by the church itself or by the culture. The holiness is only defined by
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God and it is beyond our reach. And so the only way we can even approach that holiness is through the work of the Holy Spirit. And the only place that the Holy
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Spirit is working is in the church. Okay? The only place that the Holy Spirit has been poured
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out is upon the church. So the idea that you can have the Holy Spirit as you walk in the woods and enjoy God's creation, the idea that you
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can have the Holy Spirit in your own personal prayer time or in your own gifts is a lie from the pit of hell because it serves to divide the body of
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Christ and to remove members of the body from their God-given and spiritfilled function. It is completely different from what Paul teaches and yet in a way
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totally different from the way our culture means. Paul tells us that this whole process actually does begin with me. It begins with you. It begins with
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each one of us, everyone among you, not to think more highly than he ought. So it does begin with me. It does
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begin with an assessment of my own thought paradigm. And yet he immediately says, "Do not do not think more highly of yourself
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than you ought." He he uses the uh prefix that we get the word with kind of the colloquial when we we think something's um really great or or really
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grand, we use the word uber. Well, that's kind of what he's saying here. Don't U Don't U overthink your your superpower should not be not be self-esteem. Although it really is in
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many of our cultures and that's what everybody is telling you should you should think well of yourself and and think highly of yourself and don't think negative yourself. Well, he's not saying to think negatively of yourself. But he
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also realizes that in human history that really hasn't been the problem. The general problem is that we think too highly of ourselves. And within the church, this is exactly
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the problem that we find in Corenth that even within the outpouring of the various grace gifts, the Corinthians were being proud about what they were gifted in. They were thinking more
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highly of themselves than they ought. And so it does start with a selfanalysis. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, examine yourself. And
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that's something that that we really need to do quite often. He is saying very emphatically and again when you add a prefix to a Greek verb you are you are
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emphasizing you are taking that verb beyond its normal function of just thinking and he's saying don't think too highly of yourself. He's talking about a
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type of thinking that is diametrically opposed to humility. It it is the polar opposite of that humble mind that we read about in Christ Jesus in Philippians 2:5. So it's it's the
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diametrically opposite spectrum of humility and therefore it's diametrically opposed to Jesus Christ. A and since Jesus Christ is the
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pattern of the renewed mind, then thinking more highly of yourself than you ought is fully conformed to this age. So what he's saying here is this this is
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not the manifestation of a new mind. This is not the manifestation of transformed life when you think of yourself more highly than you ought when you think of yourself with pride and not
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with humility. But again, he's not advocating a false humility. He's not advocating self-abnigation where where you put yourself down. And and I don't know if
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you've experienced this, but I have in the years that I have been a believer. People who are taught how to speak in humble words. And we're supposed to believe
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that that's true humility. Do you know you can be a very proud humble person? In fact, you can be very proud of your humility and be so far from the Lord
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that you couldn't see him. Okay? So he's not advocating some type of of of self-negation and and and and self-put down. That's not what he's saying. He
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says here that we are to think of ourselves with wise thinking. Now here he takes that word to to think that verb and he
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attaches the word Sophia and many of you are familiar with that word. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Sophia is the word for wisdom. So he's not talking
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about sober thinking that many of our English translation or even the new American standard sound judgment. So the new American standard takes the same word and it translated in in Romans
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thinking and judgment and then attitude. When we read our Bibles we we get a really good especially some of our versions we get a really good
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approximation of what's being said. But I think it is important that you you do consult as you read and study that you do consult some good
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commentaries that can explain to you, hey, this is the same word Paul's using it four times in one verse and you wouldn't gather that from reading the English. Now, if if if you use a word
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four times in one sentence, you're not going to get a good grade. Um, but we might say you're trying to emphasize something. I certainly wouldn't say if Paul they had a limited
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vocabulary. Whenever his vocabulary was limited, Paul just made up a new word. But when he's using one word four times in one verse, I think that's pretty important. And I think it's a
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shame. Unfortunately, our our English um translations, and I'm sure other translations do the same thing. We lose that that repetitive that emphasis by
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repetition that Paul is trying to bring out. You see, as in all things, the believer must think of himself or herself according to
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truth. This is wise thinking. So, we don't think of ourselves in an unduly negative way that that we think that if we put ourselves down, we're somehow
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being more sanctified. And we certainly shouldn't think of ourselves in some elevated prideful way but rather we should think of ourselves according to the reality according to what God has
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done in us. Now that puts us all on the same level because as Paul says himself it is by grace I am what I am. It is God at work
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within us. Not anything from our native talent or ability that we can point to and say, "I'm doing this for the Lord." But rather whatever we do, we do as God
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working through his Holy Spirit within us. So it puts us all on the same foundation. So foundation. So wisdom in this context is knowledge that
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corresponds with the way things truly are. One commentator says, "Paul insists that we are to view ourselves in a sober manner in accordance with a true and
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objective estimate, the product of a renewed mind." And we can do this because excuse
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me because we have the Holy Spirit. And this is as I said it begins with me. It begins with each one of us. This is a self assessment. This is not an exam after catechism
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class. This is not checking off boxes or passing some type of of communion or um acceptance test. It is a selfassessment and it is a fundamental
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self question by by what pattern do I think? This is this is really at the heart of these opening verses of chapter
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12. And we need to internalize this each one of us. By what standard do I think? What is the paradigm of my thought life?
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thought life? Because as we get into the rest of the nitty-gritty of chapters 12, 13, and 14, it will reveal to you through the Holy Spirit whether your thinking is in
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conformity with the world and this age or whether your thinking is in fact transformed by the renewing of the mind through the word of God and by the work of the Holy
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Spirit. And as I've said before, it doesn't really happen all at once. It is a progressive growth and maturity that every believer goes through that we we
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progressively think more and more God's thoughts after him. But by what standard do we use to measure our own thought life? Well, Paul gives it to us here in
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verse three. He says, "As God has allotted to each a measure of faith," a lot of
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ink has been spilled on that little phrase, that clause, a measure of faith. The Greek is
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metronu, which means a measure of faith. I'm sure that's helpful. But metron is the word from which we get metric which of course is a system of measurement a system of units but it's
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also a word that means however we measure the results of something it's by our metric. So if if we have a website for our company for example we can have
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a metric. How many viewers did we do we receive? That's a a metric. Or if we advertise in print media and we get leads we find out what how did you hear about us? And that's a metric we're
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measuring. So it's a very good translation here. There is somehow a a metric of faith that God has given to us. Now, a lot of believers read that and
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they get a little bit nervous. Does that mean that I'm not as saved as someone else? That there's actually a a a discrepancy or a scale of being saved? because we've been taught
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to associate the word faith with salvation. But actually, the word is a lot more flexible, as most words in most languages are. It's a lot more flexible
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in Paul than just what we would call saving faith. There is no differential in saving faith. You're you're either in
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Christ or you're not in Christ. You're not half in and half out. Okay? you're not half faith in terms of your salvation. But that leaves us with wondering, well, what is he talking
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about then? What does he mean by the word faith? Well, he goes on to describe it in chapter 12. In fact, he goes on to describe it in verses 4 and 5. And what
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we would most immediately refer to is a very similar discussion in 1 Corinthians 12. See how nice Paul was in giving us the chapter divisions, you know, 12 in
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Romans and 12 in 1 Corinthians. You all know he didn't do that, right? That that was added later. But it is coincidental and and somewhat uh providential and fortuitous that both
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chapter 12s are dealing with what? Well, they're dealing with what we call the spiritual gifts, the grace gifts. So when he says in chapter 12 of Romans, the measure of faith that God has given
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each one of you, he's saying the same thing as what he says in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 when he says the Holy Spirit distributes to each one severally as he
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wills. And and what we learn in chapter 12 of Corinthians and we're going to see here in chapter 12 of Romans is that we all don't get either the same gifts or
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even the same intensity of intensity of gifts. And so the measure of our thinking is immediately tied to that
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which God has done in every believer. Remember all y'all, you cannot be in Christ and not have a grace gift or
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gifts. There's no such thing as an ungifted member of the body. There used to be a teaching and and Martha would know far more of this than I, but the
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the the various parts of our body, I think they were called vestigial that they were supposedly left on left from evolution and we we don't like that little punching bag in the back of your throat or your
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appendix or your gallbladder for example, things that you can live without. Okay? And it used to be thought they had no function. But as medical
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science grew and and more and more is known about the human body, I don't think there are any of those left. They all have a function. Okay? They all have a function. And that's what Paul's
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teaching here in the most common metaphor he uses in his letters is the body of Christ and each of us as members of that body. And as he teaches in first
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Corinthians, what he's teaching here is that not every member has the same function. And not every function has the same I don't know
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glamour and yet every function has the same essential same essential nature and when we are without any of those then our body does to some extent
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suffer. two things that that often happen in terms of a of a body whose functions or members excuse
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me are in a way refusing to function in that body. You have on the one hand paralysis and on the other extreme you
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have epilepsy. Now, pardon me for this, but you might draw a concl, you know, the analogy of Presbyterian and charismatic. There was a story told about a church that installed motion
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detector lights in their sanctuary and one-third of the way through the service, the lights went out. That's out. That's paralysis. That that is a church in
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which everybody is looking to the clergy to do the work of the ministry. That is that is that evil comma in Ephesians chapter 4. that the pastor teachers are there to do the work of the ministry
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rather than to equip the body to do the work of the ministry. That is paralysis. When every member is not functioning and you've all felt it, I'm sure at some point when you when one of your members
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falls asleep, that's temporary paralysis. And a church can have that as well. But then on the other side, there's epilepsy. Now, what is epilepsy? Well, again, I'm the chemistry teacher,
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but it seems to me that epilepsy is when members of the body are doing their own thing, and they're not doing it in relationship to the needs of the body, but rather in some relationship to some
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other neurological other neurological source that is causing the motion and the activity, but it is detrimental to the body. And so, two extremes there, but they are they follow that metaphor
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that Paul develops so much in his word. But but I I do want to point out that if we don't grasp this idea of the body and let me read again verses four and five.
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For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function. So we who we who are many are one body in Christ and individually
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members one of another. Obviously Paul was guided by the Holy Spirit in selecting the metaphor of the body and yet as I said it is his most
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common metaphor and I think primarily because it is living it is active and it is something that we can all individually relate to. But what we often don't do is to understand that we
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as individuals are members one of another. We are members of that body. The modern western evangelical church
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image of the body of Christ is frankly more like Mr. Potato Head within
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parts. And I understand that's part of the world and the culture in which we live. And we've talked about this in Sunday school. But but I want you to try to think of it in Paul's light and in the light of what God has done through the Holy Spirit.
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Is it really the intention of God that we simply be individual body
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parts that can go wherever we choose and plug in to the body there? Is is that the image that Paul is developing? No, it's not because it's an image that is frankly ridiculous.
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What he's trying to draw on is the fact that we all as a body, no matter what function we have and what part of the body we have, we all draw life from the
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same source. We have one head and in that royal divine head there is one
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is one mind and that mind guides every member of the body through one circulatory system the Holy Spirit. And yet for a body to be
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considered healthy then every member is even unconsciously doing what the head requires of it. And as Paul teaches, it
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does so with reference to the rest of the body. When one member suffers, the whole body suffers. When one member rejoices, the whole body rejoices.
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And so the point that that if we've got to get if we are to to to live out this new creation salvation that God has brought about on earth, this new
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humanity is to understand that if you are in Christ, you are a member of the body, which means that your function is
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essential for the health of the body. Now it is true that there is no member of the body that is indispensable because the body is ultimately
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Christ's but it's no benefit to the body for any member to consider itself dispensable or dispensable or indispensable. There's there's no health
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in the body if one member of the body acts on its own. It took a lifetime of of getting rid of the the genetic malady of being
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Italian. You know, don't you know it's like what are these doing? I don't know that you you you it's a matter of discipline. It just as it is with your
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body. It is a matter of discipline. It's a matter of discipline in the church that every one of us realize that the body is not healthy. The body is not whole.
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If I as a member of the body am not functioning according to what the God has given me in the measure of faith or in other words according to what the
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Holy Spirit has given me in terms of gifts. Now, I can't imagine that God would establish a body like this and then not
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reveal to each member what its purpose and function and function is. And Paul is going to get into that. Starting in verse six, he's going to
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tell us that the function of the body divides up into two categories. One is is speaking, one is
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serving. And and so in those two categories, we can first recognize, well, I'm I'm probably gifted in serving or no, I I think I'm I'm gifted in speaking. And
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then within those, there are so many others. But as I've said many times, the lists, you know, those spiritual gift inventories, these lists in Romans 12
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and 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, they are not exhaustive. In fact, if we if we look at those lists, we're going to go astray because the fundamental criteria
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is what the body needs, not what my gift is from this list, you know, of of gifts. I've got to have one of them or maybe two. No, it's
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what the body needs for the building up of itself in love. And so I don't know that necessarily we can you know each say what our gift
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is but I do think it's important in our selfanalysis that number one we think in terms of what what do I provide for the body and am I providing
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it? What what has the Lord led me through the spirit and through his word to provide to the body and am I providing it? Now there are times just as in the
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physical body that different parts of our body will provide a bit more. There are times when when our mind is very active. There are times when when our legs are more active. There are times
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when our hands are more active. this week with with our entire administrative staff on vacation, it fell to me to pack the paycheck envelopes at the end of the week. To
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which I I texted Deborah that I hope our health insurance covers arthritis. You know, that's more handwork than I've done in quite some time. And so that the different parts of our body at times are
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going to be more active than others. And again, I think that analogy just keeps rolling through the life of the church. Romans 13, Romans 12:1,3 and 14 and
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really all of Paul's letters are completely focused on the community of transformed minds. He's made it clear throughout his
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letters that this is not some higher spiritual class of Christians that kind of run the show in the church. That has too often been the case in practical
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application, but it has also been very destructive to the church and to its witness in the world. It's also been very destructive and often oppressive to
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believers when they're basically told just to sit there and be quiet when someone else will do the work for you. That's false and it's dangerous. What rather he would have us understand
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is that every believer born again and indwwellled by the Holy Spirit has been gifted has been given a measure a metric of faith. I I don't believe that that gift
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is static. Jesus taught that he who is given much or he who is faithful with much will be given much. And the parable of the talents basically shows us that
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first of all the money that the servants were given was not their own. Right? It was the the masters. And yet those two who had brought a return were not only
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given the principle but the interest as well. It all comes from God. But if we're faithful in little, we will be given more. And we're faithful in more. We'll be given even
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more. And so I don't think this is necessary. I think the body grows. The body grows up in itself in love into the fullness of the head Jesus Christ.
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Believers then progressively know the will of God. That's verse two. Which is for each to function verse three and onward. And and Peter would say as
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living stones that each will function according to each one's measure of faith to each one's grace gift.
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One author says, "A sober estimate of oneself then recognizes the amount of faith that God has given and in consequence does not yield to pride or
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by implication to implication to despair." Let us close in prayer. Father, we do pray that you would encourage and exhort each one of
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us to know that in Christ, we were members one of another. And in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, we have each been given a function in the body, joints,
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and ligaments that work together for the building up of the body in love. And we pray that for your glory and for the health of the body of Christ that
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each one of us would not only know the measure of faith that we have been given, but by the grace of the Holy Spirit within us would live in that measure, that we might even be given a
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greater measure again for your glory and for our good. We ask these things that the church might indeed manifest the glory of God through the head of the
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church, Jesus Christ. For it is in his name we pray.
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Amen. Well, please stand for the benediction and admonition from Peter in his second letter where he says, "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the
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glory, both now and to the day of