Romans 12:3-8

 

The main theme of Romans is the righteousness of God, and beginning with chapter 12, that theme narrows to the application of that righteousness to the live of the individual Christian. After stating his general proposition in the first two verses, Paul moves on to develop this idea in the specific context of the church.

Verse 3 states the big idea of the passage: “For I say... to every man that is among you.” Is there something significant in the fact that Paul seems to address the readers as individuals rather than as a group? Because that is what Paul is focusing on here--how each individual plays a part in the corporate whole.

In verse 4, Paul uses a word picture—the picture of the church as a body composed of many members or many organs. Each part of the body has its own function and purpose.

Take something as simple as smiling. (What follows is based on a website by Dr. Seth Margulies of Amboy Orthodontics.) A smile is created by the zygomaticus major, also known as the Smiling Muscle. This, in addition to as many as 42 other muscles, work together to create various forms of smiles. These muscles are controlled by nerves. The seventh cranial nerve separates into several strands which connect to these muscles and determines when and how they activate. And these nerves connect back to the brain. And, of course, all these muscles and nerves are built upon the bones of the skull and covered over by skin, without which a smile would like very, very weird.

A smile is a small thing and, in some sense, an unimportant thing. But just to do this one small thing requires muscles, the nerves, the brain, the bones, and the skin. And that isn't even touching on the fact that none of that would be able to happen at all without the heart pumping blood, the stomach digesting food, and the lungs absorbing oxygen.

The body is a complex, interconnected system. I keep wanting to say that each part has its own role, but that really isn't true because the roles and functions of the body are interconnected. So the mouth is used to form facial expressions, to talk, and to ingest food; but it couldn't do any of those things without the help of other parts of the body.

And a problem with one part of the body may lead to a problem with another. So the mouth and the arm are not directly connected. But if you have a broken arm, you will have more trouble putting food into your mouth; and if you say the wrong things with your mouth, it may lead to someone trying to break your arm. 

All of which is to say that the body is a single organism—a collection of individual organs working together for the good of the whole. And that is the picture Paul is painting of the church.

But when we use the word 'church,' it is very easy to fall into a misunderstanding. We use the word church in many different senses, and it's easy to lose sight of what it means for that reason. So to make it clear, I want to make a comparison between a church and a school since the two things have something in common.

First of all, both a church and a school are buildings. You can look at a building and say just by looking at it: “That looks like a church” or “that looks like a school.” They have traditionally had certain styles all their own. And even if they have been shut down and abandoned, you might still describe the empty, decaying building as a church or a school.

But obviously, there is more to either thing than a building. If the school burnt down and had to hold classes in a field, it is still a school. The church in the days of Paul probably had no church buildings; in some places, even today, the church can't have church buildings—and yet it is still a church. Some places have a church and a school in a single building.

Both the church and the school are organizations, social units comprised of individuals coming together in a certain way. So a school has a principal, teachers, staff, students, and a board. This group, this assembly of people in these roles and positions, is what makes something a school, regardless of its setting. Notice that I said people in these roles—if a teacher gets fed up with his job and quits, he is still the same person, but he is no longer fulfilling the same role and therefore is not part of the school. 

And the church also has its roles—the preacher(s), Sunday school teachers, song leader, pianist, ushers, congregants, and a board of some kind. This structure differs from individual church to church and from denomination to denomination, but the basic idea remains the same.

So we have an organization, a social unit that exists at a particular point in time and space and which, most likely, has a special building for its use. And notice that the building exists for the sake of the organization; this is an asymmetrical relationship. Nobody would decide to start either a church or a school solely because they had an empty school or church building sitting around. That might be an incentive, but it would never be the only reason. And conversely, the only reason why anyone would ever build either a church or school building would be for the sake of the organization. The lower exists for the sake of the higher.

But here is the big question: why? Why do we have either churches or schools? Well, with the school, we can explain it this way: just as the building exists for the sake of the organization, so the organization exists for the sake of something higher, something bigger—education. Education, the general process of imparting knowledge and skill to others, is the only reason why schools exist. If we did not have this concept of education and if we did not—generally speaking—view it as important, we would not have schools. Education is the concept that links all schools together—and links them to things that are not identifiable as schools. Any time one person helps someone else to learn something, that is education, even if it is not, in the normal sense of the term, a school. 

There are many good examples and many important examples of education outside of a school—but the school exists because we believe that education is important enough—especially for children—to be given a formal structure and financial underpinning in order to provide the best education. 

So, that is the case for the school. What of the church? Well, one of the essential functions of the church is the celebration of communion. When writing to the Corinthians, this is something Paul had to deal with since the way the Corinthians were doing communion was causing more problems and divisions within the church. And this is the crux of his argument: "For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come." (1Corinthians 11:23-26)

Communion was not just something that they happened to do in the church. It was a connection with something more. It was done in remembrance of and to proclaim something. It was a participation in, even an assimilation into something. Whatever your view on communion—a topic too big for this lesson—the general truth I want to highlight is this: the church meets as an organization, it participates in communion, it has all the other parts of the church (the music and the preaching and the classes) all for the sake of something more.

Obviously, that something more, in one sense, is Christ—everything the church does is for the sake of Christ, and if that isn't true, then the church is ceasing to be the church, just a school has lost its way if it cares about other things more than education. 

But the foundation of the church is not simply the fact that Christ exists. I worked out all of this lesson regarding the church and then was looking over our passage and realized that Paul never actually uses the word church, or the Greek word which is usually translated church. Instead, Paul uses this term: "the body of Christ."

And Paul describes what that is—it is our union with Christ and therefore with one another. Verse 6 and following describe how there is within this union and service and ministry for one another. I'm probably reading too much into this, but note that in verse 5, Paul says that “we” are the body of Christ. That is, Paul and his readers. But Paul, at this point, had never set foot in Rome. He had never entered whatever building the Roman church was using for its services. He had no office or role within that church as an organization. His name wasn't on their membership roll. And yet, they and he were all part of one body.

The church, as an organization or social unit, exists because of and for the sake of the body of Christ, just as the school—as an organization—exists because of and for the sake of education. The difference is that education is only an abstraction, a concept, an idea. The body of Christ is a living reality. In Ephesians 5, Paul makes a sort of triple comparison—comparing marriage, the body, and the church together. And this is what he says: “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.” (Ephesians 5:23)

Paul states that Christ is the head, the savior of the body. It is Christ who originates and directs the church, who works to maintain and perfect the church. The church is not simply an organization of people who have chosen to pursue a specific aim—like a school or any other social organization—it is a spiritual reality founded on Christ. And the organized church exists only because of that spiritual reality, just as the church building exists only because of the organization.

And that brings us back to the point we saw earlier. When we talk about the church as a single organism with different organs, each working together for the good of the whole, that doesn't simply mean: “We need to work together for the sake of the common good,” though it does mean that. It means that we are, in actual fact, part of something more than ourselves. This idea of organization as a body with many members could be applied to the school or any other organization—but when applied to the church, it is something more than an idea; it is a reality. We are not simply working together for a common end; we are joined at a spiritual level. 

And when Paul says that we are all members of the body with our own office and function—that doesn't simply mean we need to all get some position in the social organization of our local church, though that may be a good idea. Not everyone can be a preacher or a teacher or even an usher—but everyone has something they can do for God.

And here is why all of that matters. It means that the foundation of the church is not society or humanity. It is not even the choice of the individual, though that is an essential ingredient. The foundation of the church is in God. “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-13)

Do you notice what Paul says? He compares the church to a body, as he does here in Romans. But notice what it is that makes this body--it is the Spirit. Just as the human body is knit together in a single organism because it is under the control of the human spirit, so the Holy Spirit works in and through all Christians to make them one body.

Paul continues this idea in the next several verses. “And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.” (1 Corinthians 12:16-18) Once again, we have this idea of the many members of the church, each fulfilling their own role for the health of the whole. But the main point is the fact that God is the one who set the members in the body, just as He crafted the organs for the human body.

If I said that all people have some role in the church, some work that they can do for God, it wouldn't mean anything. I don't know everyone in the world, and some of the people I do know, I can't easily imagine what role God could use them for. If I had to organize the church, I could not fit everyone in; I couldn't find a place for everyone. But I am not the one making the church. The church is made by God--by the same God who made man. God does not try to find a place for people, like a harried chairman organizing a fundraiser--God makes the people, and He makes the places and knits all things together for his glory.

This is an idea that runs through the New Testament picture of the church—that the church is both one thing and yet many things. Redeemed humanity can be considered as a unit, and yet that does not destroy our own individuality. God deals with the church as a whole and yet also deals with each person as a person. It is a body with many organs; a family with many members; a building with many building blocks; a race of individuals. All men are created equal, but all men are not created identical; each person is unique, and God deals with people, especially within the church, as unique.

That is precisely why we should not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think--because we are not in some sort of competition. In a race, many run, but only one receives the prize; because only one person can be the fastest; only one person can cross the finish line first. Do you see the point? In a race, everyone is competing for the same thing. But you could not have a competition where everyone was after something different. If one runner wanted to be the fastest and one runner wanted to be the best looking while they ran and one runner just wanted to have fun, you could never award the medal between them because they are doing different things for different goals. While they were all, generally speaking, “running the race” they were not competing for the same prize.

And that's an analogy for what Paul is saying here—within the church, each of us has our own role to play, all of which contribute to the body of Christ as a whole, but all separate and unique and therefore outside the realm of competition. And if there is no competition, then no one can boast of winning, but only “think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.”

This part may be controversial, but as I look at what Paul is saying here, I don't think he is talking specifically about what we would call the 'officers' of the church—the official positions that the church as a corporate body assigns to its members. Paul does deal with that in other places—1 Timothy and Titus—but there's nothing like that here. Here the idea seems to be simply the things that Christians do for the good of the body. One of the things he mentions is giving—there were in the early church those whose job it was to see to charitable endeavors, but the act of giving was not and is not limited to those.

So, we have prophecy, teaching, and exhorting. These three ideas go together.  All three of these involve what we can call education—helping people to know the truth and encouraging them to act upon it. (Teaching and exhorting are two different sides of the same thing; what prophecy is and whether or not it has relevancy to the modern  church would be a lesson in itself.)

Then we have ministry. The word has a broad meaning and can be used for physical ministry and service, but it is also frequently used for the work of the church. It's not clear what specifically Paul means here; perhaps he doesn't mean something specific and is using this word in general for any sort of ministry which the church needs.

These four roles or members Paul describes all have a simple encouragement—that if this is your place, you should do them. In other words, don't neglect your post or bury your talent. As God has given us our roles, we should live up to the grace which God has given.

Next, we have giving, or, more exactly, sharing or imparting. This seems to refer to giving or helping those in need; what, in modern language, we refer to as charity. Paul urges that those engaged in this work do it with simplicity or single-mindness. This may mean with honesty; keeping their eyes singly on their mission, and not allowing any temptation to lead them to misusing that committed to their care. But it can also mean sincerity—having their mind solely focused on God and their work and not allowing any desire for acclaim or other motives to sully their work.

We have rule or presiding; the word means someone in charge of something. It could have reference to many roles, but most take it in the sense of those who are in a position of authority within the church—the leaders of the church as a unit. These are encouraged to work with diligence. Though it might seem like a personal advantage to be an important officer in the church, Paul reminds them that their position is not meant to make things easy for them—they have a job to do for the church, and they had better put their whole heart into it. To be a leader means—or should mean—serving others and not wanting others to serve you. The word translated diligence literally means speed or haste, and so it may have the idea—don't procrastinate or put off your work for the church in favor of your own personal concerns.

And finally, we have showing mercy. It's unclear how this differs from giving. Perhaps this has to do more with people doing concrete acts of charity as opposed to simply giving material goods. Adam Clarke points out that this kind of work is often extremely difficult, that is hard for the doer to deal with. This causes many people who perform such work to fall into bad attitudes; so much so that 'charity' has something of a bad name—so many people have performed acts of charity with a sour or self-righteous attitude. That's why it's important to note the other half of this—which is that mercy must be performed with a good attitude, with cheerfulness. Why cheerfulness specifically? Because it is a reminder that we do not do these things solely for duty or guilt, but for God.

I struggled put together this section, because I don't really understand the nuances of what Paul is saying here and how we can incorporate it into the modern church. The one interesting this is that with all these different roles which Paul portrays—in many modern churches, it is expected for the pastor and his wife to fulfill all of these. 

In any case, here is the conclusion. We all have a role and so can do something for God and that is really all that we can do. There is a sense in which this is true of any organization or cause—that it is comprised of many people working together for a common cause. During WWII, Jim Jordan, a radio personality, made this statement regarding the war effort: “If all of us do our part, part of us won't have to do it all.” That is true, but the point Paul is making is something more than that. We are not merely members of one another. In the end, we are all members of the body, and that body is the body of Christ. We are not merely doing our part as best we can; we are doing it “according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.”