Romans - Lesson 49

Romans 12:3-8

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

A. Humility and Unity of the Body: 

The general overview of the vision of giving ourselves as living sacrifices and trying to approve what God’s will is by the renewing of the mind. Now Paul begins to break that down in 12:3-8. This focuses on the importance of humility on our part and the unity of the body; two ideas often closely related in Scripture. I think of Philippians 2, another passage where these two are closely connected, a place where again we see Paul anticipating where the argument is going to go in his application in chapter 14. Paul warns us about thinking too highly of ourselves. 

The word he is using here about thinking highly of ourselves picks up the language Paul has just been using in chapter 11. So, we are beginning to see again, a kind of a sequence here. In chapter 11, Paul warns the Gentile Christians in Rome in verse 18, don’t consider yourselves to be superior; verse 20don’t be arrogant. This is the same language Paul now uses here in 12:3, don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought, think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 

Let’s pause on that phrase for a moment at the end of verse 3. As the NIV translates here, it sounds like each of us has been given a sort of different degree of faith. Paul is saying to think of yourself in line with the amount of faith God has given to each of you which will differ from person to person. That could be what Paul intends here, might even be probably what he intends. This is a place where I would like a different view to be what Paul says, but I am not sure I can justify it in the Greek text. 

A second way to understand this is to think about faith as a kind of common standard that God has given everybody. He is telling us not so much think of yourself in accordance to how much faith you have as opposed to how much faith you have, but rather use the standard of faith you all have in common as a measuring stick against which you evaluate yourself. Rather than trying to compare gifts, to brag about what one person has as opposed to another person, Paul says to look at the faith that you all have as that which you need to measure yourself by.

In either case though, Paul’s concern is with people who are arrogant, who are not recognizing the place they actually have in the community. I had a professor back in my Trinity days that used to use this verse to say that there was a problem with people thinking too highly of themselves but there is also the problem of people not thinking highly enough of themselves. He would really emphasize the point to think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has given you. 

Obviously within the context, Paul is concerned about people thinking too much of themselves. But there can also be the other danger of people not appreciating adequately enough the gifts they do have, the faith that God has given them, who become too timid in ministry or who are afraid to take some bold moves that God might be calling on them to make because we are sort of uncertain of ourselves. There might be a good application here.

B. The Gifts: 

At the end of the paragraph in verses 4 and following, brings in the common Pauline teaching about the single body with the diversity of members. This is very similar to what we have in 1 Corinthians 12; somewhat similar though not quite as parallel to Ephesians 4 also where the concern is to emphasize the unity we have together in Christ even as we recognize the diversity of gift and function, etc. 

Paul, of course, never gives us a neat comprehensive list of gifts. All three of the passages are Pauline - Ephesians 4 again and 1 Corinthians 12 and the passage here Romans 12. In each case, Paul is illustrating his point by mentioning certain gifts. We realize we can’t go to the New Testament and claim here are all the gifts God has made available to the church, these are the only ones that He has made available to the church. There may well be gifts that aren’t mentioned in the New Testament that God is giving His people. Of course, some of us may have more than one gift as well. 

We have to back off a little bit from the thing we are prone to do sometimes, pass out to our congregations a list, here are all the gifts mentioned in these passages of Paul, check off the one you have. This can be helpful in encouraging people to think about how God wants to use them and what kinds of abilities they have and how they can be used to serve the church, but can be reductionistic in these sense of not realizing there may be more gifts than that and I may have to check five or six boxes. 

Student:  
I took some encouragement when I was looking at this. If your gift is to give, then give generously. I thought about probably most of our churches have two to five families who are the ones making the church happen financially. It’s just the reality that they are the primary givers. Sometimes they complain with the thought that everyone ought to be giving. But there are some people who have more of an ability and more of a gift to give financially. And praise God that there are people who make that choice!

Dr. Moo:  
Why is it when you do this inventory of spiritual gifts, that no one checks the box that my gift is the gift of giving? The gift of giving is one that kind of gets missed; people aren’t jumping into this as such. 

Student:  
I have found those who have the gift of giving, use their gift to inspire others to give. 

Dr. Moo:  
There is often a real pattern of example that comes with givers. That is why when you are doing fundraising drives with school, institution, or church, usually they say, get your leadership together and make sure that they are committed first to give a certain amount and then the people are going to follow that.

C. Defining Prophesy: 

Paul mentions some gifts here and the focus is on making sure that each person who has a gift uses it well, whatever that gift might be. So, Paul briefly mentions prophesying, serving, teaching, encouraging, giving, leading (there is some debate about the meaning about this word), and showing mercy. This is just a sample of the kinds of gifts God has given to the community which we are to exercise as Paul says in verse 6, according to the grace given to each of us. 

Obviously, God distributes His grace, it takes different forms in different lives for different people and we are called upon the recognize that and use our gift faithfully in the context of the community. Paul’s chief concern is to use it in a way that fosters the unity of the body, that recognizes here is my place in the body; here is where I can use my gift and use it in a way that doesn’t try to elevate me but tries to genuinely fit into what the body as a whole is about. 

Student:  
What do you do with the prophesying prophesier, are you comfortable with the interpretation that says that a prophesier only speaks for God, and is not necessarily a future-teller?

Dr. Moo:  
I think it is more than a future-teller, yes. I think the evidence in the New Testament goes that way. Moving on from there though, I think is challenging. On the one hand, you have what I would call a fairly narrow view of prophesy that is argued by Wayne Grudem in his doctoral dissertation and in a couple books and articles since then, in which prophesy in the New Testament is very much tied to communicating a revelation from God. This is a revelation with a small ‘r’, not a capital ‘R’, authoritative biblical truth, but revelation, small ‘r’. In 1 Corinthians 14 toward the end of the chapter there, Paul does in the context of prophesy, talk about people who have received a revelation. That is the key biblical basis for that. 

So that is a fairly restricted sense of prophesy which involves this sense of receiving a revelation from God that is then communicated to others for the body’s edification. That can take the form of a prediction as we see in the Book of Acts two or three times, but need not be a prediction either. It can just be a Word from God for the community. 

Other people, for instance, Anthony Thistleton in his commentary on 1 Corinthians, take a much broader understanding of prophesy as speaking on behalf of God, of bringing a word from God to the community with some kind of degree of authority. If that is how we define it then, certain forms of preaching could fit under the rubric of prophesizing. 

If you take the first view, the view that Grudem argues, it is a narrow idea and usually what we think about as preaching wouldn’t fit in the gift of prophesy then. I’m not sure myself. I used to hold Grudem’s view. I still may slightly incline to it, but reading Thistleton recently has led me to go back and reevaluate a little bit. It is difficult to pin down, obviously.

Clearly, it isn’t the same thing as the Old Testament prophet, I think that is clear enough, the person appointed by God who speaks with authority, as in ‘thus says the Lord’. 

Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 14, whatever prophesying is, others are to judge the prophesy. It is not something that comes with immediate unquestioned authority from God.