The Church

Romans 12:1-16

“We are often eager to see extraordinary events – growth in numbers or financial abundance or credibility in the larger community – that we fail to delight in the ordinary breath and heartbeat of the body. When people in the church encourage one another, teach one another, serve one another, and pray for one another in dozens of small and large ways, we ought to rejoice.” ~ Megan Hill

Main Idea: The church is a worshipping people, a serving body, and a welcoming family because of God’s mercies.

I. A Worshipping People (12:1-2)

Because of the mercies (plural) of God, we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, which is our ‘spiritual worship.’ In every age, season, and location, the church is a worshipping people. We have no greater incentive or power to worship than the mercies of God toward us in Jesus Christ.

This worship is not just inward or abstract; it is an offering of our entire being. This includes:

Head: ‘spiritual’ worship = rational or logical. We are invited to fill our minds with the pure, lovely, commendable, and excellent things of God (Phil. 4:8)
Heart: ‘All that is within us’ (Ps. 103:1) is summoned to worship God
Hands: we are to offer our very bodies as a “living sacrifice”

As we engage in worship, we are resisting being “conformed” (lit. molded) by the world, and are rather transformed into the image of Christ. This occurs both individually (2 Cor. 3:18) and corporately (Eph. 4:15-16) in the church.

II. A Serving Body (12:3-8)

The imagery of the “body” of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 12, Eph. 4:12-16) signifies:

Unity: Just as the members of our physical body must be unified and work together, so too must the members of the body of Christ. We operate from unity, not toward unity (Eph. 4:3).
Diversity: The members do not all have the same function; there is unity but not uniformity in the body of Christ. There are no unimportant parts and we are dependent upon one another for the health of the body.

This imagery primarily implies in the Scriptures a humble service (12:3) that builds up the body of Christ. Whatever gifts we have been given by the Spirit, we are to employ them in the body of Christ as servants and contributors, not spectators or consumers.

“This truth should give you confidence: your particular gifts have a valuable, God-appointed place. It should also humble you: your particular gifts are simply one part of the body, and you desperately need other people with their particular gifts… this truth should increase your love for the local church: the gifts in the body are exactly what God knows your congregation needs. Because of God’s sovereign choosing, no part is missing, and every part is valuable.” ~ Megan Hill

The various “lists” of spiritual gifts in the NT can be categorized broadly into Speaking Gifts, Leading Gifts, and Serving Gifts. Regardless of gifts or categories, the exhortation is “having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (12:6). We are called to joyfully & sacrificially invest our time, treasure, and talents as an act of worship out of love for God and love for one another.

III. A Welcoming Family (12:9-16)

The church is primarily described in the NT as the family of God or the “household of faith” (Gal. 6:10; 1 Tim. 3:15); the early church was subversive to the Greco-Roman world around because they related to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, united not by the blood of biology but the blood of the cross.

The church as a family ought to be marked by hospitality. Hospitality is not “entertaining” but instead a powerful picture of the invitation of the gospel itself. Romans 15:7: Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. As we love one another in this way, we are to welcome the outsider and the stranger in the very same way each of us have been welcomed into God’s family.

“Churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests. They are messy family rooms… Things are out of order, to be sure, but that is what happens to churches that are lived in. They are not show rooms. They are living rooms, and if the persons living in them are sinners, they are going to be clothes scattered about, handprints on the woodwork, and mud on the carpet. For as long as Jesus insists on calling sinners and not the righteous to repentance – and there is no indication as yet that he has changed his policy in this regard – churches are going to be an embarrassment to the fastidious and an affront to the upright.” ~ Eugene Peterson

Our experience & the world’s view of the church is often unremarkable, but God has willed that “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers & authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10). The church is God’s “Plan A” to make known the glories of Jesus Christ to the cosmos.