What do you think the worship service at McIvor Avenue MB church will be like this morning? That is the church where Lisa Klassen attends. I suspect that since Tuesday, when her vehicle plunged into the Red River, her whole church has been praying for her, hurting with the family and doing all they can to support them. I suspect that this morning there will be mention made and prayers sent up because of what happened. Why does one accident have such an impact on a community of faith?
If we approach Romans as a book written to us personally, we miss something very significant. This book, as much of the New Testament, although it clearly has application to the individual follower of God, is written to the people of God. In Romans 1:7 Paul addresses the letter, “To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints…” He begins by writing to the community of God’s people and the concept of the people of God continues to permeate the book. In Romans 12:3-16, he becomes more specific about how the people of God are to be His people. He writes in detail about what it means to be the church and about how we should think about the church.
Let us take a look at Romans 12:3-16, for it surely has many important things to say to us as a church.
Several weeks ago we looked at Romans 12:1,2. There we were challenged that because of God’s mercy, we are called to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” We have received mercy from God and have been forgiven and given eternal life. Therefore, we are no longer to conform to this world, but we are to be transformed. That transformation means allowing the Spirit of God to change the way we think and also the way we act.
In the section which we are looking at today, this theme continues. Please notice that the word “think” appears twice in Romans 12:3 – “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 measure of faith God has given you.” (NIV) The same Greek word, translated mind, also appears in Romans 12:16 – “Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.” (NKJV) The presence of these words is deliberate and communicates an important message to us. The theme of verses 3-16 is the body of Christ, the church. Because we are told to have a “transformed mind” in verse 2 and because verses 3 and 16 both contain the word “mind” or “think,” this tells us that the way we think about the church must also be transformed. We cannot be the church with the kind of thinking that comes naturally to us. Our thinking must be transformed so that the way we are in the church, the way we are the church, the way we relate to one another in the church reflects the grace we have received in Christ.
There are ways of thinking about the way we relate to others which are quite natural to us. For example, particularly in the present day Western world, individualism is a dominant motivator for our actions. It is easy for us to decide that what I want is more important than what the group wants. Another value which we quite naturally live by is self centeredness. When we determine that we will not make a sacrifice unless we benefit in some way, self is clearly at the center. How often pride manifests itself in our attitudes and actions! When we are proud, we will not allow others to see our faults and our failures. When we are proud, we promote ourselves as having it all together and we think, if not out loud, then within ourselves, that we can do things better than other people can. How naturally jealousy rears its head! When someone else succeeds, we don’t like it. How do we feel when someone gets what we want – a position in church or an invitation for lunch? Have you ever thought, “it is no wonder so and so is having such a hard time. They shouldn’t have made that mistake?” What is our attitude towards people who are poor or who can’t keep a job? When we are looking for someone to invite, do we just look at our friends or are we open to having strangers join us as well?
I confess that I make decisions about how I relate to God’s people using these values even though I know that if I do so and if everyone else does so, the church will not last long. If we are individualistic and we only come to meetings that suit us, if we are self centered and only serve because we have to or when it is in our interest, if people who move into the church find it hard to fit in because we don’t really need any more friends and if a few people do all the work and many people just sit and watch, our church will not be here for many more years.
However, even though the church is the only means God has in this world to build His eternal kingdom, the motivation for renewed thinking is not for the sake of the survival of the church. Talking about these things is not intended to be a goad to have a better church. Instead, the motivation to have a transformed mind about the church is because of God’s mercy. It is because we are recipients of grace, because we belong to God, because God has brought us together into one body, because we are the body of Christ in a world that is opposed to Him that we need to think differently about the church. Romans 12:3-16 is loaded with counter-cultural thinking.
What does it mean to have God’s mind about His church?
If our mind is to be renewed and if it is to be renewed after God’s mind, we might want to know God’s mind and looking at Jesus is a great place to start. What did it take for Jesus to come to this earth? Philippians 2:6-8 says, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!”
Because Jesus accomplished His work by humbling Himself, it is clear that humility is a fundamental value of a mind transformed according to the grace of God. Both the first verse and the last verse of this section speak about this value. Verse 3 says, “do not think of yourself more highly than you ought…” and verse 16 says, “do not be proud.” How does the value of humility live in the relationships we have with each other? Humility lives when we recognize that the ministry of the church is God’s and not ours. Therefore, we need to be careful to build God’s kingdom and not ours. Humility lives when we don’t hold on to position, but serve for the glory of God. Therefore, if when we are not elected to the position we want, we don’t quit serving in anger, but rather look for other places to serve. Humility lives when the people who have power value and honor those who do not have power. So, therefore, we invite people to join us for lunch who are not in our social circle. John Toews says, The real challenge of this text for the church is to construct a worldview, a value system, which incarnates the gospel in ways that build unity and nurture solidarity among Christians of different racial, class, gender, and socioeconomic status groups.”
At least a part of the problems which occurred in Kenya recently had to do with tribal tensions. We have heard of these kind of divisions in other places and the horror of ethnic cleansing is still a reality in our world today. The attitudes behind this kind of violence are not always absent even in a peaceful place like Rosenort. When we look down on people of different backgrounds, when we think of Mennonites as the only people who are following God correctly or when we make distinctions because someone is from a different church, we are engaging in the same kind of worldly minded thinking.
A transformed mind in the life of the church is a mind which understands that God’s people, in spite of diversity are one body. This counter-cultural unity in the midst of diversity is spoken of in Romans 12:4,5. The body of Christ is one body with many members and the power of that relationship is that “we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
That kind of radical thinking has powerful implications for us in this church. It means that whether we have descended from those who migrated here in 1874 or have come here more recently, we belong to one another. It means that whether we come from Russia, Mexico, Winnipeg, or a Hutterite colony we belong to one another. It means that whether we live from pay cheque to pay cheque or retire at 55, we belong to one another. It means that whether we have a grade 3 education or a Masters degree, we belong to one another.
Recognizing that “each member belongs to all the others” has implications for how we view the people of God in other churches. If they follow Jesus, they are our brothers and sisters and we belong to them and they to us. The church is not only our church, it is the body of Christ in the whole world.
What does it mean that we belong to one another? It does not mean, as some people seem to think, that we force each other to obey all the church rules. But surely it means much more than, “I will come to church on Sunday morning and what I do and how I treat you the rest of the week means nothing.”
John Piper says, “The members of my body are members of each other because they are so much a part of each other's pain and pleasure. If I kick the coffee table full force with my little toe in the dark while trying to shut windows in the rain, my hands and my legs and eyes all join in the reaction…And none of these reactions are the result of a long chain of arguments or reasons why it would be good to help. It's immediate. It feels the pain or the danger or the pleasure that the other part feels, and the reaction of the body part is, as if it were, happening to itself.”
That is what it means to have a transformed mind about Christ’s body. That is why they will be praying for Lisa Klassen at McIvor today and why we will say amen to that prayer.
If in humility we recognize that we are not the most important member in the body of Christ and if we understand that we belong to each other in spite of our diversity, we must also realize that each of us has something to offer in service to the whole body. These things are inter-related.
In Romans 12:6-8, we have an invitation to use the gifts of grace which God has given to every one of us in order to bless the rest of the body of Christ. Transformed thinking about the church has a servant mentality.
That servant mentality realizes, first of all, that every one of us has some gift, given by the grace of God, which we have to offer to the rest of the body. In this text, the gifts of prophesy, serving, teaching, encouragement, contributing to the needs of others, leadership and mercy are mentioned. There are other gifts and the Bible is pretty clear that each one of us has been given a gift from God to offer to the rest of us. What happens if we don’t offer the gift we have been given? It seems to me that is pretty serious. For one thing, when we do that we deny that God has given us a gift of grace. Murray says, “if we underestimate (our gifts) we fail to acknowledge God’s grace…” Furthermore, we diminish what the body of Christ can accomplish because we do not return the gift which God has given. If we think that our part is so small it won’t really matter if it is missing, we are not engaged in transformed thinking. How do we know if we are not the little spark plug that will fire the whole engine?
One of the 8 essential elements of a healthy church is “gift oriented ministry.” Because the gifts for service come from God, their use reflects the transformed thinking which is to mark the body of Christ.
Love is a value which the whole world acknowledges as important. So we might be tempted to suggest that expecting love in the church is normal and not much different than what one would expect in the rest of society. But even here transformed thinking is present. The love which must exist in the body of Christ transcends that of normal human love. As we consider the depth and breadth of the love which we have been shown by God, in Christ, we know that the love present in the church must be the same kind as God’s love for us. The implications of such Christ-like love are explained in this passage in a number of different ways.
Romans 12:9 calls for love which is “sincere.” The Greek word behind the word “sincere” can be transliterated “unhypocritical.” How is unhypocritical love different from normal love? For one thing, it isn’t two faced. It doesn’t imply, “I love you” by a friendly smile or by participating in foot washing and then gossip behind the person’s back.
Transformed love is, as Romans 12:10 says, “devoted to one another in brotherly love.” It goes deeper and lasts longer than normal love and is extended more broadly than the love we naturally feel for one another. We have sometimes spoken of covenant community. This verse supports that concept.
As we read in Romans 12:12 & 15, we also see that such love is attentive and caring. When we love in this way, we pray for one another, we care for one another when there is affliction. We rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.
Such love also offers hospitality. Hospitality costs. Are we willing to pay the price? As we put this together with the call to humility, we recognize that hospitality does not discriminate between close friends and other people. We need to be willing to be hospitable to all.
Romans 12:16 indicates that such love is always working towards harmony. There is no question that things will happen that may destroy harmony. But when, with a transformed mind, we recognize that we belong to each other, the easy way out, of avoiding or dismissing those we disagree with, is just not an option. Rather, we are called to seek harmony in any way we can.
As we pile implication upon implication it becomes clear that such love is beyond what we expect as normal in this world. This kind of love can only be expressed when we have been transformed by a renewed mind.
In one brief part of this passage, we also learn that a transformed mind is a mind which follows after God’s righteousness. The body of Christ is called to reflect the purity of Jesus. Romans 12:9 says, “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” In other words, in the church we will have a concern for purity which lives according to the purity of God.
Where does the power come from to live in such a way? Clearly such living is not normal, it is not what is expected in our natural way of thinking. Because it comes from a mind transformed by God, it is important that we continue to function with the power of God. That is why it says in Romans 12:11, “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”
We are not a human organization, we are not a people powered club. We are the church of the living God and it is only in a relationship with that living God that we will be able to continue to live in this way which is not conformed to the world.
To live in this way means that we don’t serve out of duty, but out of a zeal for the Lord. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between duty and zeal. The difference is, “where does your power come from?” If it comes from us, we won’t last. If it comes from the friendships we have it will stop when relationships are broken. If our power comes from God, we will live in a way that is transformed.
So what does our church look like? Has our mind been transformed about how we think about the body of Christ? Do we need to confess that we are living according to the reactions which are natural to us? Do we need to repent and allow the Spirit of God to transform our minds so that we recognize the body of Christ in our brothers and sisters?
I want to challenge all of us to think differently and to constantly evaluate our attitudes towards God’s people and to live with a transformed mind. Look around you. Look at the people you don’t want to look at. They are a part of the body of Christ. There is the hand and there the feet and there the arms and the ear and the mouth. That is Jesus!
No comments:
Post a Comment