No Spare Parts

A Sermon on Romans 12:3-8 by Ps Phil Hunt

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Please take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to the book of Romans, chapter 12 verses 3 to 8. Let me add my word of welcome to each one of you who is here, especially to those of you who are joining us for the first time. We are so happy that you are with us here at Kitwe Church.

Romans 12: No Spare Parts

I want to speak to you this morning on this subject: No Spare Parts.

Let me ask you to imagine something. Suppose — just suppose — that you stopped coming to this church. You were not upset with anybody. You did not get into a fight with anyone. You did not make a big production of saying goodbye. You simply, quietly slipped away one Sunday and never came back.

What would actually be missing?

It would not be attendance numbers — your seat would be filled by somebody else. I am not asking which chair would be empty. I am asking: what ministry would go undone? What service would stop? What gift God placed in you would go unexercised in this body if you simply decided one day to slip away? Would anything be felt? Would anything change?

For some of us, that may be an uncomfortable question this morning, because the honest answer is: not much. Not much would actually change. We come, we sit, and we leave. We are present — but the question this morning is, are we functioning? I am not asking whether you are here. I am asking whether you are functioning in the body.

This is what Paul would say to you: you are a member of this body, and you are a member the body cannot do without. You are not optional. You are not an extra. This church is incomplete without you — but that is only true if you are functioning as a member of the body. A hand that hangs lifelessly at someone’s side, never lifting itself, is still attached to the body, but it is not performing what it was created for. It is simply there.

How did we come to be one body of many members, each one needed and each one gifted? Paul tells us in our text, and he begins with a single word: therefore — verse 1.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers…” (v.1)

That word, therefore, gathers up everything Paul has explained so far in the book of Romans: human sin in chapters 1–3; justification by faith in chapters 3–5; union with Christ and life in the Spirit in chapters 6–8; and God’s faithfulness to His purposes in chapters 9–11. Now, with that one word, he turns all of it toward what it should mean in our everyday life. How are we to live? At the foundation of that question is, what are we to do? And at the heart of that question is the consecration and transformation described in verses 1 and 2.

In our last study we looked at verses 1 and 2, but let’s go back to them, because these things are connected.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (v.1–2)

So here is the question: what is God’s will for you? As your mind is renewed, how are you to think about yourself, and how are you to think about your relationship with others in the body of Christ? That is our text this morning.

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.” (v.3–6)

From this text we see that our usefulness to the Lord depends on three things: a humble attitude, a proper relationship, and a selfless service.

I. Grace Humbles Us (v.3)

“By the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you…” (v.3)

Paul is speaking to this local church, this assembly of believers in the city of Rome — a local church just like ours. He is saying: God’s grace has enabled me to say this, and when I say what I am about to say, I want every single one of you to know it is for you.

So do not sit there this morning thinking, Oh, I’m so glad Pastor is saying that — my wife really needed to hear that. No. This is for every one of you. This apostolic command applies to everyone. No one here is exempt from what Paul is about to say. The pastor is not exempt. The deacons are not exempt. The men’s and women’s ministry leaders are not exempt. The worship leaders are not exempt. The sound coordinator is not exempt. The children’s ministry leader is not exempt. Our missionaries are not exempt. And neither are you.

This command needs to be heard by everyone in the local church, because we tend to do the very thing Paul is warning us against. Our flesh, which we still battle every day as Christians, does not like this “living sacrifice” business. Our position in Christ as a living sacrifice must be translated into practice in everyday living, and it is required of all of us.

Renewed minds think differently, and that begins with how we think about ourselves. Paul says:

“…not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment…” (v.3)

The evidence of a transformed mind begins with humble self-estimation — thinking correctly about ourselves. That begins with me, as the pastor.

So this grace humbles us. It is an exhortation for everyone, and it is an exhortation to right thinking.

Do you realize that this exhortation lies at the very root of every fight, every division, and every disunity in relationships? If you boil everything down, boil it all away, and look into the pot, the ugly residue left at the bottom is pride. I actually think of myself more highly than I ought to. After all, I’m the pastor. I deserve respect. I want you to address me with a long list of titles.

Paul is appealing to sober-mindedness — a clear-sighted sanity about yourself that looks two ways at once: an honest view of me, and an honest view of us. Right thinking. Our problem is simple: we overestimate ourselves. That is why we get offended — because we overestimate ourselves. That is pride, and pride begins in the mind. This was part of our life before Romans 12:1–2. Paul is exhorting us to see ourselves as we really are. The renewed mind does not inflate its own importance. It does not pretend.

And here is the heart of the matter: a church is not divided by diversity. I think it is safe to say we are the most diverse church in the city of Kitwe — probably twenty-five to thirty nationalities and language groups among our 230 people. A church is not divided by diversity. That is not what causes problems in a multicultural church. It is divided by pride.

Paul already warned us in chapter 11, verse 20: do not be high-minded, because God chose you. Who do you think you are? You were a slave of sin, a God-hater, very happy to follow your own path — and God, in His rich mercy, came and found you. He sought you out. You were not looking for Him. He came looking for you and called you to Himself, and it was all of His grace and mercy. Therefore, you should think very humbly about yourself in Christ.

The eye and the hand are no threat to each other until they start competing for recognition. That is pride. And pride speaks in two ways. It looks at others and says, I have no need of you (1 Corinthians 12). Or it looks at itself and says, I’m not the hand, so I don’t even belong, I don’t even matter. One puffs up, the other shrinks down — but both are still about me. Whatever starts with me is rooted in pride.

Notice again what Paul says: not to think more highly than we ought, but to think with sober judgment, according to the measure of faith God has given. Sober-mindedness does not ask, What value am I to the body? and it does not say to others, I don’t need you, you do nothing for me. Sober-mindedness sees it the other way around — it looks at differences as complementary, not competitive. Instead of competing, we serve. We help one another grow and use our gifts. That is what Paul means in verse 5 when he says we are members one of another — a phrase that becomes a reality in the life of a local church as we live it out week by week in fellowship.

The measure of sober thinking is not how I compare to others, but what God has measured out to me. I am not looking at you and saying, Look at my gifts compared to yours, or Look at how much I am doing compared to how little you are doing. I am not in competition with you, and I am not even ultimately accountable to you — though yes, there is accountability within the local church. But ultimately, God will not judge me based on your opinion of me. He will evaluate me based on the gifts He has entrusted to me and how I use them in the body to serve you. It is not about me; it is about me serving you for Him.

The temptation in church is to make church about me. How many people get offended and say, That church — me, I’m not going back. I had someone tell me, Pastor, you walked right past me after the service and never greeted me. Of course, what they did not say is that if I walked past them, it was because I did not even see them. But if I walked past them, that also means they did not greet me. Yet we take offense. All of that is rooted in pride. Paul is saying, no — we need to be sober-minded. We need this renewed mind, not the old mind. Sober-mindedness is what turns “members of one another” from a phrase into a reality.

Remember the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. The master entrusted each servant with what he could handle and expected a return. The only servant condemned at the end was the one who buried his treasure and refused to use it — that is the only one rebuked by the master.

So let me ask: are you putting to work everything God has entrusted to you, Christian? I fear that some of us are coasting. We are busy — doing everything — except serving God with our everything.

This is not only an exhortation to right thinking; it is rooted in grace, as we see at the start of the verse: “For by the grace given to me…” The same grace that enabled Paul to carry out his gift of apostleship is the same grace that enables every Christian to carry out his or her spiritual gift (v.6: “having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us”). Paul’s grace was apostleship; we too have been given grace to activate and use the gifts God has given us. It is the same grace. One gift is not superior to another, though they differ — because your gift is given, not earned. You did not earn it. You are not a talented speaker because you took speech classes and worked it up yourself. It is a gift, given to you. Every one of us in the family of God has been given a gift, and so we are humble in exercising it, because we recognize it was given, not achieved.

If we understand that, there is no other response for a renewed mind than humility — humbled that God would give us anything with which to serve Him. Whatever it is, it was His choice. Our task is to use it, not for ourselves, but for the strengthening and edification of the body.

A gift exercised in pride negates the grace that was intended. Mercy shown grudgingly negates the grace. Leading done lazily negates the grace. Giving with strings attached negates the grace. This is why I am concerned about the popular theology of giving in many churches in Zambia, because at the core of that appeal lies a selfish motive: Give and you’ll get it back tenfold, or a hundredfold. Use your gift of giving so that you can prosper. Do you see what that is? It is no longer grace — it is a mechanism by which you try to manipulate God for your own benefit. Tip God and get rich. That is not what Paul is talking about, and we will see why in a moment.

Humility does not suppress the use of our gifts — it frees them to be used gladly and freely. Pride abuses the gifts. False modesty buries the gifts. But humility uses the spiritual gift you have been given for its intended purpose.

II. Grace Unites Us (v.4–5)

“For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function.” (v.4)

Paul reaches into everyday life for an illustration everyone understands, and applies it to the unity of the body of Christ, the church. He is talking about a human body. We have hands. We have feet. We have a mouth, eyes, ears, a tongue.

Let’s look in a full-length mirror for a moment. Here is what you see: three things.

First, unity. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you see many members — but one body.

Second, diversity. The members of your body are not identical; they are varied, with different functions and different capacities. Your hand does not do what your feet do. You did not wake up this morning and decide to walk to church on your hands. None of us did that — because we already know and acknowledge that each member serves a particular function.

I have two fried eggs and a piece of toast every morning for breakfast. This morning my wife cooked them just the way I like them. I sat at the table, but I did not pull off my sock, put my foot up on the table, and start cutting my toast with my toes. Why? Because when we look in the mirror, we recognize that every member has a function. Why, then, does Paul say that when we come into the body of Christ, every single member of this congregation also has a function for the body? That is the second thing the mirror shows us.

Third, mutuality. The members all belong to one another. When I walk down the stairs, my feet do the walking and my hand rests on the handrail — because every member recognizes its mutual function in the body. When I sat down for my eggs and toast, my hand did not put the food in my mouth while my mouth simply sat there refusing to chew because it felt unappreciated. The member I have never seen — my stomach — is the one waiting to receive it. I have never seen my stomach, though I can see its effects. But when it stops functioning properly, what happens? We go to the doctor — because when one member is not functioning, the whole body is in danger.

This is what Paul is saying: grace unites us.

“So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.” (v.5)

We operate the same way as the body of Christ. We are many members within this local body at Kitwe Church, and yet we are one. This is not a command to become one — Paul is saying that Christians are already one in Christ. We are not working toward unity; we are unified, one body in Christ, connected to one another within that body.

This understanding of the human body informs our understanding of spiritual gifts: they are the natural expression of a unity that already exists by God’s grace, and the source of that unity is Christ alone. The source of our unity in this church is Christ — not our ethnicity, not how much melanin we have in our skin, not our social status, not our shared interests. We are united in this body because we have been united in Christ, even though we are very different: old and young, short and tall, male and female, people from Angola, Malawi, Zambia, Congo, South Africa, Europe, America, South America, Eastern Europe, Madagascar, and beyond. The unity of the body of Christ comes from Christ, not these other things.

But when we talk about the body of Christ, we are not simply talking about the assembled congregation on a Sunday morning. Some of you here are part of the body of Christ; there may be more of you who are not yet part of this body. Membership matters. This text is written to the members of the local church and their responsibility to function in their giftings within that local body of believers. This is why you should come and join Kitwe Church if you are a born-again Christian living in Kitwe and you are not already a member of a good Bible-teaching church — because it is in the context of the local church that we exercise and use our gifts for the benefit and edification of the body.

Do you know what comfort this is? This unity means we are not alone. Each of us is a member bound to one another within the same body. You do not have to do everything. You do not have to carry the weight and the burden alone. There is mutuality. There is unity in the body of Christ.

III. Grace Gifts Us for Service (v.6–8)

“Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us…” (v.6)

The Holy Spirit is the giver of spiritual gifts, and He has given at least one gift to every Christian. These gifts are entrusted to us by grace, not merit — not by our own effort — and they differ from one another. Not every Christian shares the same spiritual gift, for the Spirit apportions to each one individually as He wills.

Scripture never instructs us to pray for a particular spiritual gift. Why? Because at the moment you were saved, God gifted you with a spiritual gift that He wants you to discover and develop for the health of the body. It is not, God, I don’t like this gift — give me that one instead, and until you do, I refuse to serve. The gifts come from one source: God, the Spirit.

“All these are empowered by the one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” (1 Corinthians 12:11)

God never commanded you to ask for, pray for, or fast for a gift — in fact, that is not biblical. You already have a gift. God the Spirit chose what gift to give you and placed you in this body so that you would use it to serve the body and help it grow. A true spiritual gift is the Spirit’s own work.

There have been claims throughout history — and in our day — of spiritual gifts and even apparent miraculous demonstrations meant to prove their authenticity. God gives us a test for this, in 1 John 4:1–8:

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you will know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming, and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Everyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

There are five tests in this passage: Does the work exalt the true Christ (v.2)? Does it oppose worldliness (v.5)? Does it point people to Scripture (v.6)? Does it elevate truth (v.6)? Does it produce love for God and others (v.7–8)?

When my wife Lori and I were first married, she worked for a bank. Here is how banks train tellers to catch counterfeit notes: you might expect them to spend their days studying forgeries, but they do not — there are too many counterfeits, and new ones are always being invented. Instead, tellers are trained by handling genuine currency, over and over, until the feel and texture of real bills are so familiar that their fingers recognize a counterfeit the instant they touch it. They do not memorize the fake; they know the real one so well that the fake announces itself.

That is how it works in the family of God. Oh, that man performed a miracle. Yes, but he is teaching heresy. Discernment comes from knowing the true God, from being in the Scriptures, until you cannot always explain it theologically, but the moment you encounter the counterfeit, something feels wrong, and you know you need to look closer.

The gifts are for one purpose. Verse 6 again: “having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us… let us use them.”That is the point. Spiritual gifts are given to be used. They are not given to be ignored, and they were not given as decoration. They are to be used in humility, for the benefit of the body. Spiritual gifts were never given for private, personal use — not for your own gratification, not even for your own personal edification. That is not the purpose of the gift. They were given to equip the saints for service to the body.

When I visited Israel some years ago, I went to two bodies of water: I sailed on the Sea of Galilee, and I swam in the Dead Sea. The two are connected by one river, the Jordan, which carries snowmelt from Mount Hermon and the mountains of Lebanon down through the Sea of Galilee and on to the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee receives water and lets it flow back out, and because it never stops giving, it stays fresh. Along its banks the grass is green, the cattle drink, the crops grow, and the fish jump. Life follows that water wherever it goes.

The Dead Sea has no outlet. It only takes in — nothing ever leaves it. For millennia it has kept receiving, never giving. Around the Sea of Galilee I saw fish and plant life everywhere, but when we traveled south to the Dead Sea, the shore was a desert. Nothing lives in the Dead Sea, because all it ever does is take in and never give. A lake that hoards its water becomes stale, then stagnant, then dead.

A spiritual gift is like that. A gift received and poured out keeps the whole body fresh — the grace of God flowing through you reaches the people around you. But a gift received and ignored, or hoarded for your own private benefit and enjoyment, goes stagnant. It was living water, but you turned it into a dead pool. God did not give you a spiritual gift so that it would terminate at you. He gave it so that through you, the body would experience the grace of God. The focus is outward, not inward. The gift was never meant to stop with the one who received it.

The service that results from using our spiritual gifts is not for our own edification — it is for the growth and edification of the body of Christ. We are members of one another, and we exercise our gifts so that we will grow together as the body of Christ. Christ has sent us into the world with a message of hope and salvation, but first He equips us with gifts to carry out His mission.

Notice the close of verses 6 and 7: the gifts are many, but the outcome is the same — edification.

• Prophecy, in proportion to our faith: the proclamation of revealed truth that convicts and builds up the hearers, including both the foretelling and the forth-telling of Scripture’s truth. The church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and with the completed Scripture, in our day we forth-tell the truth of what God has already said — “thus says the Lord.” This gift, like every gift, is guarded by humility and used for the edifying of the body.
• Service (v.7): a ministry of compassion to the material needs of believers — the Greek diakonia, from which we get the word deacon. The focus of this gift is the service rendered to the body.
• Teaching (v.7): the impartation of knowledge, explaining God’s truth so the body understands it.
• Exhortation (v.8): encouragement and comfort, coming alongside someone to strengthen them.
• Contributing (v.8): the gift of giving — cheerful, spontaneous, private generosity toward the needs of others (see 2 Corinthians 9:7).
• Leadership (v.8): leading with zeal — standing before others and carrying out duties faithfully. Elders who rule well are commended in 1 Timothy 3:4 and 13.
• Mercy (v.8): showing mercy with cheerfulness — ministering to the sick and needy, cheerfully and spontaneously.

Paul is not giving a comprehensive list of spiritual gifts here; he is giving an example. It is descriptive, not exhaustive. Scripture contains other lists of spiritual gifts, naming at least sixteen different gifts in total, and none of the lists matches exactly — which may indicate there are still other gifts not named anywhere. But the point is not these seven gifts specifically. The point is: whatever gift God has given you within the body, you are to use it.

So What Do We Do With This?

We give God ourselves; He gives us back a gift to serve with. That is reasonable worship — a living sacrifice, equipped for ministry. We have been gifted for ministry. We have been saved to serve.

So where do we go from here? Three things:

One — think soberly of yourself. Be honest about yourself as a recipient of God’s grace, and serve the body humbly.

Two — embrace your place in this body. There are no spare parts in a body. God has called you to serve Him in this local assembly. Humble yourself and recognize your value to the body of Christ at Kitwe Church.

Three — put your gift to work for others. A Christian cannot be committed to Christ but inactive in service. If you are not using your gift in the body of Christ at Kitwe Church, you are not functioning as God has intended and gifted you to function.

So — if you were to quietly slip away, without upset, without a scene, and simply stop coming — what would we actually be missing? The answer is the exercise of your spiritual gift in this body. Are you serving? Are you using what God has gifted you with in your local assembly as He intended? Or are you just showing up for an hour and a half on a Sunday — coming in, going out?

Are you functioning as God intended within the body of Christ? Perhaps this morning you would say, Pastor, I don’t even fully understand what it means to be a Christian. You cannot function in the body if you are not in the body. God, through His grace and mercy, is willing to graft you into the body by faith in Jesus Christ. Believe in Jesus. Become part of His body. Receive the gifts He has given you, and use them for His glory.

Closing Prayer

Father, we pray that each one of us, in the light of Scripture and the sweet presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, would evaluate how we are using and stewarding our spiritual gift for service to this body of Christ. Father, grant us humble hearts, to think rightly about ourselves and to think rightly about others.

Help us to live out in this church the unity we already have in Jesus Christ — a unity not based on language, ethnicity, or the host of other things that separate people in the world, but a oneness found in Christ. And in Christ, may we gladly and humbly serve the body, and in so doing experience the joy and peace and glory that comes from functioning the way You created us — fulfilling the purpose for which You have placed us in this body. May every one of us know that joy.

We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.