An Appeal for a Grace Shaped Community (Romans 12:1-21)
It is by the grace of God that we are still able to gather as a body of Christ after 66 long years.
We are thankful to God for our brothers and sisters who have helped to establish our Church.
To our pioneers and those who have been with us for a long time, you have seen the church go through different seasons, you have shed tears of frustrations, tears of grief and tears of joy. We thank you for your love and perseverance.
Indeed as a Church, we have gone through many different seasons. We have gone through seasons of joy and celebration, seasons of frustration and griefs. We have gone through seasons of split and seasons of growth. Through it all what is evident is God’s sustaining grace enabling us to continue to stand as a Church for His glory no matter the season we are in.
Carine and I came to GBC in January 2023 and we stayed put. What made us stay put was all of you. We were drawn to a community that is not only faithful in preaching the gospel but also faithful in living out the gospel.
It is my prayer that as a community of people who have been saved by grace through faith, we will continue to let the gospel shaped our culture. For at the heart of the gospel is the outflowing of God’s grace. In other words, a gospel shaped culture is a culture that is shaped by grace.
The gospel of God not only saves us, but it transforms us. If there is a genuine transformation in all of us, then it must naturally result in a transformed community that is continually shape by the gospel of God’s grace.
So, what do we mean when we say we are a church shaped by grace, how does it look like? How can we continue to be a church shaped by grace? These are what we will be unpacking together this morning.
Today’s big idea is: An appeal to be a community shaped by grace, to serve together under grace and to have love for one another that is shaped by grace.
Appeal to be shaped by grace (Rom 12:1-2)
Let us begin by unpacking Romans 12:1-2 and let us listen to Paul’s appeal to his readers and by extension to all of us.
Dear ones, it is only by the mercies of God that we can His children and be in His family. If not for Christ we will still be living in sin and rebellion against God. But God loved us and sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins. Let us in response to the love of God heed the appeal from the word of God to offer our lives as living sacrifices.
What do we mean by living sacrifice? When Paul speaks of living sacrifice he is talking about a sacrifice that involves more than our money, our possessions, our time or our efforts. He is talking about our lives.
What does that look like? It involves offering to God our broken and contrite hearts. It is a heart that acknowledges how sinful and broken we are. We are to give to God a life that realizes our need for forgiveness, a life that is desperate for Jesus.
What this must involve is a constant awareness of our sins and a willingness of heart to confess and repent whenever we sin, trusting in God alone for our forgiveness. It involves the sacrifice of a life that has received the grace and forgiveness of God.
What does that look like? It calls for us to not be conformed to this world and this involves turning away from the ways of the world. To not conform to the world is to not let the age in which we live force us into its scheme of thinking and behaving. Someone paraphrased it this way, “"Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould."
The world we live in, the society we live in has its own way of thinking, it has its own set of boundaries on what is acceptable and what is not. We are constantly pressured to conform to these patterns.
The world finds meaning in pursuing what they deem to be a good life and it is often defined by health and wealth. We must be careful not to be pressured into living a life pursuing the things of this world as if that is all there is to life.
As a Church, it involves us not conforming to the standard of the world in how we govern the Church, we still abide by the law but it must be undergirded by the word of God. It involves not conforming to the man-made traditions but coming under the authority of His word.
The life that we sacrifice to God involves more than a broken and contrite heart, it is more than a life that no longer conforms to the ways of the world. It must also be a life that is transformed by the renewing of our mind.
An offering of our bodies as living sacrifices must include a changed mind. This calls for a total change. We cannot be chameleons, changing our colours depending on where we are. We cannot adopt one colour in church and with Christian friends and another colour at work and another different colour with our non-believing friends etc.
This is why transformation involves a renewing of the mind. A transformed and renewed mind is a mind that is turned upside down by grace.
What that looks is a mind that is no longer dictated by human logic but come under the authority of the word of God. It is a mind that is surrendered to King Jesus. It is a mind controlled by Jesus and not the world. Only then can we truly live a life shaped by grace a life that is able “to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
What this look like is having a mind that can recognize that God’s way is the best and to really want to go that way. It is a mind that takes delight in God’s law in our inner being and to really grasp and fully agree that this way alone is ‘good’, pleasing, acceptable to God and perfect’.
The evidence of a life that is that is transform is played out in how we serve one another and how we love within the body and those outside our body.
An appeal to serve one another under grace (Rom 12:3-8)
To serve one another under grace must begin with the right posture of the heart. A posture of humility. Listen to the word of God in Romans 12:8, “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.”
We live in a culture of inflated view of our own importance. To stand out in the marketplace we are prone to exaggerate our own wisdom, competence, sincerity and power. But that is the culture of the world, but we are not of the world.
One of the clear signs of self-importance is when we find ourselves easily offended. Offended when our contributions are not valued, offended when people are disrespectful, offended when we feel we are being ignored. But friends, when we are transformed by the gospel, the only offence that we should be concern with is the offence of the cross.
The offence of the cross will bring us to our knees, humble our egoistical hearts. For the cross declares how dire is our condition apart from Jesus. It exposes our helplessness. It announces how deep the sin goes, how profound the rebellion is, how impossible is our plight apart from Help from the outside. There’s nothing we can do, no effort we can exert, no law we can follow.
We need to have a right orientation in how we see ourselves. We need to learn to accept what we are not, what we cannot do — which opens us up to being able to rely on others. We need to think of ourselves with sober judgment”. What this entails is for us to be completely in touch with reality. We are to think straight about ourselves; neither too low nor too high.
Quoting Tim Keller, “The gospel prevents us thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought—we are sinners, and all our efforts earn only judgment, and we are saved entirely by Another’s kindness. And the gospel prevents us thinking in a more lowly way than we ought—we are saved sinners, and we are loved and valued in the gaze of the only One whose opinion ultimately matters.
This, then, is a direct command to start our self-appreciation by remembering who we are in the gospel.”
Serving one another goes beyond just having a right evaluation of our ourselves but it also calls for us to think of our different gifts and abilities and how we can use them to serve one another.
God has given us the Church spiritual gifts; these gifts are given so that they can be expressed through ministries and through channels of service that focus on people’s needs.
How can we discern what are our gifts. Here are a few suggestions that I came across in my sermon preparation that I find useful:
Self-examination — We are firstly to “think of yourself with sober judgment” (Rom 12:3) with regard to the gifts. The first places to look at are our hearts and our feelings. Questions like, “What do I enjoy doing? What kind of ministry is satisfying and attractive to me?” are helpful.
We can look at our perceptions of needs. What problems do I most notice? Do I feel burdened for the poor? Do I feel for people with counselling needs? Do I feel the church is too disorganized? God can put these burdens in our hearts and make us more sensitive than others.
Another area to look is our effectiveness. Enjoying doing something is good but being able to do it is important Usually it is those around us who are best judge regards our competency and we must trust in the God given wisdom of our fellow believers to affirm us or to correct us.Experience — We can discern our gifts through experiences. Often it is only when we start to do ministry that we learn about our gifts. This could be what Paul is implying when he wrote, “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them:”
Bible — The Bible must be the basis and authority in determining what are the gifts.
Use it — The gifts are given for us to serve one another. We are to use our gifts in service of others in the church. God gives his gifts as he chooses, and we’re not to say: I would like a different gift! or: I want to use my gift in a different way! Part of living as a sacrifice to God is to give over our abilities and gifts to him, to be used in his service. We’ll only do this joyfully as we keep his mercies to us in view.
An appeal to love one another shaped by grace (Rom 12:9-13)
The final appeal is an appeal to love one another and to let that love be shaped by grace. From Romans 12:9-21, Paul is appealing to the body of believers to love as people whose lives have been shaped by grace. Interestingly he did not restrict this to loving people within the community but outside as well.
I will not attempt to unpack the whole passage, the key point is to have a love that is genuine and sincere. This is one of the marks of a body that has been transformed by grace.
This love is shown not only within the body of Christ but also in how we relate to others who are not in the body. For example, when Paul wrote, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” He has in mind the church he was writing to, and they were facing persecution. He tells them to bless the persecutors and not curse them. In a few verses later he told them “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink;”
Friends what these verses reveals to us is the kind of love that we are to have. It is a love that stands out from the world, it is radical, and it can only be possible when we are transformed by the gospel.
But understand this Paul is not telling us that in love we are to tolerate evil, no he starts and ends with a call to hate evil and love what is good.
What that can look like in our body is when we see our brother’s evil act, we will want to correct the brother because we have genuine love and genuine love hates evil. If we see someone falling away because of some unwise action love will make us take action to help the one we love, even if it demands a tough action.
When our love is sincere it will hate what is evil and cling or hold fast to what is good. Paul told his readers to “abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good”. A sincere and genuine love must be true to God’s will, it must operate within God’s standard.
Genuine love will not want to have anything to do with evil, it would want to get rid but of evil. Genuine love will lead us to hold tightly to what is good.
Friends, it is not easy to love, it takes hard work and zeal, it demands commitment to one another. Because to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice demands our time and commitment in building a sincere and genuine relationship with one another so that we can meaningfully weep and rejoice with one another.
It is not easy but it is not beyond us because of the gospel in our lives, because of the transformation that the gospel has affected in our lives.
In the midst of his appeal Paul exhorts his readers, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. (Rom 12:15)”
Our hope rest in the new life we have in Christ because through His resurrection He has overcome death. We have hope beyond the brevity of this world. So no matter the difficulties and the suffering we have to go through in this sinful world, it cannot even cause a small ripple in the ocean of eternal joy that awaits us.
God did not promise us that in Christ we will not face tribulations or hardships; no in fact we are warned to expect difficulties and sufferings.
In the face of persecution, we must continue to rejoice in hope and let that hope enables us to persevere. when faced with very difficult trials. What will sustain us is the hope found in His word and the prayer that will hold us together.
We are to be constant in prayer. To be constant in prayer is to not waver and to always pray no matter the circumstance. Make prayer a constant feature in our life, pray always and for all things. Make prayer a constant in our family life, pray without ceasing. Make prayer a constant in the body life of our Church by participating in our corporate prayer.
Beloved, we have experienced the grace of God, and our lives have been transformed by the gospel. Let the gospel that transformed us continue to shape our community, to shape our culture so that when others walk in, they will see and they will experience a community shaped by the grace of God.
66 years ago, we officially adopted the name Grace Baptist. Let us not just be known as Grace Baptist Church but let us be a Baptist church that truly displays grace.