Romans 12.8d-The Permanent Spiritual Gift Of Compassion
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Tuesday October 27, 2009
Romans: Romans 12:8d-The Permanent Spiritual Gift Of Compassion
Lesson # 413
Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 12:1.
This evening we will complete our study of the list of seven spiritual gifts that appear in Romans 12:6b-8 by noting the permanent spiritual gift of compassion.
Romans 12:1, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”
Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Romans 12:3, “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.”
Romans 12:4-5, “For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”
Romans 12:6, “Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith.”
The gift of prophecy is a temporary or discontinued spiritual gift meaning that it is no longer existent since it existed during the pre-canon period of the church to fill the void until the New Testament canon had been completed.
The gift of prophecy involved not only communicating with regards to the future but also communicating messages from God to the church that were consistent with the completed canon of Scripture, which was not yet complete when this gift was extant.
Paul teaches that the gift of prophecy was to be exercised according to the standard of the Christian faith, i.e. the Word of God or the body of Christian doctrine.
Romans 12:7, “If service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching.”
The gift of service is a permanent gift meaning that unlike the gift of prophecy it was not discontinued with advent of the completed canon of Scripture.
This gift is synonymous with “helps” in 1 Corinthians 12:28 and “whoever serves” in 1 Peter 4:11 and expresses itself in a variety of ways that aid the church and its members.
The gift of teaching is also a permanent gift, which involved teaching or communicating the Word of God to the congregation.
Romans 12:8, “Or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.”
The gift of exhortation actually refers to encouraging and is also a permanent gift and manifests itself by encouraging members of the body of Christ to live in a manner worthy of their calling, to grow up to become like Christ.
This gift manifests itself in the person who gives advice to other members of the body of Christ that is consistent with Scripture and under the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit.
Though all believers are commanded to encourage one another according to 1 Thessalonians 4:18 and 5:11, the spiritual gift of encouraging functions or manifests itself in a manner that goes beyond what is normally exercised by Christians who obey the command to encourage one another.
Romans 12:8, “Or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.”
The gift of giving is also a permanent gift, which involves distributing one’s own money to others and is to be done with sincere motives.
Though all believers are commanded to given to one another (Matthew 5:42; 10:8) the spiritual gift of giving functions or manifests itself in manner that goes beyond what is normally exercised by Christians who obey the command to give to one another.
This gift is not given to wealthy believers only but rather it is can given to believers regardless of their social or economic status.
The believer who exercises this gift properly will enjoy giving of himself and his possessions and will do so without a desire for thanks or recognition.
The gift of leadership is also a permanent gift and is identified by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:28 as “administrations.”
Those individuals who possess this gift of leadership, along with the pastor-teachers, help compose the leadership of the local church.
These individuals often hold the office of deacon, which remember is not a spiritual gift since it was established by the apostles and those who were deacons were elected by the Jerusalem congregation according to Acts 6:1-6.
Like the gift of teaching, only men have been given the gift of leadership by the Holy Spirit since Paul teaches in 1 Timothy 2:12-14 that a woman is prohibited from exercising authority over men because of the divine order and because Eve was deceived and Adam was not.
Romans 12:8, “Or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.”
“He who shows mercy” is the articular nominative masculine singular present active participle form of the verb eleeo (e)leevw) (el-eh-eh-o), which refers to the permanent gift of compassion.
It should be called the gift of compassion rather than mercy because the latter has the connotation of withholding judgment whereas the former connotes the intense desire to act to alleviate the pain and suffering of another or remove its cause (1 John 3:16-17).
This gift has been given to both men and women in the body of Christ and is a permanent gift in that unlike the gift of prophecy it was not discontinued with the completion of the canon of Scripture.
Though all believers are commanded to be compassionate towards one another according to Ephesians 4:32 and 1 John 3:16-17, the spiritual gift of compassion functions or manifests itself in a manner that goes beyond what is normally exercised by Christians who obey the command to encourage one another.
1 John 3:17-18, “But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”
Like all spiritual gifts, the exercise of the gift of compassion is for the benefit of the body of Christ.
Specifically, it is directed towards those in the body of Christ who are suffering, whether physically, emotionally or spiritually.
It can involve feeding the hungry in the body of Christ and caring for those who are sick in the body of Christ as well as caring for the elderly and the disabled.
Like the function of all spiritual gifts, the gift of compassion is an expression of God’s love that is manifested in the body of Christ.
As is the case with the gifts of service (aka helps), encouraging, giving, leadership, those with the gift of compassion are often those who hold the office of deacon.
This gift does not appear in the list in 1 Corinthians 12.
Romans 12:8, “Or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.”
“With cheerfulness” is composed of the preposition en (e)n), “with” and the articular dative feminine singular form of the noun hilarotes (i(larovth$) (hil-ar-ot-ace), “cheerfulness.”
This is the only place in the Greek New Testament where the noun hilarotes appears.
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains defines the word “a state of happiness characterized by being cheerful – ‘happiness, cheerfulness’ (volume 2, page 302).
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature-Third edition defines the word as the “quality or state of cheerfulness, opposite of an attitude suggesting being under duress, cheerfulness, gladness, wholeheartedness, graciousness” (Page 473).
Therefore, in Romans 12:8, the noun hilarotes is a cheerful attitude when exercising the gift of compassion as opposed to an attitude of considering it a great burden to exercise compassion to those in need in the body of Christ.
The preposition en functions as a marker of manner and the noun hilarotes as a dative instrumental of manner indicating the manner by which the action of the verb eleeo, “the one whose function it is to demonstrate compassion” is accomplished.
This indicates that the man or woman with the spiritual gift of compassion is to exercise this gift “with cheerfulness.”