The Church-Minded Christian

Introduction

I remember once seeing a t-shirt in a Christian book store. It had an image of a globe and the words in front of it were, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son…but he still would have done it just for you.” I do not fault the heart of this message, which is meant to show the confidence we should each have before Christ, that each individual Christian can come before the Throne of Grace and know that they are loved by God. However, the message is simply not true, or rather, it brings theological confusion to the point of Jesus’ ministry, humanity, death, and resurrection. This t-shirt reveals the depths of individualism which most evangelicals have embraced. Whereas the reformation saw the danger in the Roman Church of an over-emphasis of unity under the pope that resulted in a denial of the truth, so we see here an over-emphasis on the individual’s salvation over Christ’s redemption of his Church. The message of this shirt is as ridiculous as if a husband told his wife than he loved her and would die for her. If she were to reply, “yes, but would you die if all that was left of me was my little toe?” You see how ridiculous this is, and yet the message of that shirt, which unfortunately represents most evangelical’s understanding of salvation, is that Jesus would still have died even if it were just for me. The truth we counter this error with is this: you are not the entirety of the bride of Christ. As an individual, you are not his bride, but rather a member and part of his bride. He loves his whole bride, the church his covenant people, and will not left even a hair of her head be missing in the final redemption. However, he did not die for one hair of her head, he died for all of her, and to see salvation as an event that I participate in alone is to see salvation in a patently unbiblical way.

The Thesis: Think Rightly about Yourself

The gospel changes not only how we think about God, but also how we think about ourselves. It is important as Christians to examine what our view of our self is. Most people, including most Christians, rarely consider their view of themselves. We all have a way in which we think of ourselves, usually by comparing ourselves to others, but this view is usually subconscious and rarely explored or challenged. The gospel calls us to a deep introspection of ourselves, a thorough look into who we are in relation to God, to those in the world, and to our brothers and sisters in the church. We need to be aware of how we view ourselves because it we are not, we can easily slip into lies about ourselves that are satanic in nature without realizing it. If we view ourselves wrongly, our relationship with God and with others will be affected, and we can easily lose sight of the truth. The difference between the Pharisee and the Tax Collector is not in how they saw God primarily, but how they saw themselves. The Pharisee wrongly saw himself as righteous and therefore pleasing in God’s sight, while the tax collector saw himself as a great sinner. This view of themselves was the determining factor between one being justified by God and the other condemned. So we see, how we view ourselves is important, and we must therefore have a careful and godly introspection, not as an end in itself, but as a way in which we may gauge whether we are thinking and behaving in a way that reflects a biblical and realistic self-image. Pride has its root in a wrong self-image, as we see here in our text.

Paul implores his readers by beginning with “for by the grace given to me.” Paul is careful not to exhort his readers to be humble without showing a humble disposition himself. He is not commanding these things from a place of greater holiness, but according to the gift of grace given to him as an Apostle by the Lord. It is not by his own authority that he speaks, but by the grace given to him as an apostle. A godly leader has the balance of knowing the power and influence that is given to him and using it well, without letting it puff him up to think he is somehow better than others. Paul is not better than you, but his gift of grace is certainly different and by that grace he is able to authoritatively exhort the church in the way he does.

“Not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

Not to think more highly - pride is founded on an unbiblical self-knowledge. People in the world speak of high self esteem and low self-esteem, and both have the same problem. The person with high self-esteem thinks much of themselves as opposed to others, and people with low self-esteem are think they ought to be higher than others and they live in the pain of not having the esteem they think they should have. Both are based on pride, which is thinking to highly of oneself. The person with high self-esteem looks at others as less than himself and is content because that is where he thinks he should be, the person with low self-esteem thinks they are lower than others but wishes, in fact is disparate, to be higher than others and so they despair. Both think too highly of themselves in that they have the false presumption that they should be higher than others. That they’re rightful place is to be high, and the only difference is whether they are where they should be or not.

The counter to this is to not think of oneself in a higher way than you should. There certainly is a place for confidence in the dignity we have in Christ. We are made in the image of God, we are saved by grace and being made into the image of Christ, we are gifted with great gifts to use for his service, there is dignity there but it does not amount to pride because there is an awareness that apart from God we have no value. In it only in our relationship with God that we obtain this value, otherwise we are dust. This is the relationship we all, in our sin, destroyed and thus deserve to be nothing. Only by God’s grace are we anything, and so while the Christian has dignity, it is not dignity in ourselves but in what God has made us. A piece of marble has not dignity apart from the hands of the sculptor, since no one goes to a museum to see a slab of rock. Clay has not dignity apart from the potter and is utterly useless mud by itself. So it is, we have no dignity or value apart from the grace of God, and this is the foundation of a Christian view of self. On the one hand we are bold in who we are in Christ, on the other we are humbled that apart from Christ we are less than dust and ash.

This is to think “with sober judgement.” The illustration of sobriety tells us that this is a dispassionate judgement; an objective one. This is to lay aside the feelings that puff us up or cause us to believe we should be puffed up and think with clarity about our true condition. Trails and sufferings often sober us up in this way, as it did for Job in Job 1:21

Job 1:21 ESV

And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Job saw with clarity his true self. He was naked without God, and all things come from him. When stripped away of his blessings he sees who he really is, and is humbled by that fact. When a Christian is in suffering, and the Lord has chosen not to take it away, this should be something we should seek. Perhaps the Lord, in his wise and loving discipline, is seeking to humble me by showing me who I am in a time of weakness.

Death also shows this. The same day the Queen died, 12 people in Canada died of opiode overdose. While the Queen was and still is held in high esteem, death in a sense equalizes her with drug addicts: we all have the same fate. We will all stand before God, who is no respecter of persons, and we will give an account without our position or money to status to save us. If you struggle with pride, meditate on your own death.

So, to think with sober judgement is to view ourselves with our dignity coming from God. Earlier in this epistle, Paul explained:

Romans 9:21 ESV

Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

Can the vessel for honourable use have pride over the vessel for dishonourable use? No! Because in the end, we are both clay and our dignity comes from the God who fashions us, not from ourselves.

The Application: Do this by considering yourself as part of the body, of faith equal with those who serve with gifts different than your own

With this in mind, we then take into account what exactly God has made in us and how it can be of service to the Church. Paul is nothing special except for the grace given him, and so we all should consider ourselves with sober judgement according the measure of faith that God has assigned.

There is debate over what the Apostle means by this. In context, however, it seems best to understand this as referring not to saving faith in Christ, but to the grace which manifests itself in different expressions of that same faith. That is, Paul is not comparing those with more faith against those with little faith, but rather all considering how their faith is moved to action in different ways, according to the different graces given to us. Some have faith expressed in preaching, others in service, others in giving, and so on. This is confirmed by Paul’s comment in verse 6, “having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.”

No member is less a part of the body than others, as Paul brings up this metaphor of a body working together in verses 4-5.

Pay special attention to “members with one another.” There is great mystery here. When a couple gets married, although they remain individuals they are no longer individual in the sense that they are not an island unto themselves, but part of something bigger which functions as one organism. A fingernail and an eyeball have very little in common themselves, but the DNA is the same because they are part of the same body. Although we may give more value to the eyeball than the fingernail, we cannot argue that an eyeball is more a part of the body than the fingernail is. In this sense, they are equal in their dignity. Since our dignity comes from Christ, although the role of the Apostle may be seen as greater than the role of an ordinary church member, both have equal dignity of calling themselves part of the body of Christ. One is not more a part of the body than the other.

Paul’s list of gifts here is by no means comprehensive, as he lists different gifts elsewhere. His point is to show the variety of functions that each member of Christ’s body provides, all with the same dignity that is found in Christ. The person who serves by calling the elderly or in fervent prayer can say with confidence that they are equally a part of the body of Christ as was Augustine, Spurgeon, Carson, or even the Apostles.

So for each gift is the exhortation to exercise it faithfully as faithfulness would show itself in each circumstance. A faithful Christian with the gift of generosity will show her faithfulness differently than the one who is gifted with teaching, though both display the same faith and are equally part of the body of Christ. Generally, the greater the gift (from a human perspective) the more humility needed. Numbers 12:3

Numbers 12:3 NIV 2011

(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)

Christ himself provides this example, making himself low and humble even though to him was given all authority and power, for he himself is our God. Phil 2:8

Philippians 2:8 ESV

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

We are only able to serve faithfully according to the grace given to us when we are able to think clearly about who we are in relation to Christ and his Church.

I titled this sermon “The Church-Minded Christian” because the humility which gives us the ability to serve faithfully only comes when we consider ourselves as part of the greater body of Christ. This is why it is impossible for someone to serve Christ apart from serving his Church. No organ can function alone, not a single one! Only in humble unity can we together form the coherent body of Christ.

Conclusion

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

While we are all different in our gifts given to us by the Spirit in faith, we have no need to compare ourselves because in the end, our dignity is equal being a part of the body of Christ. We will be judged by our faithfulness and not by the grandeur of our status. For those who are low, this invites you to stand up confident in who you are in Christ. For those who are proud, it forces you to humble yourself as you have no one over which you may stoke your ego. This is because, when considered seriously and soberly, our dignity is found not in the clay that we are, but in the fact that we are shaped by a gracious God.

Let us, then, take our eyes off ourselves and set ourselves about the tasks which we are assigned to by our gifts, and let us do them faithfully in worship to Christ. Let us examine ourselves carefully so that we may correct any false views of self we all at times tend to hold. Above all, let us turn our eyes upon Christ, of whose body we are a part and thus will all, whether ear or fingernail, experience the glory of eternity in him to whom we are forever bound in the covenant of his blood.