Embracing Humility in Our Spiritual Gifts

"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 one of another." [00:36:44]

"We need to address the issue of humility whenever we're thinking about our giftedness. And there are certain Christians who like to talk about their giftedness and to tell you what their particular gift is. And the tendency in such circumstances is always pride and boasting and it draws attention. It almost inevitably draws attention to yourself, and how you are different from the person to whom you are speaking, your self-achievement, how useful you are, how talented you are, how the church needs you, how blessed the church is to have you." [00:36:44]

"Paul is a man, above everything else, who has tasted the power of the grace of God. Now, he has dealt with this majestically, of course, in this epistle to the Romans; the doctrine of justification by faith alone, by grace alone, apart from the works of the law. You remember what he said? 'Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.' 'Naught have I gotten but what I have received; grace has bestowed it and I have believed; boasting excluded, pride I abase; I'm only a sinner saved by grace.'" [00:58:04]

"He was a blasphemer. He was a persecutor of the Christian church. You must understand that this man almost brought the early church to the very edge of extinction. He was within an inch of the church's life of snuffing it out entirely. He hated Christ. He regarded Christ as a blasphemer. That Christ claimed to be the Messiah was nothing short of blasphemy. And then on the Damascus Road, his complicity in the stoning of Stephen. He may not have lifted the stone himself, but they brought their garments and laid them at his feet. They did it at his bidding. He was responsible for it." [00:58:04]

"Every night as he went to sleep, he would think to himself, 'Grace came to me. I deserved, I deserved hell and damnation for what I did. But the risen Jesus appeared before me saying, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?"' Well, he was persecuting Stephen, but he was persecuting Jesus. And grace came to him. He might have raised the matter of the fact that he was an apostle, the greatest apostle, superior to John and Peter and Jude and James." [00:58:04]

"He could roll out his achievements. He could say to these Roman Christians, 'Do you want to talk about gifting? Well, I've written the epistle to the Romans.' People are going to study it for the rest of the existence of this world and beyond. People are going to say about it, even secular people are going to say about it, 'It's the greatest letter that has ever been written.' There are hundreds, possibly thousands of commentaries on Romans, and still, they are turning them out." [00:58:04]

"The point is that when you realize the nature of grace, it determines how you think about yourself, and you think about yourself not too highly. You think about yourself, not with conceit. And we've just heard the citation of Philippians chapter 2, that extraordinary Christological poem that Paul employs, often referred to as the Carmen Christi, the song of Christ, 'Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself.'" [00:58:04]

"Now, pride, that's the first thing, but, secondly, we are one body in Christ with many different parts. Verses 4 and 5, we are one body, '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 one of another.' Now, the church is the body of Christ, that's a Pauline phrase. And it's a Pauline phrase that he uses in three of his epistles, 'The body of Christ.'" [00:58:04]

"And what Paul wants to do is that before we talk about gifts, and before we can talk about people having particular gifts and different gifts and different levels of gifts, and some have one gift and others have ten gifts, before we can even go there, we need to talk about humility. We need to remember grace. But we also need to remember the unity of the one body that is the church; the unity of the body." [00:58:04]

"This was such an important truth at the time of the Reformation. This was such an important truth for Luther, the doctrine of vocation, that the man or woman who sweeps the floor has a gift, and that gift can be celebrated for God. That was not true in medieval times. We are members one of another. Fellow Christians who may have greater gifts than we do are equally members of the one body. And Paul wants us to understand that as foundational before he talks about the gifts themselves." [00:58:04]

"So, what have we seen? That when Paul begins to think about individual gifts, 'Do I have this gift? Do I have that gift?' And when some gifts seem to be more important than other gifts, or more public than other gifts, or more demonstrable than other gifts, he wants to remind you of the grace of God. That whatever gifting we may have, it is all by grace because the whole of the Christian life from beginning to end is of grace." [00:58:04]

"When the great Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China and the founder of the China Inland Mission, and he was speaking one time at a Presbyterian church in Melbourne in Australia. And the moderator, it was the general assembly, and it was meeting in Melbourne of a Presbyterian denomination, and they had invited Hudson Taylor to come and speak. And the moderator was using all kinds of grandiloquent terms and introducing Hudson Taylor as their illustrious guest. And Taylor stood on the podium quietly, and said, 'Dear friends, I am a little servant of an illustrious Master.'" [00:58:04]