Paul discusses our self-estimation and then ties that to certain gifts. Dr. Sproul then discusses the relationship of these various gifts to the church and whether the supernatural gifts listed continue. He then considers the apostolic gifts and defines prophecy and how it is used today.

We are going to continue with our study of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome. We are now in the twelfth chapter, following the first eleven chapters, which were devoted to the content of the gospel. Now, we have the Apostle’s practical application that follows from our understanding of that gospel. Today, I will be reading Romans 12:3–8. I would ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.

The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Again, our Father, as we undertake the task of interpreting this text that You have given to us through Your Apostle by the supervision of the Holy Ghost, we ask for Your aid to illumine the meaning of it to our minds and open our hearts to embrace it in its fullness. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Compliments and Criticisms

Several years ago, I met with a consultant, and he asked me some unusual questions. He asked that I take out a piece of paper and number it from one to ten. I thought a pop quiz of some sort was coming. He said to me, “What I’d like you to do is write down on this side of the paper the ten most meaningful compliments you have ever received.” He said, “I want you to write down what the compliment was, how old you were when you received it, and who gave it to you.”

Then the consultant said: “Don’t worry about being too meticulous. You don’t have to unduly tax your memory. If it makes it simpler, just write down the first ten compliments that cross your mind.” When I was finished with that, he asked me to turn the page over and write down the ten most painful criticisms or insults I had ever received, how old I was, and who it was that gave them. That simple exercise, which I would commend all of you to do on your own time, was exceedingly revealing to me.

What stood out in the list of compliments was that two out of ten came from the same person: my eighth-grade English teacher. Had this consultant started his analysis not with this exercise but said, “Write down the hundred people who have most influenced you in your life,” I never would have thought to include my eighth-grade English teacher among them. But when he asked for compliments, I included her twice, and the one that first came to my mind took place when I was in the eighth grade.

A little background: I went to the same elementary school from first through eighth grade, and we always had art class. In art class, we were given projects to do, and at the end of the project, the teacher would select eight or ten of the students’ projects and post them on the bulletin board for all to see. In the eight years of my tenure in art class, I had the dubious distinction of never once having anything I created placed on the bulletin board. As you can see, I did not have a very strong self-image about my artistic ability.

In eighth grade, we had an assignment in English class where we were asked to write a one-page descriptive essay. I wrote mine, turned it in, and waited for it to be returned the next day. Instead of simply returning the papers, the teacher stood up in front of the class and said, “Before I return this assignment to you, I want to take a moment to read one of them to the class.” To my utter astonishment, she read my essay.

Then, dramatically, the teacher turned around and walked to the bulletin board, and with a thumbtack affixed my essay to the cork. She said, “This deserves to be here because it is a work of art.” After class, I walked up to the bulletin board to admire this tremendous achievement. She had written “A+” on the top of the page, and then on the bottom, “R.C., don’t ever let anybody tell you that you can’t write.”

Do you have any idea how many people have tried to tell me that over the last forty years? But I took that woman’s compliment to heart, and I trusted in it. This is the thing about true compliments: they are different from flattery. A true compliment is one that we believe and trust in because it comes to us from someone that we regard with a certain authority. So, this woman’s generous compliment became a part of my life story.

If you were to look at somebody’s page of the ten most important compliments they had ever received, and you noticed your name on the paper next to one of those top compliments as the one who gave it, what would that mean to you? You would think, “Wow, that comment I made to that person was one of the ten most affirming things that they had ever heard in their life?”

Then there is the other side of it. Imagine if you turned the page and saw the ten most painful, cutting insults or criticisms someone had received in their lifetime, and found your name included on that list. That would certainly be a terrible thing to discover, would it not?

Sober Self-Esteem

What does this have to do with the text of Romans? We live in a culture that is obsessed with self-esteem. It has become almost cultic to develop a good self-image. A few years ago, an international mathematics test was administered to children from ten different nations, including the United States. The test had two parts. The first part of the examination had to do with mathematical competency, and the second with the student’s feeling of self-esteem with respect to his or her performance.

Two ironies stood out. First, the Korean students were last in their estimation of their own performance, but first in actual competency. This is because, along with the rigorous pursuit of excellence in mathematics, the Korean students were also taught principles of humility.

Conversely, and to our national shame, the American children scored tenth, or last, in mathematical competency, but they were number one in self-esteem. They had a high view of their competency despite their miserable performance. We see that self-esteem is as important as it is because we are not to brutalize people by tearing them apart with unnecessary criticisms and insults, yet we can do equal damage by giving people a higher opinion of themselves than they should have.

This is how the Apostle begins this segment of Romans 12: “For I say”—he does not just say it on his own, simply out of his own background, but “through the grace given to me.” The Apostle is saying, in effect: “I’m writing to you as an Apostle. I’ve been gifted by God for that calling for which I have no merit, and I still count myself the chief of sinners, but by the grace of God I have been called to be an Apostle of Jesus Christ. You are part of my Apostolic concern. I want you to understand that what I am about to say to you is coming out of that grace that the Lord has bestowed upon me.”

Herein is the admonition: “I say . . . to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly.” To all those in our midst, the Apostle makes this admonition: “Don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought to, but let your evaluation, self-analysis, and estimation be done soberly.”

Unfortunately, in English, Paul is juxtaposing the idea of “to think too highly” with “to think soberly.” We cannot translate into English the play on words that is present in the Greek. “To think soberly” is the same Greek word as the first “to think,” but with a different prefix. Paul is not talking about an intellectual enterprise or an analysis of our skills, ability, and status. Rather, he connects the cognitive aspect of thinking in the text with the aspect of affection.

Paul is not talking about estimation so much as he is esteem. He is saying, simply: “Don’t esteem yourself too highly. Don’t esteem yourself above the level that you ought. Don’t get carried away with affection for yourself, but let your self-estimation be done cogently, soberly, and carefully.”

Analyzing Your Gifts

There are many applications we can draw from this text. When the Apostle calls us to think soberly in our evaluation of ourselves, particularly with respect to our abilities, he is putting a tremendous responsibility on us. Young students come to me often and ask: “How do I know if I’m called to the ministry? How do I know if I should accept the office of deacon in the church? How do I know if I’m qualified to be an elder?” Note that Paul is giving this practical instruction in the context of the church.

To those who are looking for a vocation in the ministry, I say: “First of all, before you think about the glory and drama of the ministry, you need to sit down and have a sober analysis of your gifts. Do you really have what it takes to be a minister? Do you have what it takes to be a deacon? Do you have what it takes to be an elder? Do you have what it takes to be an engineer? Do you have what it takes to be a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker?”

One of the good things that we get from the secular world is psychological testing and profiles to see whether we have the necessary equipment to enter a certain vocation. In my time teaching seminary, I have seen lots of people who come to seminary with stars in their eyes about going into the ministry. You wonder who encouraged them to come in the first place, because they obviously do not have the most rudimentary gifts required for the service of God in this particular vocation. Perhaps someone has flattered them, or they have flattered themselves, because along the way, their evaluation was not a sober one. When that happens, people are doomed to failure, frustration, disappointment, discouragement, and sometimes lifelong depression.

I have said elsewhere that in the United States each year, sixteen thousand clergy demit the ministry. Some do so for moral reasons, but most do so because they deem their job as a bad fit for their abilities. That is a dreadful experience for a person to have. It starts because we have been intoxicated, rather than sober, with our own self-esteem.

Church Unity

Paul is giving this direction because there are particular problems that he anticipates in the church at Rome. The closest follow-up to this instruction in Romans 12 is found in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian community. That community was torn apart by strife, where everyone was elevating their own gifts and offices over everyone else. In the church at Corinth, there was an ongoing battle for power and status. That can happen in any church. If that can happen in a first-century church, it can certainly happen in our churches today.

Both to the Corinthians and to the Romans, Paul uses one of his favorite metaphors for the church. He sees the church as a body—a body that is made up of many functions and many parts, where each part needs the help of the others. Elsewhere Paul says, “Can the eye say to the ear, ‘I have no need of you?’” But in this unity in diversity, grace is given to everyone in the church, and everyone in the church has a role to play. We are not to despise the roles that other people play, nor are we to elevate our own roles as the end-all and be-all of the life of the church.

Here is how Paul spells it out to the Romans: You are not to think of yourself more highly than you ought, “but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.” Paul says elsewhere, “Were we not all baptized into one Spirit?” One thing that troubles me about the awakening to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the church today is the persistent idea that some believers are gifted by the Holy Spirit while others are not.

Every Christian has the Holy Spirit, such that you cannot be a Christian unless God the Holy Spirit regenerates your soul and dwells within you. But apart from the Spirit’s work of regeneration in the life of the Christian, the Spirit also distributes gifts, or abilities, and every Christian has been gifted by the Holy Spirit.

One of the most important things the church can do is to help you find what your gifts may be, so that we may all work together for the common task of Jesus’ church, “for as we have many members in one body”—diversity and unity—“but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.”

The Pastor’s Task

Let me speak in parentheses for a moment, candidly and personally. Some years ago, when I was leading two different Bible studies, with some people common to both, some folks came to me with the hare-brained idea to start a church, and they asked me if I would be their pastor. I laughed. I said: “Wait a minute. I’ve got a day job, and I can’t be involved full-time as a pastor.” So, I said no.

These people persisted, and they came again and said: “Look, we don’t want you to be a pastor in the traditional sense. We don’t expect you to do hospital calls, counseling, and all of that. All we want is for you just to preach for us, and we’ll hire Burk Parsons to do everything else.”

I thought, “I don’t know if that would really work.” But I knew that there was something missing in my ministry, and I knew that it was having a pulpit where I could be with the same people week in and week out. So, after much discussion, prayer, and consideration—and I hope, a sober analysis of my limitations—we agreed to do that. That is how Saint Andrew’s Chapel was born all those years ago.

Since then, I have spent much time with pastors from all over the country at pastors’ conferences, and now I have an ability to hear their cries in a way I was not able to before. One of the biggest cries that they make all the time is that they are expected to be a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. They are expected to be administrators. They are expected to be statesmen. They are expected to be psychological counselors. They are expected to be biblical experts, theologians, preachers, teachers, and so on.

We need reformation in the church in terms of the church’s expectation for their minister. The number one task of the minister is the preaching of the Word of God, the feeding of the flock. I say to these young men: “Ninety percent of your time should be involved in preaching and teaching. God hasn’t called you to be a psychological counselor. He hasn’t called you to be a brilliant administrator. He’s called you to preach the Word and feed the sheep.”

I am not trying to take the model that I have at Saint Andrew’s and impose it on everyone else, but what I once thought was an aberration I soon discovered is the model that the church should have. The pastor should be free to spend his time preaching and teaching because what we need more than anything else is to be nurtured in the Word of God. Everyone has a task. We are members of one body, but do not all have the same function, “so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.”

The Gift of Prophecy

Paul says, “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them.” Is that not a strange admonition? If God has given you a gift, He has not given it to you to waste. He has not given it to you to set on the shelf. He has not given you a gift to bury in the ground. If God has given you a gift, He expects you to use it.

The admonition is simple. If God gives you the gift of teaching, what should you do? Teach. If you have the gift of preaching, preach. If the gift of evangelism, evangelize, and so on. But let us look specifically at the gifts that Paul mentions.

“Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy.” I have to confess, I stumble a little on this verse. This is probably the toughest part of this section of Romans 12, because what does Paul have in mind when he talks about the gift of prophecy?

Some churches have no hesitance to interpret this text. They say, “The gift of prophecy refers to the immediate, supernatural, Holy Ghost-endowed ability to interpret tongues and to make predictions of the future today, just as prophets in the Old Testament did.” Then you come down the street to our church, and we struggle with that because there is a great debate around whether the supernatural gifts of the Apostolic age ceased with the death of the last Apostle, or whether they persist to this day.

Being one of those who believes that the gift of Apostleship was only for the first century and was not capable of being passed on to the next generation, I often think that this gift of prophecy that Paul describes only describes the immediate time of the Apostolic age. But there are other problems involved.

In the Old Testament, the supreme agents of revelation were the prophets. If you look at the New Testament counterpart to the Old Testament prophet, it is not the New Testament prophet, but it is the New Testament Apostle. There is a parity between the Old Testament prophet and the New Testament Apostle. Both are authoritative agents of revelation. Yet, Paul is speaking about the gift of prophecy, which he obviously distinguishes from the gift of Apostleship.

One of the ways scholars have looked at this is to make a distinction between the term Prophet with a capital P and the term prophet with a lowercase p. The same thing is done with the term Apostle. In the New Testament, the term Apostle describes an office, referring to those who were selected by Christ and endowed with His authority, like Peter, Paul, and John. At the same time, the whole church was involved in the Apostolic mission of spreading the Word of God to all nations. In that sense, every member was an apostle with a little a. The same thing could be said about the office of prophet.

The Prophetic Preaching of the Word

Let us look first at the primary task of the prophet in the New Testament. The primary task of the prophet, in New Testament terms, is to function as an interpreter of the Word of God. Although we like to think of the prophets in the Old Testament as those who predicted the future, what we call foretelling, their primary task was not predicting the future but forthtelling, communicating the Word of God to the people.

The prophets were God’s prosecuting attorneys to a covenant community that had broken its vows. They were called to interpret God’s Word to the people. In like manner, in the New Testament, the lowercase p prophet is one who is gifted in interpreting or expositing the Word of God. What we could substitute here, in contemporary terms, is the office of the preacher. It is the preacher who fulfills this task of interpreting and expositing the Word of God.

You could also add those “lowercase prophets” in the first century who had, for the time being, an individual, special anointing by the Holy Spirit, but I will leave that for another time. What continues to this day is that the role of the prophet, in interpreting the Word of God and expounding it to the people, is the primary task of the preacher.

What does that mean? If your vocation is to be a preacher, then what is Paul saying to you? “Quit messing around and start preaching. Quit coming to the pulpit on Sunday morning with your latest analysis of the culture or your agenda for entertainment and trying to turn the church into an ecclesiastical Starbucks. You are here to interpret the Word of God and expound it to your people.”

As I have told you before, when Paul gave his final message to Timothy, the last injunction he said was, “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2). So, if you have the gift of preaching, you have, with that gift, the awesome responsibility of preaching the Word of God.

Be Content with Your Gift

Paul continues by saying that if our gift is for ministry, “let us use it in our ministering.” What is principally in view in the text is the ministry of the deacons, the ones who serve, take care of the poor, and deal with orphans and widows. There are certain people who have a servant’s heart. There are certain people whom God gifts to be deacons. It is a marvelous gift in the church.

No church can be a healthy church without a heavy commitment to service and to taking care of the oppressed, the poor, the lonely, and the widow. It is not just preaching the Word of God. Remember, in the Apostolic community, the Apostles were set apart so that they could preach and not be encumbered with other tasks, and deacons were appointed to take care of the needs of the people.

But not all the deacons were content with being deacons. They wanted to establish the policy. They wanted to rule the community. They wanted a higher status than that of servants. But that’s not what God established. If God gives you the gift of being a deacon or a servant, then be a deacon.

When I preached on Isaiah 6, I gave a brief overview of the history of the monarchy of King Uzziah, who was crowned when he was sixteen years old and reigned for fifty-two years in Jerusalem. His monarchy was marvelous for the most part because he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. Then, in his later years, his status went to his head. He was not satisfied with being king. He wanted to be a priest, too.

Uzziah went into the temple and tried to offer the offerings, and the priests were horrified. When they tried to stop him, Uzziah went into a wild rage, screaming at the priests. At that moment, God struck him with leprosy. He died alone, cut off from the temple, cut off from the royal house in shame and disgrace. Why? Because he was not content with the office that God had given to him.

Dear friends, this happens in every church, in every age, and in every part of the world. Paul is saying: “Don’t let it happen here. Find out what your gift is, then exercise your gift. Don’t be jealous of other people’s gifts, and don’t try to elevate your gift over everybody else.”

Over my forty years in the ministry, I have seen this again and again. You see people that God has gifted with evangelism, and with that gift has come a passion. They eat, drink, and sleep evangelism. I have heard many of these people say: “If you’re not doing evangelism, I wonder if you’re really a Christian. Why should the church spend time in education? What matters is winning souls, not learning doctrine, not studying the Word of God, but saving the lost.”

In like manner, those whom God has gifted with a heart filled with compassion for the poor and for those who suffer in the inner cities do their job well. Sometimes they will say, “If you’re not in the inner city, you’re not really doing the work of Christ.”

If God gives someone the gift of teaching and a zeal for learning and communicating truth and doctrine—and I include myself in that category—we have a tendency to say: “What’s wrong with these people? Why don’t they care about this? Why do they care about evangelism? What good is it if we evangelize people but don’t teach them anything so they remain spiritual infants forever? Don’t they realize that there are a thousand evangelistic groups but no one doing the follow up of grounding people in the Word of God?”

That is how many teachers think from time to time. They want to elevate their office as the one that really matters. That is human nature. The eye wants to say to the ear: “I don’t need you. Ears don’t help me see anything more clearly than I see already.” The ear says: “I don’t have to see it; just let me hear it. Who needs the eye?” How foolish that would be in the function of a human body.

The Gift of Giving

Paul continues, “If prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation.” Here is one I love: “He who gives, with liberality.” Everyone has the obligation to give. But some people have the gift for it. There are people who not only give, but give generously. They give beyond what is required. They give liberally.

We remember the biblical statement that the Lord “loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7). Who wants to get a gift from someone who is hanging on to it? Who wants to get a gift from someone who will take it back at any second? Who wants to get a gift from a sourpuss, who cannot stand to have his money separated from him? God does not want your gifts if that is how you feel about giving.

I respond to this text for a reason. I grew up in a home where the most generous person I have ever known was my father. My father was relatively affluent and extremely blessed financially before his years of debilitating illness took that away. In the meantime, if he saw someone in need, he would reach into his pocket. He would not give a quarter or a dollar; he would give lavishly.

I watched that as a boy. What I never saw was a selfish spirit. I saw a man who loved to use what God had given him for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of his neighbor. I had so much respect for that. I realize now, that was a gift. Not everyone has it. But it is a wonderful gift, and it is how churches are able to accomplish what they do. It is because there are people who are liberal, not in their theology—that never accomplishes anything—but in their giving.

The Gift of Leadership

Paul continues, “. . . he who leads, with diligence.” I have told the story of when I was in Germany on a tour of the Reformation. We had been to Wittenburg, Erfurt, and different places of importance in Luther’s life. We went to Worms and examined the spot where the Diet of Worms had been assembled. We had a break for lunch, and then we were told to return to where the buses were parked.

Some people went in one direction, and others went in another. I was with a group of about fifteen people who had lunch in one of the town squares. We finished our lunch, and I could not remember how to get back to the bus. But there was a girl in our group whose name was Mary. She was wonderful. She said, “I know where to go.” All you had to do to be a leader was know the next step, and Mary knew the next step, so we all got in line behind Mary, and she started marching with confidence back toward the bus.

I did not recognize anything familiar, so I said, “Mary, are you sure that this is the right way to the bus?” She said, “Yes, R.C., I’m sure.” She kept going. Then she stopped and said, “You know, I’m always sure, but seldom right.” Mary had not done her due diligence. She needed to spend some time with a map.

When God gives the gift of leadership, the one who leads must know where he is going if others are to follow. He has to do his due diligence. So, Paul says, if you have the gift of leadership, do it with diligence.

The Gift of Mercy

“. . . he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” Is that not a strange conjunction? Have you ever received mercy from someone who looked at you sternly and said, “All right, I’ll let you slide”? You received the mercy, but you felt the wrath of the person who gave you mercy. Paul is saying that is not the way mercy works. When we receive the mercy of God, we receive it from a heart that is glad to give it.

To be gifted in mercy is a wonderful thing. It is needed among the people of God just as much as the preaching of the Word because the Word tells us that there is a love that covers a multitude of sins.

There are people in every congregation who are nitpicky. They want to make an issue out of everything with which they disagree. They want to exercise church discipline against any peccadillo that has been committed by a member of the congregation. They have no sense of charity, mercy, or grace.

Beloved, we exist by grace. We cannot do anything apart from the tender mercy of God. If you have been gifted with the quality of mercy, it is never to be strained. It is to be dispensed with cheerfulness.

The Communion of Saints

Paul is mapping out what it means for the church to be the communion of saints. What does the word communion mean? Com- is a prefix that means “with.”Unio means oneness: “With oneness.” That is the idea of the communion of saints. For there to be a communion of saints, there first has to be a plurality. There have to be many, but the many are united.

That union works like this: If I am a Christian, then supernaturally, I am now in Christ. And if I am in Christ, Christ is in me. But the relationship that I enjoy with Jesus is not simply a unilateral relationship. It works like this: If you are in Christ and I am in Christ, if I am joined in union with Jesus and you are joined in union with Jesus, what does that say about our relationship to another? If you and I participate in the union with Christ, then we have a supernatural bond, a union among ourselves that flows out of Christ Himself. If you do not like me, like me for Christ’s sake, because I am in Him, and you are in Him, and we will be with each other forever. That is the communion of saints, warts and all. Let us pray.

Father, we thank You that, though You have saved each one of us as an individual, the moment You saved us, You put us into a corporation, into a body, which is Your church. Thank You for the wonderful gifts of grace that You have given. We pray that You would give us a sober evaluation and esteem of the gifts and offices that You have distributed among Your people, that we ought not to think too highly of ourselves and yet not to be filled with a false sense of humility and think too lowly of ourselves, such that we would despise the gifts that You have given. But let us esteem the gifts that You have given, not only to us, but to all those who labor in Your body the church. Thank You, Lord, for tying us together in Yourself. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.