SPIRITUAL GIFTS: Daily Reading Plan #1
Romans 12:3-5
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
Romans 12:3–8 describes the first responsibility of every living-sacrifice Christian who worships the Lord. The church is like a body: Christ's body. Each Christian has a part to play using the specific spiritual gifts God has given to us. These gifts of grace provide all the power and ability we need to serve each other, but we must still do it, whether our gift is service, teaching, exhortation, mercy, or something else.
Paul says that we, as the collective group of Christians, are also a kind of body. We are Christ's body on earth, often referred to as "the church." We are countless different parts in many different places with vastly different jobs, but together we are, by analogy, one unified "being," a single entity with what should be a united purpose.
Paul writes something else about us as part of the body of Christ. None of us exists outside of the body. No Christian is an unattached Christian. We are all members of each other, connected to each other with the purpose of serving each other. This is what God intends to do with us on this side of eternity.
Reflection Questions
- What does this passage reveal about spiritual gifts?
- What do these verses cause me to do as a result?
