Sermon Transcript
Today’s reading is from Romans 12. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 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, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.
If prophecy, in proportion to our faith. If service, in our serving. The one who teaches, in his teaching. The one who exhorts, in his exhortation. The one who contributes, in generosity.
The one who leads, with zeal. The one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good.
Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you.
Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.
Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.
Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
If you’re new to Bridges, um, you may not yet know that we place a large emphasis on knowing one another, connecting with one another, welcoming, encouraging, supporting those around us, remembering what’s going on in each other’s lives, caring about it. It’s one of the reasons we say people matter. Our mission, which Nate said earlier, is to display people matter, truth matters, and the gospel is our only hope. That’s our mission: people, truth, gospel. The reason we place such a huge emphasis on people is firstly because the Bible does in passages like the one we just read.
They’re all over the place in the Bible, and so as we study the Bible, we encounter them frequently. But the other reason we keep circling back to these themes is because we believe that loneliness and isolation are major problems where we live, and we want to do something about it. The more that we have dug into this, the more that we have discovered that people lack deep relational connections. Now, most of us, you know, probably have associates, coworkers, a group we interact with. We might serve on a committee together in our club or something.
It’s not like all of us are hermits. That’s not what we’re saying. But at the same time, many of us don’t have what we call best friends, and we may not have had one of those since college, high school. You know, if we move, our neighbors may wave goodbye and hope the new neighbors aren’t noisy, but it wouldn’t really bother them that they will never see us again. They wouldn’t try to keep in touch.
Similarly, at work, if we were replaced by someone who could do the job just as well as us or even better than us, no one on the team would consider it much of a loss that we aren’t there anymore, which means we were never really valued for us. We were only valued for what we could do. And once we realized we can be replaced And the biggest reaction anyone will have is a shoulder shrug. That’s lonely. Our phones may have hundreds of contacts in them, but there isn’t anyone that we would call at 3 AM if we really needed something.
We don’t have a group who really knows us, who we can be completely transparent and vulnerable with, who knows our fears and insecurities, carries those with us. We don’t have those people, that’s lonely. And that’s a problem. It’s especially a problem here, but it is also a problem nationally. You may have heard the term loneliness epidemic.
There are national campaigns aimed at solving this crisis, because if people are lonely, we’ve found out it leads to all other kind of problems. There’s lower life expectancy, there’s mental health issues. So these national campaigns aim to organize you know, community events, festivals, and make sure seniors have transportation to get there, all of which is a great start. Because if people— for people to be connected to others, they need to be around others. Events are certainly needed.
But as you know, just because people show up at an event, it doesn’t automatically create deep relationships among the people who are there. In fact, we could keep showing up at the same place every week, week after week, like church, and never feel connected to anyone. So the national efforts to address loneliness, those are important, but there’s more to it than just what an event planner can organize. It takes intentionality on really everyone’s part who shows up at the gathering. So at Bridges, we’ve placed a huge emphasis on this, and to my delight, we’ve definitely made progress.
We hear from new people often how welcome, how welcoming they think Bridges is and how quickly they feel remembered and included. You’ve heard me point out before how long people choose to hang out on the patio after service, which didn’t used to happen. That’s incredible. You know, these days when I read an article about the loneliness epidemic, and there are an increasing number of those articles, When I read those articles, I think, you know, Bridges is doing something about that. We have made a dent.
We’re a bright spot of community and belonging. Now there’s more to do. There are more steps we need to take, and we’ll talk about some of those from our passage today. But I want to give ourselves a pat on the back. If we look in the rearview mirror and remember how it used to be, we have come a long way.
So great job, everyone. Today we’re in the 12th chapter of Romans. If you haven’t been with us the past several months, we’ve been studying the book of Romans. The first 11 chapters are really about the gospel, what Jesus has done for us, what He accomplished on our behalf. He removed our shame and guilt, gave us a future, provided us a worth that isn’t dependent on our performance.
So even in the midst of failure, we are still accepted. Failures won’t ruin us. In fact, God will take those failures and transform them so that they are used for our good. This is what the Gospel provides. It’s an unparalleled treasure, and Paul has talked about it for 11 chapters.
Then, in chapter 12, Paul begins with the word therefore, indicating what’s next after the 11 chapters. You know, since you’ve been forgiven, therefore, since you’ve been forever accepted, never to be rejected again, Therefore. Since you’ve been favored when you deserve to be cursed, therefore. Since God has given everything to you, therefore. So chapter 12 is not disconnected from the first 11 chapters.
Instead, chapter 12 is what’s next. And what is next is relationships. Since God has done something for us in our vertical relationship with Him, Therefore, it changes our horizontal relationships with others. And Paul hints from the very beginning of the passage that our horizontal relationships will look quite a bit different from many that we see in the world around us. He says, don’t conform to the pattern of this world.
Instead, be transformed, meaning what God has done for us will change how we interact with others, and it will deepen our relationships. It will heal divisions. It will bring us together with people who we may not have been together with otherwise. For many of us, this passage will be our next steps. For us as a church, these are great next steps.
If we want to do something about the loneliness around us or the loneliness that we experience ourselves, This is a roadmap. So as we study this passage, we’ll see 3 steps toward belonging and then how each one is grounded in the gospel, what Jesus has done for us. Um, how— that’ll be how each one connects back to the first 11 chapters. So 3 steps toward belonging and then how each one is grounded in the gospel. So first step toward belonging is rely on others.
Rely on others. The more that we believe we need others, the more connected to them that we will feel. You know, in our country, at least historically, we have romanticized the rugged individual, venturing out on your own, making something of ourselves by ourselves. It really, you know, it relates to the American frontier. It’s likely part of our personal family history.
Because basically all of us have someone in our family tree who immigrated to this country, perhaps very recently, who came here seeking opportunity. You know, the US is a pioneering spirit. Take the reins, bet on ourselves, build our own future. We have romanticized that narrative. We’re a very individualistic culture, and there are many positives of that, so many positives.
It fills us with drive and purpose. It creates an incredible work ethic, because if everything depends on us, then we’re motivated to get up and get moving. Nobody else is going to do it for us, and if an entire country gets up and gets moving, then hey, we accomplish a lot. That’s great. It’s really great.
But there’s a shadow side to that narrative. If we don’t depend on anyone else, we’re isolated. We might pride ourselves on being a lone wolf, but a lone wolf is alone, and that’s not good for us. Even wolves are meant to run in packs, and he would actually get further in a pack than by himself. And there is a correlation between relying on the group and feeling like we belong to the group.
There’s a correlation. Did you know that individualistic cultures like ours, we report more loneliness than collectivistic cultures. Collectivistic culture is hard for some of us to imagine, but for instance, it’s one where the norm is you ask your friend to give you a ride to the airport even if you can afford an Uber. Even if it’s 3 AM, you still call your friend because the norm is to rely on the community instead of yourself. It’s normal to watch each other’s kids, to help each other move, Redecorate, be in each other’s business.
You actually— those cultures, they want to go to the theme park on the busiest day with the longest lines because that’s when people are going to be there. You don’t want to do anything alone, right? And we might say, no thanks, no, I don’t need people in my life like that. Okay, and that’s fair. There are things collectivistic cultures can learn from individualistic cultures like ours.
But relational fulfillment isn’t one of them. The more we think, I am all I need, the more lonely we will be. Paul says, verse 3, no one should think more highly of himself than he ought. No one should think, I am all I need. Everyone should understand we are part of the whole and we need each other.
Don’t think more highly of yourself than than you’re not. And then he gives an analogy. He compares people in a church to parts of a body. He says, for just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function— I think we have this on a slide— so we in Christ, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. The idea being, right, a leg can’t think, I can make it on my own.
I can be a lone wolf. I’m all I need. Right? The leg can’t think that. That would be thinking more highly of itself than it ought.
It— the leg belongs to the rest of the body, and it needs the rest of the body. Likewise, we need each other, and needing each other is one way that we experience belonging. How do we need each other? Well, Paul gets specific. He lists various ways that we complete one another with different gifts that we bring to the table.
Speaking, serving, teaching, giving, you know, holding people to truth, exhorting, having mercy. And Romans 12 is not an exhaustive list of all the gifts that people can have. In other letters, Paul makes the same point with different lists of gifts. He includes other things. But the idea is we’re designed differently with different functions on purpose.
Those people who are unlike us They complete us. We need them, and we need them to be like they are. You know, people who are more creative probably need a taskmaster around them, and vice versa. People who move fast need people who slow down and ask questions. Cautious people need someone willing to take the leap.
Big picture people need detail-oriented people, and detail-oriented people need people— big picture people to pull them out of the weeds. Rule followers need innovators. Innovators need people who will protect them from chaos. Emotional people need calm, steady voices nearby. Calm, reserved people often need someone who helps them feel and express emotion.
Dreamers need skeptics. Skeptics need dreamers. Merciful people need truthful people. Truthful people need merciful people. That person who is different from us is actually healing us, making up for what we lack.
We need them. We ought to appreciate them like a leg would appreciate an ear for what it can’t do. But often our instinct isn’t appreciation. It’s criticism. You know, taskmasters will tell the creatives, why aren’t you like me?
You’re doing it wrong. You need to be more organized. But that only leads to disconnection and division. If you’ve been around Beth and me, you’ve probably noticed that we are not the same. She is the life of the party, and I am not.
She is super verbal and expressive, and I am not. She keeps track of all the details with the kids, and I do not, which is easy to lead to conflict, right? We could ask each other, why aren’t you like me? You’re doing it wrong. But what we’ve learned and what we sometimes achieve is seeing how we need the other person, right?
I need Beth to remember all the details, and she needs me so that she doesn’t stress over all the details. Our kids need her voice, which says, be careful, and our kids need my voice, which says, go for it, see what happens, right? We need each other. We need each other to be different, and when that clicks, we immediately feel more connected. But as long as we think you’re doing it wrong, you should be a leg like me, right?
That’s division. So wherever you’re experiencing, you know, division in one of your relationships— spouse, kids, parents, friends, roommates, work, church— all of us probably have some amount of division somewhere in our life. If Step toward belonging. If you can identify ways in which you need that person, you need that person to be the way they are, if you can identify that, you will immediately feel less divided. You will feel like you belong together.
And that’s one step toward belonging, is rely on others. Second step, elevate and empathize. Paul gives a whole list of practices, but to categorize them, elevate others and empathize with them. We will start with elevate, then we’ll see how empathy is really a type of elevation. Paul says, outdo one another in showing honor.
Contribute to the needs of the saints. Show hospitality. He instructs an over-the-top amount of affection, esteem, support for one another. Outdo one another. If you feel like you’re being too excessive in how much encouragement and support you give to those around you.
If you’re like, well, this is probably too much. If you think it’s probably too much, you might be just about getting close enough. It takes an over-the-top amount of elevation of others to have healthy relationships. You might be aware of research done by Dr. John Gottman, and he found that healthy, stable relationships have 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction. His original research focused on marriages, but other people have picked up his findings and applied it to every other setting— teachers, students, coaches, players, just about everyone.
And it’s consistent. Best relationships, 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction. 5 times more esteem, honor, praise, bending over backwards, serving the other person than any kind of correction, criticism, confrontation. Best relationships outdo one another, as Paul says. Now, if those are the best relationships, 5 to 1, what’s, what’s the ratio for relationships that are in trouble?
We might think if the best relationships have 5 positive interactions for only 1 negative, then we might assume troubled relationships would be the ones that are the exact reverse, you know, 5 negative for every 1 positive. But that’s not the case, because as you probably know, negative interactions carry a greater weight than positive interactions. Gottman found that if relationships tip just slightly negative, 5 negative for every 4 positive, they often dissolved. So a critical comment, a correcting comment, a why do you do it that way comment, an I’m upset with you comment— if there’s just a little bit more than that than the I value you, I appreciate you, you’re important, just a little more negative spells doom. And listen, for us in this area especially, we need to watch out for this.
We are especially prone to point out what is wrong, much more so than what is right, because— and I’ll lump myself in with this— many of us are engineering-minded, which means we naturally see problems. We are predisposed to recognize what is wrong so that we can do something about it. We are problem solvers, and the world needs people like that. But what problem solvers need to recognize about ourselves is if we aren’t careful, we will give more corrections than encouragements, and we will poison our relationships. So, problem solvers, talking to you.
And let me word it like this so that it codes in your brain correctly. Problem solvers, we may be the problem.
We may be the problem that needs solving in our relationships. Because the problem in our relationships might be the number of problems that we point out compared to the number of encouragements we give. The command of Scripture is outdo one another in showing honor.
Similarly, show hospitality, which would include making people feel invited, wanted, cherished, welcomed, and they’re not going to feel welcomed if we give them more criticisms than encouragements. That’s elevating others. Now empathizing with others. Paul says, weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice. Those are commands.
This is not optional for Christians. Put yourself emotionally where the other person is, which means putting their emotions ahead of your own. This is how it elevates them. So if they’re hurting, we slow down and hurt with them, even if we have other things to do. This is why Paul says, associate with the lowly, verse 16.
Even though their emotions will certainly be a disruption to our plans, it would be so easy to sidestep them and their problem. But if we do, we miss an opportunity for connection. And if we sidestep everyone, then where will we be?
Alone. So we weep with those who weep, we associate with the lowly, but we also rejoice with those who rejoice, which we might think is easier because who wouldn’t want to rejoice? But often it’s not easier. What if they got the promotion that we wanted? What if they got accepted into the school and we didn’t?
What if they landed a great opportunity, they’re excited about it, but they will now need to move and we will miss them when they’re gone?
We want to weep, but they are rejoicing. The command is put yourself in the back seat, which elevates them. Celebrate what has happened for them. If we do, it’ll deepen our unity with them. If we don’t, it damages the relationship.
I mean, think about when you were rejoicing. You got the job, the opportunity, but you had a friend who just seemed bitter and jealous about it. That didn’t make you feel closer to that person. It eroded the relationship rather than strengthened it. And if our pattern is, you know, be jealous of everyone else’s success, then we will erode all of our relationships and we will be alone.
So weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice. Third step toward belonging is repay blessings with, uh, or repay curses with blessings. Excuse me, repay curses with blessings. Here’s an uncomfortable truth: everyone you know will hurt you eventually. Everyone.
Because you’ve never met someone who isn’t a sinner, so you’ve never met someone who isn’t going to fail you in some way to some degree. The best people we know, if we know them long enough, they will hurt us somehow. And oftentimes the closer they are to us, the more it hurts when they hurt us. And when that happens, not if, when it happens, we have some options. We’ve been hurt, so we could hold a grudge, we could cut ties and run, we could get revenge, we could repay evil with evil.
Okay, we could do those things, but if we do, it’ll make the divide between us bigger rather than smaller. And if we develop the habit of, you know, cutting people out of our lives who hurt us, pretty soon we will have cut everyone out of our lives, and then we will be alone. But there is another way to respond when people hurt us. Instead of running away from them, we could run toward them. We could invest again.
We could elevate them, treat them with honor, respect, blessing. And this is what Paul instructs. He makes no bones about it. Verse 14, bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them.
Verse 17, repay no one evil for evil. Verse 19, never avenge yourself. Verse 20, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. Verse 21, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
I mean, Paul is clear. It’s don’t hold grudges. Don’t seek revenge. Bless people who hurt you. There is no ambiguity about what he’s saying.
But it is difficult to do. It is difficult to repay curses with blessings. And one of the reasons it’s difficult is actually our sense of justice. We don’t want people to get away with it. They’ve wounded us, so they should face a consequence, right?
They owe. They owe us. We want them to pay. We want to get even. That would be fair, we think.
So then we try to collect payment. You know, maybe we give them the cold shoulder until we believe they have served their sentence. Or maybe we actually seek revenge, hurt them as they hurt us. And while that instinct feels natural, it’ll make the problem worse, not better. I mean, if our friend hurts us and then in response we hurt our friend, it’s not like, oh, we’re friends again.
Even Steven, that’s fair. No, that makes the problem worse, not better. And now, you know, probably they feel that we have wronged them by taking our revenge. So now they may take revenge because they have a grievance against them. They feel it starts a cycle.
So what are we to do? They wronged us. Justice says they owe. But if we collect It doesn’t heal anything. So what are we to do?
How do we simultaneously address our need for justice but also move forward with that person? It seems mutually exclusive. If we make them pay, that’s probably the end of the relationship. We can’t move forward with them. On the other hand, if we move forward with them without making them pay, how do we satisfy our need for justice?
How can we have both? And the answer is what Paul says, is believe in a God of justice. Believe God is keeping count of all the wrongs and will deal with people according to their deeds. He says, verse 19, never avenge yourself. Never, never avenge yourself.
Leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. Paul says, just let God be the debt collector. Let him worry about that. Let God worry about collecting the debt that is owed to you so that you no longer need to attack those who hurt you. If you do, then you can move forward with them.
Miroslav Volf, who was a longtime professor at Yale, he lived through the Yugoslavian Wars where there had been terrible cycles of violence between like the Croatian side and the Serbian side. Entire towns burned, pillaged, people abused in just every way. And the world wanted it to stop. Stop this cycle of violence. Stop seeking revenge on each other.
Volf said the only way it could happen— and he saw this happen— is for one side to believe that God will hold the other side accountable. He said, you know, if the world police come in and tell these 2 warring sides, you guys just need to be nice, That’s not going to work. He says, imagine seeing your town burned, your wife, your sister, your daughter taken captive who you may never see again, and you assume she had a tragic end. And there’s whole towns that has happened to, and then somebody comes in and tells you, just let it go.
Volf said he witnessed that doesn’t work. Because it doesn’t address the need for justice. But what he saw among his own people in their hearts, among some of them, the way some of them laid down their arms was to believe God was keeping track. He will judge. He’s got it, so I don’t have to be the judge.
I don’t have to be the one to enforce justice. God will take care of it. And if that clicked with people, then they could move forward. They could repay evil with good. They could bless those who cursed them.
So there you go, 3 steps toward belonging: rely on others, elevate and empathize, repay curses with blessing. Now finally, how each of these connects to the gospel is, as always, the gospel is our only hope. Like we say at Bridges, the gospel is our only hope, because the gospel actually forms us into the type of people who live like this Who know that we need others, who elevate and empathize, who repay curses with blessings. We’ll take those one at a time, but very quickly. First, we need others.
The gospel shows us that because it begins with the reality that we cannot save ourselves. We cannot earn our acceptance with God. It was given to us by sheer grace. We absolutely had to have Jesus. There was no other way.
Without him, we were lost. We wouldn’t make it on our own. We needed rescue. And once we can admit, you know, I can’t make it on my own in my vertical relationship with God, it makes it much easier to admit I can’t make it on my own out in the world. I need other people.
I’m not everything. The gospel humbles us, helps us to rely on others, look outside of ourselves, not be self-sufficient. Second, elevate and empathize. This is exactly what Jesus did for us. He lowered himself in order to elevate us.
He consistently welcomed outsiders, honored the weak, drew near to the lowly. You know, the gospel is the story of the most important person in the universe making himself less in order to make us more. And when we see someone like him do that for someone like us, It changes us. We don’t need to worry about elevating ourselves because we’ve already been elevated by really the only one that matters. We can shower others with praise because we have already been showered with his praise.
You know, the saying is loved people love people. We have been loved, so we can love. We can spend everything on others because he spent everything on us. So we elevate and empathize with others. And finally, we repay curses with blessing, which is exactly how God treated us.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. You know, God did not wait until we were his allies before he blessed us. He blessed us when we were full of sin, resistance, and pride, when we had cursed him with our lives. That is when he gave us everything he had. And on the cross, instead of taking revenge, Jesus paid what we owe, right?
The gospel is the story of the offended one reconciling offenders back to himself at cost to himself. We see God— when we see that God didn’t hold a grudge against us, it’s difficult for us to hold a grudge against others. If we were received while we were still sinners How can we not receive those who have sinned against us? This is why the gospel is our only hope. It transforms proud people into humble people, self-focused people into sacrificial people, bitter people into forgiving people, all at once.
Because of the gospel, we know we need each other, we elevate each other, we absorb wounds that we give each other, and we move forward toward one another in grace. That’s what the gospel creates, and it’s exactly what a lonely world needs. It’s up to us to provide it for them. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for each other.
I pray that our hearts would be moved to see the blessing that one another is around us.
Lord, may, may we prioritize those around us. May we elevate and empathize with them. May we, may we appreciate our differences, rely on each other to provide what we lack, and may we always repay curses with blessings as you have done for us. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
