16. Pursue Love, & Earnestly Desire Spiritual Gifts - Fr. Michael Flowers 9.22.24

St. Aidan's Anglican Church, Kansas City - weekly talks

House Communities at Gift Giving (12:3-8) I entitled this section house communities at gift giving to emphasize the original context for sharing spiritual gifts and developing the relational culture of Christian community. Paul’s reciprocal pronouns, his “one another’s”, are the building blocks of his house churches. And Romans 12 mentions three of them. The context is small house churches as noted in Romans 16:3-5, across the Gentile world. “Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus… Greet also the church that meets in their home.” 12:3-5 Paul is beginning to describe what a transformed charismatic church might look like. He’s noted that transformation comes from renewing one’s mind in order to discern God’s will. He explains how to begin this renewal by addressing a necessary mindset, a self-perception. He uses a word for thinking four times. 3 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. He’s describing the mental pathway to achieving prudence, moderation, one of the cardinal virtues. ESV – sober judgment, thinking soberly about oneself, carries this idea. Such thinking is based in the mercies of God. He has to emphasize the attitude of humility because the gentile world considered it a weakness. He moves from humble self-assessment verse 16: Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly (a transformation beginning in one’s self-assessment trickling down to one’s social commitments (breaking through the mindsets of ethnic (Jew & Gentile), gender and class smuggery). This is an example of Christian transformation Paul has in mind. He tells each person not to think of themselves more highly than they out to think, but according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Measure? Is Paul inferring that people can have more of a quantity of faith than others? “I have more faith than you do!” To measure yourself by the amount of faith that God has given you? This understanding could foster precisely what Paul seeks to avoid (thinking more highly of oneself). If not quantity, then what? Perhaps Paul is saying the criterion of a realistic self-assessment is the standard of faith—knowing that one’s relationship to God is a matter of trust. But faith can grow, as he speaks of Abraham in Romans 4:20 who grew in his faith, giving glory to God. Faith is dynamic, able to stretch, grow, operate. And while all faith is a gift from God, there is a unique gift of faith mentioned in I Corinthians 12:9 which is a different manifestation of the Spirit than what we might call saving faith. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:2 reflects that “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” We began this series reflecting on the words of Jesus referring to faith in terms of size, the size of a mustard seed. In Matthew 17, the disciples come to Jesus having failed at exorcism. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” I don’t believe Jesus is referring to the gift of saving faith, but what Paul mentioned in I Corinthians 12 and 13… Paul refers to Jesus’ in this example - “… and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”