The Nuts and Bolts of Church
Text: Romans 12:9-21
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
February 23, 2025
Some years ago psychologists did a study on how members of 11 major symphony orchestras perceive each other. The study wanted to discover what the different musicians thought of other musicians with whom they rehearsed, played and performed.
They found that the percussionists were viewed as insensitive, unintelligent, and hard-of-hearing, yet fun-loving. String players were seen as arrogant, stuffy, and unathletic. The brass players were consistently described as being loud. Woodwind players came off fairly well. They were described as quiet and meticulous, though a bit egotistical.
Given the different and very divergent personalities and perceptions of the other people in the orchestras, one might wonder how could an orchestra ever come together to make such wonderful music? They determined that the answer was regardless of how those musicians viewed each other, they made their feelings and biases and prejudices subordinate to the leadership of the conductor. As they come under him or her, they play beautiful music together as one orchestra.
Whether it is an orchestra, an athletic team, or a company when different members can come together, work together and be as one it is a wonderful thing. It is no different with churches.
We take our cues from the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not merely the conductor of a symphony. He is our God who we worship, love and serve. We keep our eyes on him. We lift up our hearts to him. And when we keep Jesus as our focus, we look like his people should look.
The number one picture in the New Testament of the Bible that is used about the church is that of “the body of Christ”. Time and time again the church is referred to as a body because the way God has designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church. All parts are needed. You may be a hand. You may be a finger. You may be a foot, or an arm, or a blood vessel, or a ligament, or an ear. We are all different things. But together we are the body of Christ
And there is nothing like the body of Christ when it is working right.
The Bible never indicates that living our faith in God is an individual, private affair. No, everyone is a part of a tribe, a nation, a people, a church, a community. The Bible knows nothing of Lone Ranger Christianity. It assumes that we are in and active in a church where we receive and give, worship and serve with others. To call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ and not be a part of his body is a contradiction.
Romans 12 is one of the places in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul spells out the way the church is to work as a body. He writes,
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.
Paul uses the metaphor of a body to show how we all to belong to and depend on one another. And how we treat one another determines the health of a church, just like how we treat our bodies determines the health of our bodies.
So Paul gets into the nuts and bolts of being part of a church. He launches into a list how to treat one another within the Christian community, and how we treat those outside of the community.
You know, sometimes we in the church can get our heads in the clouds at little too much. Sometimes we read things in the Bible or hear them in church and we wonder what they have to do with us. Well Paul brings the hay down to where we goats can eat it in Romans 12. No one – no one! – needs to be sophisticated, theologically educated, or have a long history in the church to understand these words. This is where faith meets life, where the rubber hits the road. This is the nuts and bolts stuff of our faith. Let’s walk through each phrase.
Love must be sincere. It starts with love. In that well-known passage from 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says love is the greatest of all spiritual realities. Jesus listed loving God and loving others as the fulfillment of everything God wants of us. He said people will know that we are his disciples by our love for one another. So it is no wonder Paul tells the church he is writing to that love is to be sincere. To be sincere is to be real. It is to be unhypocritical. Not faked. Everything else in the verses that follow really are examples of how to live this love with sincerity and truth.
Hate what is evil, cling to what is good. The thing about love is that it can easily get reduced to sentimentality. But love distinguishes what is true from what is false. Again, 1 Corinthians 13, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth.” Love does not bless or go along with what is wrong. We condemn evil in whatever form it takes. In the Book of Common Prayer, the prayer for justice leads us to pray that love “makes no peace with oppression.” We can’t love God and be for what is not of him.
Be devoted to one another in love. “Love” comes up once again. Love with mutual affection. Really the term is “family love.” Love one another as if they were family. Care what happens to others.
Honor one another above yourselves. Figure out ways to lift up the other person. Be competitive in showing honor to others. Have you ever heard someone say, “I get too much encouragement, too many compliments, too much appreciation”? Is that true for you? We can probably never show enough honor to others.
Christian faith isn’t self-seeking. It’s other-seeking. We don’t exalt ourselves. And we don’t put down others. We lift up others. Put the spotlight on others. Show them appreciation. Applaud them. Tell them you hold them in high esteem.
Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. This means to live with desire and enthusiasm. Feed the fire of your spiritual fervor and serve the Lord with your time and energy. It can be hard to keep enthusiasm for Jesus all the time. It is like a fire that has to be tended. It needs fuel and oxygen to burn. Or as the young people say today, “Stay lit.” Feed your faith.
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. This is such a great verse. And it is a great triad. Each of these things works together.
Joyful in hope. Joy is not the same thing as happiness. Happiness is dependent on circumstances. Joy is deeper. Joy in the Bible is beyond the changes and circumstances of life. We can be going through something tremendously hard or painful, and still have joy. Being joyful in hope means believing that no matter what, God is with us, is present and will get us through.
Patient in affliction follows that because we may have to endure what is hard. Hope holds out. We have to have patient endurance because life often takes time.
The theologian and archaeologist Teilhard de Chardin wrote a memorable poem that begins, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.” He goes on to note that we are naturally impatient and want to get things over with. But God is doing something, forming us through his Spirit, through all we are facing. We have to give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading us. So we trust in the slow work of God. And that takes patience. Especially when we are going through something hard.
Which leads to the third part of that little verse: being faithful in prayer. The only way to keep joyful in hope and patient in affliction is to be faithful in prayer. Prayer makes endurance possible. Prayer keeps our eyes on the Lord. Prayer keeps us holding on to the Lord. Prayer engages us in the battle between the world and the Spirit. God doesn’t promise to exempt Christian from hard things, but he does promise to be with us in them. Prayer is to our souls what eating and brushing our teeth are to our bodies. It has to be done regularly.
Romans 12 goes on…
Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. If you see another in your church who has a need, share what you have with them. It might be financial, but it might be time. It might be a word of encouragement. It might be a listening ear. It might be a ride to church. We don’t keep what God has given us to ourselves.
Practice hospitality. Churches have the opportunity to do this every Sunday. We welcome the guest with a handshake, word of greeting, conversation. We help people find their way here. The ministry of hospitality can never be underestimated.
Fourteen hundred years ago, a man named St. Benedict organized a number of monasteries. He wrote a rule that all in those monasteries were to live by. One of the things in the Rule of St. Benedict is that every person who comes through the doors of their communities are to be welcomed and treated as if they were Jesus Christ. Rich or poor, attractive or not so much, important or lowly, aggressive or sweet as can be. Welcome all as Christ. What if churches took that seriously?
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Boy, that’s tough. It echoes what our Lord Jesus Christ said when he said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” Man, I want to be better than a tax collector. And it isn’t just be quiet and don’t hit back. We are told to “bless” those who make life hard for us. This takes deep inner strength. It is not our default setting. It takes a heart controlled by the Holy Spirit. Paul comes back to this in a few verses so hang on to this.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Is someone celebrating? Has someone had something great happen to them? Rejoice with them. Is someone sad? Grieving? Mourning? Join them in that. Be aware of what others are going through. And stand with them.
Live in harmony with one another. Psalm 133 says, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” Division, rivalry, and enmity absolutely destroy a church. Harmony complements. We all have different personalities, backgrounds, social status, gifts, abilities and views. Harmony is when those are blended together under the Lordship of Jesus Christ for everyone.
Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Snobbery is never Christian. Be able to talk with, be at ease with and have genuine relationship with those who may not be as high or valued in the eyes of others. This phrase can also be translated, “give yourselves to humble tasks.” Sometimes it’s our job to reach for the plunger.
Paul writes to not repay anyone evil for evil. Living at peace with everyone as far as it is possible. Not taking revenge but leaving vengeance to God.
When we come up against the jerks of the world we don’t repay them with our own version of “jerk-ness.” We don’t seek revenge. We leave it to God.
When the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was beaten, jailed, his family threatened, his home firebombed he still said that a true leader “is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. If every Negro in the United States turns to violence, I will choose to be that one lone voice preaching that this is the wrong way.”
I have always kept in mind those words about living at peace with everyone as far as it depends on you. Sometimes we can’t live at peace with people. Sometimes they just aren’t interested in reconciliation. Sometimes the danger is too great. It says “as far as it depends on us.” We do all we can but then may have to walk away.
Paul wraps up this nuts and bolts list of how we live the Christ-filled life with “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Part of the victory of the Christian life is that we don’t become like the person or who is doing evil to us. We don’t let evil get the best of us. We overcome with good.
There is a parable of a holy man who was engaged in his morning prayer time under a tree whose roots stretched out over the riverbank. During his meditation he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. He crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him. Someone watching came along and said to the holy man, “Don’t you know that’s a scorpion, and it’s in the nature of a scorpion to want to sting?” To which the holy man replied, “That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and must I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?”
During one of the bitterest moments of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said a kind word about the South. A shocked bystander asked how he could do this. Lincoln said, “Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
All of these things Paul writes about happen as our hearts are filled with Jesus Christ. When we give the Holy Spirit room, we will find we become more like him and less like what this world – and right now our nation - tells us we are to do and be.
So many people have become skeptical of churches. They see people claiming Christ and acting very contrary to him. But the stuff Paul writes about here in Romans 12 demonstrates a compelling life. They are the things that happen when the people of a church are working right. And, as one pastor said,
“There is nothing like the local church when it’s working right. Its beauty is indescribable. Its power is breathtaking. Its potential unlimited. It comforts the grieving and heals the broken in the context of community. It builds bridges to seekers and offers truth to the confused. It provides resources for those in need and opens its arms to the forgotten, the downtrodden, the disillusioned. It breaks the chains of addictions, frees the oppressed, and offers belonging to the marginalized of this world. Whatever the capacity for human suffering, the church has a greater capacity for healing and wholeness.
Still to this day, the potential of the local church is almost more than I can grasp. No other organization on earth is like the church. Nothing even comes close.”
Prayer: Gracious God, we ask for these things to be in our lives and in our churches so that we will live as people of the Lord Jesus Christ. May love be sincere, and nurture how we treat and live with one another so that we will look like your people and bring health to your body.
Send your Holy Spirit to make this reality. Amen.