Romans 12 carries the warmth of God’s mercy and a challenge to be a living sacrifice. It also carries a warning.
“Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.” [vs 3-5 NLT]
The Gifts of the Spirit follow but we shouldn’t rush there just yet. We should look again at that sentence, “Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.”
Faith is the seedbed from which all the other gifts bloom. We are reminded by Paul not to think more highly of ourselves than we should, but to be humble and sober about what we are, what we have. In another letter, Paul asks the question, “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” [I Corinthians 4:7]
Everything, including the seedbed of faith in our hearts, comes from God. God has given us a measure of faith, and that is the foundation of all else. Any spiritual gift we might have, any talent, any ability comes from God. We have nothing of which to boast. And the principal motivation of everything we do as believers in Christ, must stem from the faith we have been given.
How can we consider ourselves any other way except soberly?