Chapter # 12 Paragraph # 2 Study # 3
November 3, 2019
Humble, Texas
(022)
1769 Translation:
4 For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office:
5 So we, [
being] many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
1901 ASV Translation:
4 For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office:
5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
I. Paul's "For" Signals "Explanation".
- A. At issue: the "thought" required by Paul is that "God has distributed 'a measure of faith' to each believer".
- 1. This, according to Paul, is "right thinking" and extremely "necessary" to keep arrogance at bay.
- 2. This, though it seems to lead to "God-blaming" (if He determines the "measure", then it is His fault that men/women don't "believe"), is not about God's failure; it is about men looking for ways to puff themselves up because they understand not that being "loved" by God is a universal truism (He "loves" both His friends and His enemies just as He insists that we do) so that any "failure of faith" is not because God has failed, but because men have, as Zachariah pointed out years and years ago, "they have made their hearts like flint" (Zachariah 7:12; NASB; "an adamant stone" in the Authorized Version).
- a. There is a difference between "issues" here.
- 1) The first issue is "man's apparent success" and how he views its underlying cause(s); the Nebuchadnezzer-like "is this not ...[what]... I have ...[done...] by the might of my power and the honor of my majesty?" (Daniel 4:30), and the Paul-like "...I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10).
- 2) The second issue is "man's abject failure of faith" in the face of the active love of God.
- 3) There is a massive difference in the "whys?" involved here. Genuine "success" by men is evidence of God's favor in "grace", whereas man's "failure" is evidence of his own twistedness.
- 4) God, in this arena, is the Author of Success, not the Author of Failure.
- b. There is also a difference in "causation": "grace unto success" involves the causation of grace; "disbelief unto failure" involves the causation of man's resistance to truth which only God can overcome. But, if He overcomes it for one and not another it is because "Grace" pursues one man and simply leaves the "other" to "Justice". "Grace" and "Justice" alike exist in infinite degrees in the glory of God and each has legitimate foundations for expression. It is not a "fault" in God to refuse to be "gracious" because "grace" is "grace", and "justice" is "justice". Neither is it a "fault" in God to refuse to be "Just" because "justice" is "justice" and "grace" is "grace". In other words, God is acting in history in a setting where "Sin" exists and its existence creates a "stage" for the revelation by God of "Grace" on one hand and "Wrath and Power" on the other.
- c. The "difficulty" lies, not in the wisdom of God, but in the ignorance of man. Solomon, wisest of men among men, wrote: "God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions". In other words, any man who aspires to blame God is simply an ignorant idiot who does not understand the most basic realities of "differences" between the Creator and the created (Romans 9:20). Even a lunkhead should be able to "see" that creatures have no business exalting their stupidity over infinite wisdom. On the other hand, any man who "trusts in Grace" is obviously the recipient of "understanding from God Who has overcome his brute-beastly natural state (Jude 1:10) in order to bless".
- 3. The "point" of the requirement is "to head arrogance off".
- a. Man's most powerful distortion of reality is viewing "Life" as the outworking of being "large in approval by men".
- b. Paul's "thorn-hedge" to keep such distortion out of the mind/heart of the "believer" is this doctrine of "Grace" being at the root of every good thing that a man is viewed as "doing".
- c. Paul's "point" is not that "failure" is rooted in God's "Grace"; that is the "point" of "Justice".
- d. Paul did not address the issue of God's sovereign decisions about to whom and when salvation would come in order to give men any legitimacy to their angry disbelief and hostility toward God. That most men do not "like" this critical thought only means one thing: men do not "like" God and will use any argument they can to justify themselves. But those who are "believers" have "believed" in the Love of God for them and, yet, still must wrestle with their old man's death-grip on "significance through performance".
- B. Main Illustration.
- 1. "For" points to a coming explanation: in this case it is an illustration taken directly out of the realm of physical creation.
- 2. "Just as..." points to a strong correlation between the physical and the relational.
- a. This particular conjunction is only found twice in this letter: Romans 4:6 and 12:4.
- 1) In 4:6 this conjunction ("just as"/"even as") puts Abraham's reality of attaining to the righteousness of God by faith to David's declaration of his exact parallel that same reality.
- 2) In our current text Paul is putting the reality of a physical body and its creation-reality of "necessity" of having many differing function-parts in place as the illustration of God's creation-reality of the relational body that also has a "necessity" of having many differing function-parts in place.
- b. Paul's use of this conjunction in these two places indicates a strong focus upon the issue of "creation-necessity" in any kind of creation.
- 3. The analogy.
- a. In "one" body we have many "members". This can be argued from the smallest element (the individual cells that compose the physical whole) up to significantly more impressive "units" such as toes, feet, ankles, legs, etc.
- b. But the individual elements do not all have the same functional purpose at the actual function level (though they all do have the same functional purpose when viewed from the perspective of the overall purpose of a "body" to do things).
- c. "Thus" (an adverb), indicating an "in like manner" comparison: the "many" are one body in Christ and tied together as they function in a multi-function body.
