Dr. J. Vernon McGee :: Duty, Chapters 12—16

Duty

Now we come to the duty section, and I’m going to be brief here. But I want you to notice that Paul is very practical with all of this. In chapter 12 and through the rest of the epistle he deals with a believer’s duty in the various relationships encountered in daily living.

Service of the Children of God

First of all, in chapters 12 and 13 is that which is known as Christian service. A child of God is in this world today, and since he’s in this world he has a duty; he has a relationship to God.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1)

Here we have the Christian’s relationship to God; he presents himself a living sacrifice. That is his spiritual service. And may I pause to say this: I do not believe that a child of God can live unto himself. Paul makes it very clear that if you have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, God has a claim on your life. I’m afraid we are not getting that over to young people today and, as a result, we have some of the most miserable so-called “Christian” young people. The reason is that they are living selfish lives. They are talking in terms of themselves, and God is not in it. He says, and this is the first step, that you cannot even live the Christian life until you present your total personality as a living sacrifice unto God.

Then you have a relationship to the gifts of the Spirit, and there are gifts of the Spirit — many more than speaking in tongues. In fact, Paul doesn’t even mention tongues in this section because he is talking about that which is quite serviceable. He mentions these gifts: prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhorting, giving, ruling, and showing mercy (see Romans 12:6-8).

Next Paul speaks of our relationship to other believers. Now I’m going to quote from a version that I do not recommend to you at all, and I’ll tell you why. No one who does not understand Greek ought to use the Revised Standard Version under any circumstance. But I’m going to quote from it because I’ve checked the Greek to make sure this passage has been translated correctly, and it happens to be a helpful rendering:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality. (Romans 12:9-13 REVISED STANDARD VERSION)

Isn’t this a marvelous injunction that God gives to believers today? And it has to do with our relationship to the gifts of the Spirit and to other believers, if you please.

Then we have a relationship to unbelievers, those outside of Christ. We are to

Recompense to no man evil for evil.... (Romans 12:17)

We are not to avenge ourselves. The minute that you and I attempt to punch the other fellow in the nose after he has punched us in the nose, we are no longer walking by faith. “Well,” somebody says, “I think somebody ought to punch him in the nose.” Yes, you are right, somebody ought to. But let God punch him in the nose. God says He intends to do it. You say, “Do you mean He says that?” Yes, He does:

...Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans 12:19)

In effect, God says, “I will not permit any injustice to come to you that I will not straighten out someday. Now do not depart from the pathway of faith — don’t hit back.” The minute you and I hit back we are saying to Him, “God, I can’t trust You in this particular case. I’m going to have to take it into my own hands.”

Let’s turn vengeance over to God. My beloved, when we do, that’s when we heap coals of fire on those who are our enemies. Believe me, when God starts dealing with them He’s going to do a good job of it. I have watched that in my ministry. Oh, how many times I have wanted to take things into my own hands! But when I let God take over, I’ve seen Him move in. And I want to tell you, He does a lot better job than any of us down here would do in dealing with folk. Turn them over to the Lord — that’s what our attitude should be toward unbelievers.

Then we have a relationship to government. A dear lady in my congregation called on the phone and asked, “Do you think a Christian ought to vote?” Of course we ought to vote! We have a real relationship to government today. We are to obey the powers that be, and

...The powers that be are ordained of God. (Romans 13:1)

We’re almost inclined to say, “But, Brother Paul, could you say that if you lived in the day in which I live with this crowd of politicians in office?” Well, you must remember that in Paul’s day bloody Nero was on the throne in Rome, and Paul had even appealed his case to him. Despite the conditions that prevailed in his day he could say, “You are to be obedient to the powers that be, for the powers that be are ordained of God” — whether it’s bloody Nero or whoever is in office in your day. We have a relationship to government.

We also have a relationship to our neighbors (see Romans 13:8-10). This is where the Ten Commandments come in, by the way.

Separation of the Children of God

Now we come to that matter of separation, if you please. Separation is something that is certainly misunderstood among believers today because most of them have made up a nice little list of commandments that they attempt to follow. There are generally about a hundred little commandments of “don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do the other thing.” That, may I say to you, is not Christian conduct by any means.

Paul puts down three great principles of conduct.

Conviction

Conviction is first of all. Whatever you do, you are to do it with conviction. Notice:

One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. (Romans 14:5)

Now, what day are you to observe — Saturday or Sunday or not any day? Well, whatever you do, be fully persuaded in your own mind. You are to have a conviction about what you do.

Our problem today in this matter of separation is not solely a problem of young people but of all age groups engaging in activities that are unacceptable. The problem is that they haven’t anything in their hearts to take the place of these things they are told to give up. And that’s the reason you find them going in all different directions, engaging in all types of questionable activities.

May I say to you, you have to have a conviction about your conduct — a real conviction. I get so tired of these namby-pamby Christians who go to these nice little Christian functions in a half-hearted sort of way, straddling the fence, trying to go with the world and trying to go with God. Have conviction about what you do! And do whatever you do with conviction.

The world does that. I have always watched this crowd that comes to the New Year’s Day football game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. They come with conviction. They come wearing their particular team’s buttons. I see the crowd from Wisconsin or Minnesota, and when I go to the Rose Parade, I like to kid them about the game — and believe me, you can get a rise out of someone wearing a button! I said to a couple of them one time, “I didn’t even know they had a team back there this year.” Oh, I said the wrong thing! Why, this couple wanted to pull me off the ladder on which I was perched to view the parade. They didn’t want me to make a statement like that at all. May I say to you, I like that. That’s conviction, my friend. Oh, if Christians today only had conviction!

Do you know the reason they fill up the Rose Bowl every New Year’s Day? It’s because of those who go there with conviction. The rest of the crowd go because the others have conviction. I’m convinced that half the people who attend games do not know a football from a baseball. In one group the people are so drunk they can’t tell the difference, and another group is like the lady who was sitting behind me the last time I was there. When the boy from Wisconsin threw a pass she asked, “Who hit the ball?” My, how disturbing it is to hear anyone make a statement like that at a football game! She didn’t know a thing about the game. Why in the world was she there? Because the crowd was there.

My friend, you may have a fine Sunday night congregation at your church, but let me tell you that if the members of your church had real conviction about going to church, the place would be packed out. That is what we need today — Christians who have conviction. It is the first thing that is needed in Christian conduct.

Conscience

Conscience is the second great principle of conduct:

Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth. (Romans 14:22)

Do you look back on your life today or this week and hate yourself for what you have done? Well, I don’t know what you did wrong, but happy is the man who doesn’t condemn himself with what he does. That’s the reason I don’t answer questions like this: “Do you think, Dr. McGee, that it’s wrong for a Christian to do such and such?” The answer is easy. For you it’s wrong because you have a conscience about it. Otherwise you never would have asked. I never have been asked, “Do you think I ought to eat supper tonight?” Nobody has a conscience on that, you see, but they ask only about that on which they have a conscience. I like to say to some of them, “Well, apparently for you it is wrong — you’ve got a conscience on it or you wouldn’t have asked me. You can’t go. But I don’t have a conscience on it — so let me have your ticket!”

May I say to you, my beloved, we need to have a conscience on these things. And when we have to look back at what we’ve done and raise a question — regardless of what it was — it was wrong. And it’s also wrong if you can’t enter into it whole-heartedly. “...Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.”

Consideration

Consideration is the third and last of these great principles:

We, then, that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. (Romans 15:1, 2)

That is what consideration of others is, and it is something that ought to affect a great many Christians in their conduct. Maybe you have a conviction about this or that and you can do it, and maybe your conscience doesn’t condemn you for doing it. But have you ever stopped to think what effect it might have on somebody else? There is always the other person to be taken into consideration. And may I say this to you: A Christian does not please himself; he pleases his Lord. It is not a question today of whether it’s right or wrong — that is not the standard of the Christian anymore — it is a question of walking in the light. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth [keeps on cleansing] us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

It is not how you walk, it is where you walk that counts. Are you walking in the light? Are you attempting to please Him? That is what is important. It is not to see how far you can go in doing questionable things and still maintain a Christian testimony. If that is the way you are living, may I say, you are living a shabby, shoddy Christian life today.

Now, does this thing that we’ve been talking about work? Is it something that has reality?

Paul closes the Epistle to the Romans by mentioning thirty-five people by name who lived among pagans in the Roman Empire under the rule of bloody Nero. These people walked in the light of God’s Word down the streets of Ephesus, Jerusalem, Athens, Corinth, Thessalonica, and Rome itself. These thirty-five people in a pagan civilization found that this epistle was true, and they lived for Christ in the first century.

It not only worked in the first century, but it worked in the second century, it worked in the third, the fourth, the fifth and the sixth, and it continues to work in this century, my friend. There are Christians today who, like those in the first century, are walking the streets of this pagan world. Those who know Jesus Christ and are walking in the light as He is in the light have found out that these things Paul wrote about are true.

The question is, have you found out that they are true? Or is this all theory to you, something that is only an ideal? I say to you right now that you can know whether these things are true or not. The Lord Jesus said that if you will do His will, you will know His doctrine, you will know whether it’s true or not (see John 7:17). Like the psalmist says, “Oh taste and see that the LORD is good...” (Psalm 34:8). God wants you to make the experiment. It all begins at the cross, in a transaction with Him — it all begins when you come to Christ as your Savior.