Week 2: Love and Gifts

Romans 12 turns from what God has done to what a congregation does about it. Paul's first move is a measurement. Before he lists a single gift, he asks every member to think sensibly about himself, because God distributed the measure and nobody in the room arranged his own. Then the picture widens: many parts, different functions, all of them members of one another. Seven gifts follow in three verses, each one a piece of grace with a job attached, and four of them carry a word about how the work is to be done. The lesson closes in an upper room, where the only man who ever knew the full measure of what He had been given picked up a towel.