Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
March 23, 2025
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts.
And I will show you a still more excellent way.
You’re probably aware of how powerful AI video generation is becoming. But I’m not sure if you have seen the video going around in Christian circles about the church in Corinth. Designers made a video of what a gathering of believers (a church service) might have looked like in Corinth around AD 56, specifically even what it was like for them to use their spiritual gifts and get into a bit of an argument about it. The video is just a little over a minute, and since we’ve come to this topic this morning, I thought we’d play the video. It’s actually been set to music. I’ll just let you watch.
That’s actually not AI-generated footage of the Corinthians using their gifts when they gathered. However, it does accurately portray their heart posture about spiritual gifts. The song is from the musical Annie Get Your Gun, and even if you have not seen the musical, you’ve probably heard lines from that famous song. Let’s pray, and we’ll talk about what that song has to do with our passage and the heart of God to bless his people and build his church.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
Imagine that your right arm gets into an accident. Suddenly, it’s bleeding—not a little bit, but a lot. Pretty quickly, the worry arises in your mind that you might lose too much blood. Imagine now that the left arm—the healthy arm not in the accident—is saying to the right arm, “That’s your problem. Good luck with that.”
Or, imagine a different situation. Imagine the same arm is in another accident. This right arm always seems to get into accidents. This time the accident doesn’t involve the loss of blood but a broken arm. The right arm is in a cast and in a sling and immovable. Now imagine the left arm drives to the grocery store, the left arm gets food, the left arm drives home, carries it into the house, makes a meal using the stove and utensils, puts it on a plate, carries the food to the mouth, and feeds the body. Now imagine the right arm saying to the left arm, “You supply no benefit to me. All the good you do does nothing for me.”
One more. Imagine neither arm is in an accident. Yet, there is frustration between the two arms. They are not getting along. They want to wear different shirts; they can’t decide on the right temperature, and so on. So the right arm says to the left arm, “Forget it. I’m out. I’m going to detach from the body and go over there by myself and just hang out.”[1]
Sometimes passages from the Bible are at first hard to understand. Sometimes, as we approach passages from the Bible, we must take great care to make sure we understand the points actually being made. We need to see one passage in the context of other passages and those passages in context with the whole of the Bible and, of course, those books of the Bible in the context of God’s one telling of the good news story of Jesus—his life and death and resurrection and the promise of his second coming. We need to look at all the historical context and the cultural context and the meanings of words and how the passage has been understood throughout church history and all this and more. And once we’ve done this, then—and only then—a passage that at first looked confusing becomes helpful and clear and challenging and convicting and points us to Jesus and builds us up.
This is not one of those passages, at least not in the sense of all the great work that must be done to understand the biggest truths on display in this passage. The biggest truths in this passage are obvious truths.
If you followed the utter absurdity of my three imagined situations about the left arm and the right arm, then you already understand the logic of this passage and what God is saying to us. If you understand the utter absurdity of one arm saying to another arm, “That’s your problem. Good luck with that,” or “You supply no benefit to me. All the good you do does nothing for me,” or “Forget it. I’m out. I’m going to detach from the body and go over there by myself and just hang out,” then you already understand the point of this passage.
God wants it to seem utterly absurd to you that we—the people of God who gather in one local congregation—would be the sort of people who could look at one another and say, “That’s your problem,” or “You supply no benefit to me,” or “Forget it. I’m out. I’m going to detach from the body and go over there by myself and just hang out.” God wants these realities to be utterly absurd to us.
So, this week understanding the passage is the easy part. Living this passage is the hard part—just as it was for the Corinthian church. Just like them, we tend to overvalue some gifts (whether ours or others) and we tend to undervalue other gifts (whether our own or others), and that causes divisions among us. And so, at a deeper level, this passage is about how God in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit overcome our jealousy and mistrust and pride and selfishness and ego and discontentment and shame and more, so that, in the gospel, God might build strong, healthy arms and a body.
As we look at this passage, let’s first talk about our tendency to either overvalue gifts or undervalue them. And we’ll end by talking about what all the gifts are for.
1. Neither Overvaluing nor Undervaluing Gifts
Since this is part two of chapter 12, I’ll be building on the work that Pastor Ron started last week. So, I won’t necessarily be talking about the meaning of spiritual gifts or how we get them. But by way of reminder, every person who turns from their sin and places faith in Jesus becomes part of the family of God, part of the body of Christ. And the Bible teaches that God comes to make his home in the person and begins a renovation project of sorts, all by the power of the Holy Spirit. And in that renovation project, God gives all believers at least one, but often many different, gifts to serve the body. With that in mind, let’s see in the passage the danger of either overvaluing or undervaluing our gifts. Paul has a lot to say about that. Look again at verses 12–26.
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Paul’s points are all mixed in there, but just for a moment so that we can see each of them, give me a minute to speak to both overvaluing and undervaluing gifts.
When we’re talking about overvaluing, we’re essentially singing, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” We’re saying, “I know you have some value. But I don’t need-need you. You might make my life a little better. You might help me in some small ways, but I could carry on just fine without you. Sometimes I wonder if I would even be better if I carried on without you.” This is overvaluing our own gifts. And you might think, “It just takes me so long to explain things to you or so long for me to show you how to do something. Even after I explain it to you, and even after I show you, you still don’t do it as well as me.”
I would venture to say that since you’ve been at church this morning, some thoughts along these lines have entered your head. “I would keep the church parking lot looking better than they keep it.” “I would be a better greeter than you.” Or a better preacher than you. Or a better giver than you. Or a better whatever. And so on.
This is overvaluing our gifts. And when we overvalue our own gifts, pride blinds us from two things: our need and God’s provision through others. In your marriage and family, in your friendships, in your workplace, on your teams, and certainly in your church, if you constantly overvalue your own gifts, you’ll be a miserable person to yourself and to others. The best friends and the best husbands and wives and bosses and employees and certainly the best church members see the beauty of the whole body.
Coming back to that silly song from the musical, I’ll tell you a funny detail. Early in our marriage my wife and I used to sing that song to each other. But my sweet wife would tweak the words. (Yes, I got permission to share this. I had actually forgot about it.) She would actually sing to me, “Anything I can do, you can do better.”
If you’d like to say, “Ahhh,” that would be understandable. Do you see how sweet that is? It actually sounds like she’s paying me a compliment. She’s saying that she was aware that whatever she could do, she knew I could do it better than her.
But I’ll tell you as this memory came up the other night, I was reminded that there’s a way to sing this “compliment” that doesn’t make it sound like much of an actual compliment. So, for example, let’s just say we were talking about our budget, which for twenty years my wife has done an amazing job of keeping, and let’s just say early in our marriage as we had Microsoft Excel open on the computer, I might have leaned in and shown her a little trick I knew about Excel. Then she might have looked at me and sung with a bit of an edge and ironic and maybe snark, “Anything I can do better, you can do better.”
But in seriousness, sometimes as God comes to open our eyes to the beauty of the body of Christ, and we see the enormity and the diversity of all the gifts and all the gifted people, and we can come to the place of not overvaluing the gifts that God has given us, but become self-conscious about our own gifting and undervalue the gifts God has chosen to give us. We can legitimately feel like anything I can do; there are ten or twenty people who can do it better, and even what I do well doesn’t really matter anyway.
We say in our hearts something like, Oh, I could never preach like so and so or sing like so in so. I could never lead like this person or show hospitality like that person. And because I can’t do that like them, and I’ll never be able to do that like them, well, I guess I don’t matter—never mind the fact that apart from work of the Spirit even those who can preach like that and sing like that and lead like that or show hospitality like that, couldn’t preach, sing, lead, or serve like that. But you get the point.
We can think too highly of what others have, thinking what God has given us is too unimportant to share. Paul’s point, using the imagery of the body is that this is never true. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes all matter. Your lungs and your heart and your brain and your kidneys and intestines and teeth all matter. Even the less visible parts matter a ton.
Each Sunday, preaching and praying may happen on this stage and from behind this pulpit, and they have a way of anchoring all that we do when these are done well. But there are words whispered in the café from one believer to another believer, and there are prayers that happen in the basement of this building that almost no one but God knows—and those barely visible deeds might have more of an impact on the health of our body than anything done on the stage.
So, God doesn’t want us to either overvalue or undervalue the gifts he gives to us.
2. Using All the Gifts for All the Good of All of the Body
For the last point, I want to underscore the purpose of the gifts. God intends for us to use all the gifts he gives for all the good of all the body. I’ll say that again. God intends for us to use all the gifts he gives for all the good of all the body.
Paul really doesn’t spend a lot of time explaining what each gift is. It might have helped us if he had. He says more about prophecy and tongues later, which we’ll get to in chapter 14. But Paul does spend a lot of time throughout this chapter saying what the gifts are for. Look with me at vv. 4–7 from last week’s passage.
4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
Again, God intends for us to use all the gifts he gives for all the good of all the body. It sounds weird to say it this way, but your gifts are for regifting. God gives you gifts not for you alone but for the way in which you will use them to bless others.
So, on the one hand, we might ask questions like this: What would this church look like if the same people who were gifted to work on our HVAC also tried to design the color scheme for the building and tried to put out seasonal decorations for the café and tried to pick out the furniture? Or think about this. How well would the HVAC system work each season if the people who installed it were the same people who made meals for people when they are sick? What would happen if the same people who did counseling also oversaw the budget? Think what would happen if I were the lead singer on the worship team rather than the lead preacher. What if the guy writing books oversaw the benevolence budget? I am playing with a few stereotypes, but you get my point.
Not that I want you to feel sorry for me, but one of the most crushing realities of pastoring in our current American context is the expectation and the myth of the omnicompetent pastor who has all the spiritual gifts at once. Pastors are expected to be an entrepreneur and preacher and counselor and manager and visionary leader and CEO and CFO and lead marketer and whatever, when these pastors don’t exist. (I’m sure plenty of pastors have the same unrealistic expectations of their congregations.)
Anyway, what if, on the other hand, we didn’t come at this from a negative perspective? What if we asked instead, “What if the people who are gifted at HVAC oversaw the heating and cooling of the building? What if our gifted, faithful accountants oversaw the budget? What if the livestream was run by people who were good at techy things? What if those who had the gifts of hospitality were the ones who led the welcome dinners? What if those gifted at gospel teaching did a lot of the teaching? And so on.
My point is that we might be a place, and this might be a church, where both insiders and outsiders would more and more come to say, “I think God is among us.” And that’s really the point. Not that people would say, “Oh this is a great church.” Rather, insiders and outsiders would more and more come to say these people seem to have a great, kind, loving, wise, strong, and generous God who actually loves them.
Look, I know some of you have legitimate frustrations with our church. We’re not as good as we should be. But maybe I’d just ask you to consider if your frustration with some part of our church might not be a reason for you to leave but a reason for you to stay. Have you ever thought about that?
I want to be careful here. I don’t want to baptize your frustrations and call every annoyance you have a good and legitimate annoyance. I’m not saying some people have the spiritual gift of being annoyed. Your annoyance is not one of the fruits of the Spirit or the gifts of the Spirit. The Bible speaks of the fruit of the Spirit as the character traits that God, by the power of the Spirit, works in his children more and more: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22–23). And the New Testament lists perhaps two dozen gifts, of which every believer has at least one if not more. And none of the fruit and none of the gifts are being mad.
But I do want to say this. Sometimes you come to know what gifts you have by noticing what sorts of things tend to frustrate you. There are people who can walk into a church and no one greets them, and they sit and listen to a sermon and leave. And some are not very bothered by that. Others would lose their mind if that happened to them. And it does happen, sadly, even in a good church like ours. But don’t assume just because you see a failure in our church, that this is necessarily a reason to leave. It might be a reason to use the gifts God has given you.
If you’ve brought a concern about lack of greeting (and I’m just making something up), and the leaders are like, “Actually, we don’t care about people being greeted. It has nothing to do with the gospel.” Okay, you can leave. But if the leaders are like, “You know, we wish were better at this or that, and we’re just struggling to do that as well as we’d like,” then something really good might happen.
In his book, What Is a Healthy Church? (Crossway, 2007), pastor and author Mark Dever writes about this in a parable in the preface of his book. It will take a few minutes, but I’d like to close by reading it. First he quotes verses 18–21 from our passage.
God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”
Then he writes this:
Nose and Hand were sitting in the church pew talking. The morning service, led by Ear and Mouth, had just ended, and Hand was telling Nose that he and his family had decided to look for a different church.
“Really?” Nose responded to Hand’s news. “Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hand said, looking down. He was usually slower to speak than other members of the church body. “I guess because the church doesn’t have what Mrs. Hand and I are looking for.”
“Well, what are you looking for in a church?” Nose asked. The tone in which he spoke these words was sympathetic. But even as he was speaking them he knew he would dismiss Hand’s answer. If the Hands couldn’t see that Nose and the rest of the leadership were pointing the church body in the right direction, the body could do without them.
Hand had to think before answering. He and Mrs. Hand liked Pastor Mouth and his family. And Minister of Music Ear meant well. “Well, I guess we’re looking for a place where people are more like us,” Hand finally stammered. “We tried spending time with the Legs, but we didn’t connect with them. Next we joined the small group for all the Toes. But they kept talking about socks and shoes and odors. And that didn’t interest us.”
Nose looked at him this time with genuine dismay: “Aren’t you glad they’re concerned with odors?!”
“Sure, sure. But it’s not for us. Then, we attended the Sunday school for all you facial features. Do you remember? We came for several Sundays a couple of months ago?”
“It was great to have you.”
“Thank you. But everyone just wanted to talk, and listen, and smell, and taste. It felt like, well, it felt like you never wanted to get to work and get your hands dirty. Anyway, Mrs. Hand and I were thinking about checking out that new church over on East Side. We hear they do a lot of clapping and hand-raising, which is closer to what we need right now.”
“Hmmm,” Nose replied. “I see what you mean. We’d hate to see you go. But I guess you have to do what’s good for you.”
At that moment, Mrs. Hand, who had been caught up in another conversation, turned back to join her husband and Nose. Hand briefly explained what he and Nose had been talking about, after which Nose repeated his sadness at the prospect of losing the Hands. But he again said that he understood since it sounded like their needs weren’t being met.
Mrs. Hand nodded in agreement. She wanted to be polite, but, truth be told, she wasn’t sad to be leaving. Her husband had made just enough critical remarks about the church over the years that her heart had begun to reflect his. No, he had never burst into an open tirade against the body. In fact, he usually apologized for “being so negative,” as he put it. But the little complaints that he let slip out here and there had had an effect. The small groups were a little cliquish. The music was a little out of date. The programs did seem a little silly. The teaching wasn’t entirely to their liking. In the end, it was hard for the two of them to put their fingers on it, but they finally decided that the church wasn’t for them.
In addition to all that, Mrs. Hand knew that their daughter Pinkie was not comfortable with the youth group. Everyone was so different from her, she felt out of joint.
Mrs. Hand then said something about how much she appreciated Nose and the leadership. But the conversation had already run on too long for Nose.
Besides, her perfume made him want to sneeze. He thanked Mrs. Hand for her encouragement, repeated that he was sorry to hear of their departure, then turned and walked away. Who needed the Hands? Apparently, they didn’t need him.[2]
I think a lot of this parable would be funnier to me if it did not hit so close to home. Our pastors might not, and maybe even me specifically, might not be adequately able to tell you how important God intends for you to be to our body.
But for all my inability to tell you this as well as I would like, please hear it from God in his Word. Note again what Paul writes in v. 18: “But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.” God is choosing all this for all our good and all his glory. And it comes to us only through the expensive gift of the Son who died so that his body might live. Let’s pray and we’ll take communion together. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
[1] Years ago, I listened to the audio of John Piper preaching through the Romans 12 passages on gifts and, if I remember correctly, used some of these illustrations.
[2] This parable was quoted in a sermon I listened to as I prepared. David Vecchitto, “One Body, Many Parts,” from 1 Corinthians 12:12–27, CrossWay Church, September 28, 2008.
Sermon Discussion Questions
You might not want to answer this out loud, but do you tend to overvalue or undervalue your gifts? Why?
Have you ever left a church because you didn’t feel like your gifts were valued? How did that experience shape you? Do you feel frustrated with your church now? What might you do about it in a productive way?
Can you spend time telling others what gifts you feel like God has given them?
How does this passage connect to the gospel story of the life and death and resurrection and second coming of Jesus?
