The Servant's Heart

“For God whom I serve in my spirit...” Romans 1:9

All of us from time to time go through the motions, we function, our discipline tells us to, and we have to go on. We are all tempted to serve Christ for the wrong reasons. But here in this verse we have an insight to 'serving' in the writing of Paul. No doubt an intellectual, but underneath it all, he is a tender man who loved Christ. Yes, he spoke like a prophet, he had the fire and zeal of the preacher, he had the intellect of the theologian, he had the determination of the apostle. But underneath he had the heart of a shepherd.

So what we have is a glimpse of the real Paul, the man behind the theologian, the man behind the intellect, who he is, and what makes him tick.

What’s the key to our passage, “Whom I serve in my spirit...”? Remember, Paul was raised in Judaism, he understands the external, the formality, the ritual, and he understands the activity. He also understands what it meant to serve in the flesh,what it meant to go through the mechanics, and what it meant to go through the motions.

Being raised in a Gentile world, he understood external religion. What he is saying is that I don’t serve God in the flesh, in the external. It’s not that I don’t know how to go through the motions, put on a front, or appear to be what I am not. But the God whom I serve... I serve in my spirit!

My service to the Lord Jesus Christ is not external, it is internal, it comes from the heart that has been transformed by the love and power of Christ.