Reasonable Service

How do we know what our reasonable service is to be unless we search the word of God, ponder it, pray about it, and ask “Lord, what would you have me to do in light thereof?” Besides, what is our reasonable service? Didn’t the Apostle Paul say “with the mind I myself SERVE the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin”? My desire is to learn God’s will more and more so that I can serve all the more, by His grace and effectual working. I want to be taught from His law (the entirety of His Holy Bible, spiritually discerned, and not after the letter only) and to do all that He would have us to do in this New Testament era. In other words, seeing that the Mosaic civil and ceremonial law has been put away, the desire is not to go under the law of Moses (to be subject to it, under its dominion); no, the desire is to serve God by striving to keep (guard in my heart so as to do) all of His non-abrogated, non-put away, commandments (for the Lord declares in John 14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments). I will never do so unto perfection, or anything close in this life, but out of true love for Him, I wish to serve Him as He declares that He is to be served for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).

The word reasonable is logikos from the root word Logos (as in John 1:1, in the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. This reasonableness does not stem from our carnal reasoning (for we are not to lean unto our own understanding) but from the spiritual life found in Christ Jesus. This word is the same word found in 1 Peter 2:2 wherein we read… as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word [logikos] that ye may grow thereby. Moreover, logikos is also clearly related to our words logic and logical — so God wants us to reasonably/logically apply the instruction that He gives to us to our lives, after the inner man, and all by His grace and working, that we may worshipfully serve Him unto His glory.

Note that service comes from a root meaning both to worship and to serve as a slave, one for hire. If one considers the context of all of Romans chapter 12, we will see that it describes service in the sense of actions, in the sense of things that the Lord would have us do — both amongst the brethren and amongst those without. May it be that we are found not as hearers only but doers; not as those who would “look to Christ” merely in the abstract, in mere notion, but as those who look to Him as it pertains to every single aspect of our lives, experience, hope, and being — all to the degree that God ordained and enables — To Him be the glory!

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 KJV