As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. (Ephesians 4:1)
There is an unusual and remarkable use of the word “calling” in Ephesians 4:1 The Apostle Paul, imprisoned because of his missionary work, writing to the Ephesians, doubles down on the use of “calling” in this verse. The letter’s recipients are to “live a life [literally, “walk”] worthy of the calling to which [they] have been called.” We want to ask the obvious question: “So, what is the calling to which we have been called?” The answer to this question is not quite as obvious as the question itself. Paul spoke in Ephesians 1:18 of “the hope to which He has called you.” I talked about this last week. This hope, according to Ephesians, certainly includes our personal salvation by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8). But our hope is much more than that. Because of what God has done in Christ, we have the confident hope that, one day, God will bring “all things under Christ” (Eph. 1:10). God will mend this broken world, unifying that which has been divided by sin. We, who are called to this hope, should not just wait for God to fix everything. We are to be participants in God’s work of salvation and restoration. When we accept God’s grace through faith, we are “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10). We are not just observers of God’s work in the world, but partners in that work. The phrase in Ephesians 2:10 translated as “good works . . . to be our way of life” reads more literally “good works . . . that we should walk in them.” Notice how similar this is to the language of 4:1: “live a life [“walk” in Greek] worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” We walk worthy of our calling by walking in the good works God has prepared for us. Our calling emerges from the grand story of what God has done and is doing in Christ, the story that fills Ephesians 1-3. This calling is shared by all who belong to Christ by grace through faith. It is not our specific calling to a particular work or life situation. Instead, it is the calling to embrace and to share in God’s saving, healing, renewing, life-giving work. When we say “Yes” to God’s invitation to faith, we also say “Yes” to God’s summons to live our lives in light of all He has done and will do through Christ. Help us, Lord, to walk worthy of the calling You have given to us. Comments are closed.
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