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.

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know Him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance among the saints.                                                   (Ephesians 1:17-18)

God calls us to many things: to be His special people, into fellowship with Christ and His people, to believe the good news of salvation through Christ (see 1 Cor. 1:2, 9, 22-24). We are called to peace in our relationships (1 Cor. 7:15), to belong to Christ (Rom. 1:5-7), and to unexpected freedom (Gal. 5:13). In Ephesians, Paul prays for another dimension of God’s calling: that “you may know what is the hope to which He has called you” (Eph.1:18).
The Greek reads more literally, “that you may know what is the hope of His calling.” God’s calling is primarily God summoning us into relationship with God through Jesus Christ. God invites us to be His special people, live in His love and walk in the good works He has designed for us (Eph. 2:10). Paul says, earlier in Ephesians, that God’s mission for the cosmos will be culminated in the future when God “gather[s] up all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:10). The universe, shattered by sin, will be put back together through Christ. God’s peace, permeated by righteousness, justice, and blessing, will fill the whole creation. So, when God calls us through the Gospel, we are called to a compelling vision of the future. We are called to hope.
In today’s culture, hope is wishing for something, longing, even anticipating that we might get it. Hope sounds like, “Oh, I hope the Lakers will win the championship. Oh, I hope I get that promotion. Oh, I hope the economy will recover.” You can even hope for things that are quite unlikely: “Oh, I hope we won’t have any fires in California this year.” Hope is longing, wishing, and desiring, whether what you hope for will happen or not.
Biblical hope is different. Far beyond wishful thinking, it is deep confidence. It is a conviction about the future. Christian hope is knowing that what God has begun in Christ, God will complete when the time is just right. We are called, not just to any old hope, but to confident hope.
This kind of hope isn’t something we conjure up through our own efforts. It is something to which we are called, given to us as a gift of God’s Spirit. Paul did not tell the Ephesians to be more hopeful. Rather, he prayed that God would help them to know of the hope of His calling. Hope comes from God’s work in us through the Spirit. When we embrace the hope of the Gospel, not only do we look forward to God’s future, but also we are empowered to live boldly and courageously every day.
Lord, may the confident hope of Your calling help me
to live fully and fruitfully today.

Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.               (Psalm 90:12)

To what has God called you?
Most Christians think of God’s calling in terms of the work God has for us to do, whether in our professional lives, our families, or our participation in the church’s mission. We may also associate God’s calling with an invitation to know God and God’s love for us. But Ephesians adds something more, something unexpected. It says we are called to hope.
In Ephesians 1, Paul prays that those who read his letter will receive from God “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better” (v. 17). Then Paul asks that, in addition to knowing God better, we might also know “hope to which He has called” us, “the riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people,” and “His incomparably great power” (vv. 18-19).
There you have it. Hope comes at the top of the list of things for which Paul prays. What does it mean to know the hope to which we have been called?
The phrase rendered by the NIV as “the hope to which He has called you” reads more literally, “the hope of His calling.” Although Paul can elsewhere refer to “your calling” (Ephesians 4:4), here he emphasizes that the calling comes from God. We have a calling because God calls us. Though God first called us in the past, the content of that calling points to a glorious future. Right now, we belong to God because we have been called into a relationship with God. In the future, we will participate in the fullness of salvation, in the unifying of all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:10).
Thus, when we consider God’s calling, we respond with hope. Notice that our hope is not something we conjure up in ourselves through positive thinking or by trying to have a good attitude. Rather, it is our response to knowing God and all that God has given to us in Christ and will give us through Christ in the future. Therefore, in this passage, Paul does not exhort us to be hopeful. Rather, he prays that God will enable us to know the hope that is already ours in Christ. Genuine hope is a gift of God and a response to God’s gracious calling.
Hope of this sort depends, not on some emotional high, but rather on the bedrock of God’s calling to us. Moreover, it depends on the reality of the resurrection of Christ. Why does Easter matter? Because the resurrection gives us hope and reassures us that our hope will not disappoint us.