“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called”
As we move through this epistle we come to a slight bend in the road. As we travel along it, the farther we go the more likely we will be to lose sight of what came before and forget that it is, nevertheless, the same road, and what came before brought us to where we are now.
Paul makes his transition with the word ‘therefore’, and so I will be faithful to point you back to the previous chapters and say ‘look once more before we pass on’. Go all the way back in your mind and remember that he taught us that the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ”.
Be reminded that “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.” And remember that this is what He had declared and now reckons us to be, in His Son; holy and blameless.
Rejoice once more that He has predestined us to adoption as sons through Christ to Himself and to the praise of His glory. Remember the mighty deeds He has wrought in putting an end to the enmity between men and men and men and God, and by His Holy Spirit, ushered us into the very Throne room of heaven to stand as family before Holy God.
And then once more be reminded that the things Paul has prayed for us at the end of chapter three are things that can only be accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit, but that power is the same that raised Christ Jesus from the dead, and does indeed work in us to accomplish those things. To strengthen the inner man, to let us comprehend the infinite and unfathomable love of Christ and to be filled up to all the fulness of God.
These are the things He has made us and reckons us to be, believer, and you must keep this in mind as we study verse 1 of chapter 4, or you will miss the point completely.
Notice first, that one more time he refers to himself as ‘the prisoner of the Lord’. And I have to mention it, because it serves a different purpose this time than before. Paul is not just continually bringing up his circumstances to incite sympathy for himself.
Previously, he wanted to give them assurance that he saw himself as being in the center of God’s will, and that they should not fret or sorrow for him; and also that even in his circumstances he was still a minister of Jesus Christ and continuing in the work of the Kingdom.
But here his purpose is slightly different. He is about to exhort them in their Christian walk, and in reminding them of where he is at the outset, he is effectively removing from them in advance any ability to point to their own physical circumstances as an excuse to walk any other way.
“But I live with a nagging mother in law” “Yeah? Well I’m in prison”
“But I have rebellious teenaged children” “Yeah? Well I’m chained to a Roman soldier who hasn’t ever heard of deodorant”
“But I have a struggle with debt that occupies me constantly.” “Well, I’ve learned to be abased and to abound, and right now I’m definitely abased; but I’m walking the walk.”
It’s just kind of hard to excuse yourself to someone who is in much worse circumstances than your own, yet continuing successfully in what he’s challenging you to do.
For example, if someone with his leg chopped off at the knee and using a crutch says to you “Walk five miles with me”, you might simply refuse to go because you don’t want to go, but you won’t be likely to cite a sore pinky toe as your reason for refusing.
So he says, “I…entreat you…” , that word ‘entreat’ meaning to ‘appeal to’…
“I appeal to you…” and he is justified in doing so, in that he is walking the road before them and is not calling them to anyplace he has not traveled.
“Look at your back trail! Get another good look at the things we’ve encountered so far, and then take this bend with me and see what comes next as integral to what was before.”
Now there are two key words in this verse that must be studied carefully for the understanding of all that comes afterward. They are ‘worthy’, and ‘calling’.
So that’s where we will stay today.
WORTHY
Now I suspect that unless deliberate thought is given to it, most of us these days would read past that word ‘worthy’ and go on with the sense that it means the same as ‘deserving’. And I guess that does come in to a degree.
But the actual meaning of the word being used there, to be more precise, is to be ‘consistent with’. And a second rendering given is ‘matching’, or ‘coordinated’, like we might say about someone’s clothing.
“His shirt doesn’t match his pants.” or “Look how well coordinated the colors are in her dress and accessories”.
Backing up to the first definition, ‘to be consistent with’, we might use it in this context. The General’s expectations of his troops as they enter into battle, is that their deployment and tactics will be consistent with their years of training and the oath they have taken.
So Paul is appealing to his readers, as they consider all the things he has been telling them that they now are in Christ, that they endeavor to live daily in a way that is consistent with ~ that matches ~ their calling; and we’ll get to that word ‘calling’ in a few minutes.
Now Christians, being diligent to stay true to my calling as a preacher of the Word of God, I have to be entirely honest with you and with myself, and include myself when I say, that I think there are really very few Christians today who are walking in a manner worthy of their, our, calling.
I do have to say that I think to a very large degree, the reason for this is ignorance. It is ignorance of what we really are in Christ, and that is due to shallow, often unbiblical teaching. Whether pastors will admit it openly or not, there is a great deal of pressure, imposed from without and from within, to appear successful. A church is successful if it is bringing in the masses. It is successful if it is sending folks out to the mission field. It is successful if it is actively involved in its community. It is successful if it has satellite ministries going out from it to teens, to the homeless, to the shut-in and so forth; and it is really successful if its senior pastor has books published and maybe a radio ministry, or a regular annual circuit of seminars…
You get the picture.
Unfortunately, far too often, and very early in the quest for this kind of visible and tangible success, sound biblical teaching takes a back seat. Because the masses in general do not want the challenge to go deeper, they don’t want to have to study to understand the deeper things of God and their relationship to Him. They don’t want the accountability that comes with understanding, any more than the young boy wants to eat his spinach and beets.
I think it is a natural tendency of the fallen nature, to desire a sort of “Peter Pan” Christianity. We’ve lifted off and flown to Neverland, but we don’t want to grow up.
(‘Not I. Not me‘) and it stands to reason that in order to avoid growing spiritually, we have to continually quench the Spirit and His working in us. This is called ‘sin’.
So the temptation for leadership seeking success, is to consistently feed people pizza, reasoning that all of the individual ingredients, after all, are healthy in themselves, and after all, they are being fed, and isn’t it more important to get the many saved, than to concentrate on the further development of the few?
Now I am generalizing. You and I both know that this is not the case in all the big and successful churches. We think of people like Jack Hayford and John MacArthur and Alistar Begg and we know that these are wonderful teachers of the Word and there are many like them, in churches both large and small.
But by and large, the percentage of Christians whose lives they effect on an on-going basis is small, compared to the whole.
So here is where I’m going with all of this. Christians whose steady diet from the scriptures consists of “…elementary teaching about the Christ, …repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings (baptisms) and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment” (Heb 6:1,2),
in other words, the basics, are of course going to continue in a daily walk that is characterized, not by a sense of victory and power in the Holy Spirit, but of falling down and getting up, and stumbling and uncertainty, of occasional highs and many lows, of reacting to life in very much the same way the unsaved person does, because they don’t know who they are!
Their walk does not match their calling, because they don’t know what God calls them! Their walk is not in a manner consistent with their calling, because they don’t know they have a calling!
Here’s a quiz: Do you know you have a calling? Before you walked in here today (or read this) were you consciously aware that you have a calling from God? When was the last time you heard a radio or television preacher tell you that you, as a born again believer in Christ, have a calling ~ and then challenged you to walk in a manner worthy of that calling?
I would be bold enough to presume openly that there would not be very many ‘yes’ answers to those questions.
It’s just not something we’re challenged often to think about. We’re saved. We’re Christians. We know, I hope, that the Holy Spirit is in us and that He helps us. But we tend to think of that help as being a sort of guide through a dark cave.
But the message I see coming clearly through the history of the early church as given to us by Luke, and the doctrinal teachings of the epistles of the New Testament, is that the Christian is supposed to be powerful and effective in the Holy Spirit. He is to manifest a walk of victory over the flesh and the world because he is in Christ, and Christ in him.
Jesus told His disciples that they would do greater things than He did because of His going to the Father, and sending the Comforter to indwell them. And they did.
They did the things He did, and even some that it is not recorded He did while here.
And we’re not always given the specifics of things they did; sometimes we’re simply told that those observing them knew they were Christians by their actions and their treatment of one another. Their very lives were a witness that they knew Jesus.
So this should be evidenced in our lives also. Walking in a manner consistent with our calling.
CALLING
Well let’s talk about this calling with which we have been called.
Just for comparison let me read you a couple of other places this word is used. In Romans 11:29 Paul says, “…for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” If you understand what is being said to you there, it should be a very powerful word of encouragement to you.
And in I Corinthians 1:26-29, ~ and I want to read this whole passage to you so you can get an idea of the context in which he uses the word ’calling’:
“For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, and not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God.”
So in essence there, our calling from God is to deny the exercise of our own strength and supposed wisdom and importance, so that through our baseness and our weakness He can show Himself to be strong.
The greatest example of this for us was set by our Savior, Jesus Christ. Although He was 100 percent Man and 100 percent God, He lay aside the privilege of exercising His attributes as God, and lived a life as a Man entirely dependant on God the Father for power and victory over the world and the devil. He was anointed with the Holy Spirit at His baptism, and as we are told in Acts, He went around doing good and healing those who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
And now He calls us to walk according to that example.
Now before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s back up and talk about what it means to be called.
There are really two types of calling in the New Testament. Generally, the call of God goes out to everyone. When we read John 3:16 for instance, we note that God loved the world so much that He sent His only Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life.
So generally speaking although we know and the scriptures make clear that not all will be saved, nevertheless, all are given the opportunity. The call of God goes out to all, and a careful consideration of the scriptures from the very beginning reveals that everything God has done has had as its goal, the revelation of Himself and His nature and purpose, so that men might look to Him and be saved.
For instance in Acts 17 Paul says in his address on Mars Hill, “..He has made from one (man) every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God…”
And another very familiar passage is II Peter 3:9, saying that the Lord “…is patient… not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”
Then we go to Romans to see the second sense in which this word ‘calling’, or ‘called’ is used; the more specific sense.
In chapter 8 verse 28 there is a reference to the “called”, with whom God works for good in all things according to His purpose in and for them. This is not speaking generally, for it is specifically talking about those who love Him.
Going on in the next two verses, we see that God foreknew those who would be conformed to the image of His Son. And having this foreknowledge, He predestined them for that purpose, and having predestined them He then called them.
So we understand from this that in this context the called, are those who became conscious of the general call and responded to it in faith, thereby being regenerated, declared right with God through faith in the shed blood and resurrection of Christ, and in God’s eternal view of things, glorified.
Now I have to ask you here; do you know these things? Are you aware that if you are a believer in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to pay for your sin and give you life, that God already reckons you glorified forever in His presence? Do you have a settled conviction in your heart that you are even now an heir and joint-heir with Jesus Christ of all the riches and blessings of Heaven, and that your victory through His accomplished work is complete and settled forever? Those are just the basic facts.
If you can comprehend this, then you must go on from there to understand, with the enlightening power of His Holy Spirit in you, without which you could not possibly understand, that the power that now indwells you is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that you could ask or think.
You must ask the Lord to help you grasp this, and as you begin to get an inkling of the unfathomable depth of that power and love, look back around the bend and see that this abundant power is able to strengthen your inner man so that Christ might live in your heart through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in that same unfathomable love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.
And then walk in a manner worthy, consistent with, matching, what God has reckoned you to be, by the power He has anointed you with to do it.
I remind you that up until now the focus has been on what God has done. And I stress once more that it is God working in you to do make you what you are in Him.
But be careful not to miss that here in chapter 4 verse 1 Paul is now telling us to do something.
We really are partners with God in His working all things together for good; in conforming us to the image of His Son.
The power is His, and we must yield to it and walk in it as our part of the process.
“…I entreat you to walk…”
Now there’s nothing mystical or foggy about that word ‘walk’. The same Greek word is used throughout the New Testament, in every case except one. That one exception is when God is talking about Himself, saying that He will walk among His people. Every other reference to walking uses the same word, and it means only one thing. Walk. Move about. Going here and there. Walking. Conducting yourself as you go.
“…I entreat you, appeal to you, as you walk about, in everything you do, everywhere you go, to walk and conduct yourselves in a manner that is consistent with what God calls you (your identity in Him), and what He calls you to do (His commandments to you as His purchased possession).”
It will be important as we move through this chapter and even the rest of this epistle, to stay balanced and remember, that what we are is His doing, and by His power, but that we are to deliberately walk in that power, being careful that our walk matches, coordinates with that power, to do the things and behave the ways that he is exhorting us to as we go on.
Just a glimpse; look at these opening verses of chapter 4.
“…with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
I doubt there’s anyone here who would deny that we need the power of the indwelling Spirit of God to do that. Nevertheless, we are exhorted to walk accordingly, and the clear implication there is that we are in a partnership with the Holy Spirit to be in practice what God has called us, and called us to be.
He has called us to life, just as surely as He called Lazarus from the tomb; and now He justly expects us to walk according to life. He empowers us to do so, and now calls us to step out in that power and live the life of Christ which is in us.
I want to close with a paragraph from Dr. Lloyd-Jones that I thought was a very good challenge for us all as we go forward into this chapter.
“He has called me, and I am His bondslave, His servant, His prisoner, and you are to live as the prisoners of Jesus Christ. ‘Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price’ (I Cor 6:19-20). We have no right to live as we choose and as we please. We were the prisoners of Satan; we are now the prisoners of Jesus Christ. We should have no desire save to please Him. ‘Let nothing please or pain me, apart, O Lord, from Thee’ should ever be the expression of our constant desire. If we but saw and grasped the meaning of our calling, in all its parts, there would be no problem about Christian living. We would ‘count it our supreme delight to hear His dictates and obey’…”
As we move forward in this study of Ephesians, I have a duty to make clear to you that if you fail to understand the spiritual reality of what God has accomplished in you and for you, what He has declared you to be, the power that He has made available to you by the working of His Holy Spirit to live the Christ-life and to go ever deeper in Him, then the coming chapters will become a drudgery to you because you will perceive the challenges and exhortations there as impossible for you to meet.
But if you pray and ask Him to open the eyes of your understanding concerning the things that have already been said, and if you will submit yourself to the working of His power to be strengthened, and enlightened, and filled up to God’s fulness, then you will know that it is only by His Holy Spirit that your walk can ever be consistent with, worthy of, the calling with which you are called, and you will go on with Him from victory to victory, joy to joy, fulness to fulness, glory to glory, and ‘count it (your) supreme delight to hear His dictates and obey’.
