Walking Worthy of Your Calling

 

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:1-5 ESV).

 

Our reading today is a call to “walk worthy of our calling” (v. 1). There are some practical things we can strive to do in response. First, we should seek a life of meekness. The word, meekness was used in classical Greek in the sense of mildness or gentleness of character. The adjective (praos), especially, found an important use in describing an animal completely disciplined and controlled, much like we would use the word “saddle-broken” for a horse. It deals with our attitude toward others. As one writer puts it, meekness “is the spirit of one who is so absorbed in seeking some worthy goal for the common good that he refuses to be deflected from it by slights, injuries or insults directed at himself personally, or indeed by personal considerations of any kind”.

 

Secondly, we should develop patience. This word is used of steadfast endurance of suffering or misfortune (cf. James 5:10), though more often it is used of slowness in avenging wrong or retaliating when hurt by another. It is used of God’s patience with humanity and the corresponding and consequent quality that the Christian should show towards others (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:4).

 

The third attribute we should develop is also a divine quality (cf. Romans 2:4): the practical outworking of longsuffering. It involves bearing with one another’s weaknesses, not ceasing to love others because of those faults in them which perhaps offend or displease us. It is that mutual tolerance without which no group of human beings can live together in peace.

 

Each of these is possible only in love. Since love is the basic attitude of seeking the highest good of others, it will therefore lead to each of these qualities, and include them all. The Apostle Paul has prayed that his readers may be “rooted and grounded in love” (v. 17), and now he exhorts them to do their part, and to go on to possess all these virtues in love. That prayer was first for the Ephesians, but then for every believer to read this Scripture. Make that your goal!