Topic: Therefore, Walk Worthy (Part 1)
Ephesians 4:1, “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.” Paul makes his transition with the word ‘therefore,’ and so it is worth looking back at key points before moving forward. Go back to chapter one and two. Remember that Paul 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.” 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 desires to adopt us 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 God. By His Holy Spirit, He ushered us into the very throne room of heaven to stand as family before Holy God.
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.
Now, Paul sets the framework for the rest of chapter 4 and even chapter 5 with four key words.
1. Paul refers to himself as ‘the prisoner of the Lord.’ He wanted these Ephesians to know that a “prisoner” does not have charge of his life. A prisoner lives a restricted life. A prisoner is under the control of someone else. Christians are under the control of the Lord Jesus who has given us eternal life.
2. Paul sets before us the call to “walk.” The Greek word for “walk” is used eight times in Ephesians. Literally it means to “walk around” but is more often used metaphorically as “a way of life.”
- Ephesians 2:2, Paul writes that before Christ, we walked according to the world’s standards.
- Ephesians 2:10, Paul paints a picture of our lives as poems and encourages us that God has good works for us to walk in.
- Ephesians 4:17, Paul commands us to no longer walk the way Gentiles walk.
- Ephesians 5:2, we are commands to walk in love, in verse 8, to walk in love, and in verse 15, to walk as children of light.
The only way to “walk” in these ways is to understand that we rest in Christ, and He does the work in us for we are His prisoner.
Next week we will look at “worthy” and “calling.”
See you Sunday!
Dr. Scott Kallem