BIBLE READING: EPHESIANS 4: 1-10
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says:

‘When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.’

(What does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)

REFLECTION
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is in two halves. Ephesians 1-3 begins the letter and it’s there where Paul explores some of the big themes of the Christian faith: that we’re made alive in God and that we’re made for a new community. It’s there that Paul talks about these big ideas of peace and of God’s love for us and of what it means to be in this new community.

In the second half of Ephesians which we’re starting today in chapter 4, Paul starts to talk about what it looks like practically to be a follower of Jesus.

It’s really important for us to hold those two things together. If we don’t then we have only big ideas but no practical outworking, which would mean that our lives would look no different to anyone else’s lives. We would believe in Jesus but then that belief makes no difference.

On the other hand, if we only read how we’re supposed to live but never consider the big ideas of scripture then all we’ve got is some good ideas of how to live but nothing behind those ideas: there’s no substance. It would be like a vacuum behind our way of life. What we need to do then is to hold these two things together. The big ideas of grace and of faith with actually what does faith look like in our world.

If we think about our world it seems that that is what it’s looking for – deep meaning and a way to live.

Paul starts Ephesians 4 with these words: ‘I urge you then to live a life worthy of the calling you have received’.

Paul, a prisoner, writes to the church in Ephesus saying to them: you have been given a calling, you have received something. It’s worth thinking about that. We’ve received it, we don’t earn it. In the Christian faith we never have to earn our identity. It’s always something that we have received.

And what is the calling, the thing we have received?

It's found in Jesus. That is what Paul has been saying in the first few chapters: that Jesus has rescued us, that he’s saved us by his grace and that because of him we can live a new life. So, the calling that we’ve been given is a calling to Jesus, to make allegiance to him. When we make our allegiance to him what we do is we enter into a new way of living: one where we don’t have to justify ourselves, one where we don’t have to prove ourselves. We also become part of his kingdom because what God is doing in the world is he is establishing a new way to live. That is the calling that we have received: a calling to explore grace and to make grace known.

So Paul says: ‘I urge you to live a life worthy of that calling’.

He says to us we must live a life worthy of it, he says to us that we have got something to live up to. And the thing that we are living up to is the calling we have been given.

It’s like this: I have two children. Those children of mine do not become my children because of what they do. It’s not as though they behave in a different way and therefore I call them my children. No. They already are my children and because they are my children they live like my children. They act out of a place of their identity.