Walk Worthy

The apostle Paul exhorted the Christians in Ephesus, Colosse, and Thessalonica to walk worthy of their calling and worthy of the Lord who called them. He exhorted them to live in a manner that reflected who they were in Christ. I believe the exhortation given by the apostle to particular churches in his day is for the Church universal and so is for Christians today. We are to live in a manner worthy of our calling and of the Lord who called us. We are to die to self and live for Christ. We are to boldly proclaim the Gospel. We are to sacrificially love.
I think most of us who know Christ as Savior agree that this is what we are to do; indeed most of us would say this is what we want to do, but many of us aren’t doing it – or aren’t doing it very well – because we seem to have little power against our sinful attitudes and behavior. Some of us have given up, thinking that we are “just sinners saved by grace” and we can’t hope to have real or lasting victory. Some of us categorize, believing that as long as we stay away from the “big” sins we are OK. We can live with a little lust as long as we don’t fall in to adultery. We can live with a little anger as long as we don’t punch anyone in the nose.
We aren’t called to give up. We aren’t called to defeat. We aren’t given the liberty to be OK with the “little” sins. We are called to walk – to live – in a manner worthy of our call and the One who called us.
I think most of us aren’t doing this – dying to self and boldly proclaiming the Gospel and sacrificially loving – because we misunderstand the concept. We think we are called to do when in fact we are called to be. We make walking worthy of Christ a matter of doing.
I don’t think this is what Paul is calling us to. Throughout his epistles Paul declares this is who Christ is and this is who the Christian is in Christ. He never says go do this and you will be this, he always points us to who we are in Christ and tells us to be who we are in Christ.
If you are a Christian you are in Christ. You have been born of the Holy Spirit and you are indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Paul writes; “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” This is an inspiring thought, but many days this is not our experience. I don’t think Paul wrote this to inspire, I think he wrote it to describe. He wrote it to describe the reality of who we are in Christ.
Paul wrote to declare the truth about those who are in Christ. All who are in Christ have been changed. The old nature has been replaced with the new. We were by nature children of wrath. We were dead in sin, but we have been made alive in Christ.
So, if the reality is that we are new in Christ why is it our experience that so often we don’t live that way?
We don’t live that way because we live in corrupted flesh – flesh that will not be completely redeemed until the resurrection – and we live in a corrupted world. I think most of us get that. That’s why we say we’re just sinners saved by grace.
We don’t live that way because we aren’t being who we are in Christ. We experience defeat by our sin instead of victory over our sin because we aren’t walking in the Spirit. Paul wrote that if we walk by the Spirit we will not gratify the desires of the flesh. What leads us, our corrupted flesh or the Holy Spirit in us? Are we looking to our experience to define our reality and inform our thinking and our living or is the true reality of who we are in Christ taught in Scripture and validated by the Spirit in us informing our thinking and our living?
We live in our experience, and we can live nowhere else, but our experience should not define us. What should define us is who we are in Christ, and I’m convinced that as we understand who we are in Christ our experience will change. We will walk in the Spirit and not pander to the desires of the flesh.
To do this we need a correct understanding of who Christ is, what He has done, and who we are in Him.
Imagine going downtown and seeing a man living on the street and sleeping in doorways. You comment to your friend who is walking with you how sad it is that people live that way. Your friend looks at you incredulously and asks; “Do you know who this man is?” When you say no, your friend says; “He is the son of Mr. Jones, the richest man in town, and heir to the Jones business and financial empire!”
Why would the son of the richest man in town live on the street and sleep in doorways? I don’t know, but I have a question closer to home. Why do we who are in Christ, born of the Spirit, by grace though faith redeemed from the penalty for our sin, reconciled to God, adopted as His children, indwelled and empowered by the Spirit, dead to sin and alive in Christ, live like the only part of this we get is that we are saved by grace through faith (we hope).
Christians who live this way are like the man living on the street while the heir to the richest man in town. They live with a false identity. They live with a false understanding of who they are. I believe that if we live in our true identity – which we can only do if we understand who we are – we will live in a manner worthy of our calling and the One who called us. We will walk in the Spirit and not indulge our flesh. We will walk in victory, putting sin to death.
Don’t misunderstand, I’m not talking about becoming sinless – as long as we live in flesh corrupted by sin in a world corrupted by sin we will sin – but we are no longer sinners by nature. We have been made new in Christ.
Many Christians live with a deficient understanding of their true identity. Many of us have a deficient understanding of who we are in Christ.