A High Standard - The Wesleyan Church

I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. (Eph. 4:1)

Expanded Passage: Ephesians 4:1-16; Titus 2:11-15

Local churches come in all shapes and sizes, don’t they? Some are mega-churches, some micro-churches; some meet in an elaborate sanctuary and some in a private home; some practice traditional worship and some a more contemporary style; some are free to hold a public service and some in other parts of the world are gathering behind locked doors. They’re very different, and yet they’re all “the church.”

God gave the apostle Paul a word for the Ephesian church, but he was not just writing to a single congregation in that letter. For one thing, many scholars believe he meant for it to become a circular letter, passed along to several other Christian congregations in that region of western Asia Minor (modern Turkey). But in a more universal way, the principles that Paul was preaching, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, are God’s design for every congregation as well.

When he called the church to unity (4:1–6), ministry (4:7–13), maturity (4:14–16), and, as the letter continues, purity (4:17—5:20), all in the context of the gospel, he was speaking to us as well as to them. That’s a universal template, one meant to characterize any church anywhere at any time. If it characterizes us, we too can “live a life worthy of the calling” we have received.

In things great and small, live a life worthy of your Lord.

Bob Black is a third-generation Wesleyan minister and professor emeritus of religion at Southern Wesleyan University (SC).