What is God's Calling for in Ephesians 4:1?

    What is God's calling for?  Ephesians 4:1 says: I therefore the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the calling with which you were called."  I read a sentence from page 329 of chapter 39 of the Life-Study of Ephesians that caught my attention, and it said:  According to Ephesians the unique goal of God's calling is the building up of the Body of Christ" (Lee, Witness. Life Study of Ephesians. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1978, Print).  And I've learned from my reading that this is really on God's heart. 

    Paul's letter to the Ephesians shows us over and over that God's purpose concerns the church, the Body of Christ. As Witness Lee mentions in the beginning of this chapter, not many believers have not been so clear about the church being  the goal of God's calling.  I liked this opening excerpt:

In Matthew 16 the Lord Jesus said that He would build His church.  The book of Acts and this Epistle reveal that the church is built up not by the Lord directly, but through the members of the Body....God has called us for the fulfillment of this goal (Page 329).

     In this message he also touches on how Ephesians 4:12 helps to achieve this goal.  Paul mentions that God has given the apostles, prophets, shepherds and teachers as gifts to help build up the Body.  Besides doing that, they also perfect all the other members of the Body to do what they do.  Because I'm a teacher it's easy for me to see this parallel.  Every teacher has the job of perfecting his/her students to do the same thing that they can do. 

    When I've thought about this, I can see that in the Body of Christ it's the same way--if you can preach the gospel well, you can share those experiences with others and even go out with them a few times to help them preach the gospel.  In this way they'll be perfected like this verse talks about.  I learned from one of the chapters that the Greek word for apostle is just a sent one. We can all be sent ones to our neighborhoods and jobs.


You can listen to excerpts of  these Ephesians Life Study messages on Life Study of the Bible with Witness Lee.

Other blog posts on the Life Study of Ephesians:

What is the Subject of Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians?
What is the Mystery of God's Will Revealed in Ephesians 1:9?
How Does God Head Up All Things in Christ in Ephesians 1:10?
How Does the Spirit Seal us in Ephesians 1:13-14?
What is the Surpassing Greatness of His Power in Ephesians 1:19?
From the Life Study of Ephesians: How Electricity Illustrates God's Purpose to Reach Man
What is the One New Man in Ephesians 2:15?
What is the Stewardship of the Grace of God in Ephesians 3:2?
 What is the Multifarious Wisdom of God For in Ephesians 3:10?
What's God's Calling for in Ephesians 4:1?
What Does It Mean to Learn Christ in Ephesians 4:20?
Seeing the Church as the Bride of Christ in Ephesians 5:32
Seeing the Church as the Warrior in Ephesians 6
How Do We Apply the Armor of God in Ephesians 6?
What are the Seven Aspects of the Church Seen in Ephesians?
Why Did God Abolish the Ordinances in Ephesians 2:15?
Why is the Spirit Mentioned in Every Chapter of Ephesians?