“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:1)

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1)

I’ve been reading Romans 12 alongside Ephesians 4 recently, and I was struck by the similarities in both Paul’s messages. They both begin with the same entreaty: “ I therefore beseech you.” Paul beseeches the Romans to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service,” and goes on to encourage them “not to think of himself more highly than the ought to think but to think soberly…“ In essence this is very similar to “walking… with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.” To the Romans he explains that this is necessary because “God has dealt to each one measure of faith,“ whereas to the Ephesians he writes “to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.“ The Romans are taught that “we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another,“ whereas the Ephesians are encouraged to “keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling…“ (3 to 4). In both letters Paul considers how different grace gifts perform different functions. For the Romans Paul focusses on the functions (sometimes called “motivational gifts”) themselves, whereas to the Ephesians he looks at the different types of people performing them – the “(fivefold) ministry gifts.” However both passages essentially have the same message:

“Don’t think of yourself as special: the identity and purpose that you have has been given to you as a gift by the grace of God and is yours by Faith. Your life isn’t about you. It’s about the point you play in the Kingdom of God, which is the rule and reign of Christ through his body on earth. It has meaning and value when it is used for the benefit of others out of a motivation of love for the Lord and love for others. If you can put your flesh and your self-importance on the altar and get hold of the glory and majesty of the Kingdom we are being called into, and concentrate on using what it is that God has given you to do to equip and build up others, not in your own strength but in His mighty power that can move mountains with mustard seeds, the whole body of Christ will grow in love and maturity and God will be glorified.“

The Hope of our Calling
In the light of this, what is “the hope of our calling,” and the ”calling with which we are called?” Paul says “I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:14) Our call is from Heaven. It’s a prize. Bible teacher Andrew Wommack says: “When you see a therefore, you’ve got to find what it’s there for!” Romans 12 begins: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” What’s the therefore there for? Read the last verse of the previous chapter, which is all about the unsearchable wisdom of God in His plan for “all Israel,” Jew and Gentile, to be saved. The last verse reads: “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.” When we offer our lives to Jesus as a living sacrifice because we realise there’s nothing else we can reasonably do in the light of all that He is, we are pressing on for that goal.

In Philippians 3:12 Paul also talks about pressing on, “to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me.“ Jesus got hold of our spirits on the cross and has taken them to heaven with Him, and now he’s calling us to live lives that will manifest on earth the amazing truth of who we have become. We are called to leave our own bodies behind and humbly join ourselves to the spiritual body of Christ. That is the calling which we are to walk worthy of. A hand isn’t a hand for its own sake; it’s only a hand in as much as it serves the body. My call isn’t my ministry: it’s the coming perfection of the body of Christ – “a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;” (Eph 4:13) – that it serves.

Measuring Mustard Seeds
Paul introduces his passage to the Romans on gifts with the explanation “God has given to each of us a measure of faith,” (Romans 12:3) whereas the introduction to the parallel passage in Ephesians four is “but to each of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ gift.”  This leads me to the final point of this teaching. If indeed these two texts are expressing the same truths in the way that I suggest they are, then the “measure of faith” corresponds to “the grace that has given according to the measure of Christ gift.” The point is this: what measure does God use? I have always understood these passages as saying that God gives each one of us a particular measure of faith to correspond with the gift in which we are operating, and every translation I have seen seem to imply the same thing – ie that God deals, or assigns, different measures to different people. However Jesus Himself says “God does not give the Spirit by measure.” (John 3:34) Christ’s gift to us is the power that raised Him from the dead (Romans 8:11), and “the power to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think.” (Eph 3:20) If we only need a “mustard seed” grain of the faith that comes from God to move a mountain, is God really going to measure our mustard seeds depending on the size of the mountains He want us to move? I think not. God didn’t give me more, or less, grace than He gave you: we both received His grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift, which is actually beyond measure. As we know from 2 Cor 12:12, when we are weak, we are strong. It’s when we operate in our weakness but in His measure of grace that God is glorified. Peter puts it like this: “If anyone ministers, let him minister as with the ability that God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”

The Perfect Man
Paul gives us this vision of the Body of Christ in Ephesians 4:16 “from whom (ie Christ, the Head) the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effectual working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”

The phrase ”effectual working” is the Greek “energeia”, which is only used in the New Testament for superhuman power. “Share” is metron, the same word as the measure (metron) of Christ’s gift. We are called to participate in God’s plan by devoting ourselves to laying hold of His superhuman power to fulfil our assignments. We aren’t going to access His energeia unless our walk is aligned with His will, and to align with His will we have to lay down our own. There is no such thing as compromise in the service of the King: our sinful nature is such that we can’t walk  “with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,” unless we’ve left our flesh on the altar and stepped away as the new creations that we are in the Spirit. I believe that it’s only when we succeed in this that Ephesians 4:16 is fulfilled in our lives.

The “perfect man” that the body of Christ is being called into is the mature bride of Christ filled with a love that matches His own. To play our part in that high calling our lives must display a love and desire for unity that is worthy of the goal we are pressing on to attain.