Ephesians 4:1

VOCATION

‘I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.’

Ephesians 4:1

The vocation or calling here referred to was the name, the status, the dignity, the privileges, flowing from admission to the Church of Christ.

If we are true citizens of the Kingdom of Christ Jesus we have assuredly our work to do.

I. We have each of us to use our earthly citizenship, our civil rights to leaven public and social life with the influence of the laws of Christ’s Kingdom.

(a) We have to discourage the rudeness and coarse frivolity, and clever impudence, and unscrupulous exaggeration and distortion of the truth, which are far too much tolerated and applauded in our day.

(b) We have to crush, by manly effort, the lawless licentiousness and fiendish lust which seethe beneath the surface of society, and poison the fountains of national life.

(c) We have to rebuke the prurient indecency which publishes without reserve or modesty the things of which it is a shame to speak.

(d) We have to foster the delicate reserve and sensitive shrinking from all whisper of uncleanness which used to be the instinct and the law of chaste womanhood.

(e) We have to rescue our cities from worldliness and profligacy, our villages from irreligion, and lethargy, and sloth.

II. We have by well-doing to put to silence the ignorance of those who speak foolish things against the religion and the Church of Christ.

III. We have to deepen the religion of our homes by the silent suasion that proceeds from hearts which are themselves filled with the love of Jesus.

IV. We have to discipline our own lives in growing conformity to the mind of Christ.

Thus, by making the most of our lives, we shall walk worthy of what God has bestowed on us, and accomplish the vocation that He intends.

—Bishop James Macarthur.