Ephesians 4:1
“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”
The first three disciplines of The R Factor are:
#1: Press Pause (gain clarity about any situation you face)
#2: Get Your Mind Right (create the mindset necessary for the situation)
#3: Step Up (take disciplined action in response to the situation)
Imagine what happens when these three disciplines are empowered by the Holy Spirit, directed by the truth scripture, motivated by love, and executed with faith!
In response to what God has done for us in Christ, Paul exhorts us to “live a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called.” The Lord has called us to a life (individually as Christians and collectively as the church) that displays his character. We are his ambassadors to a watching world.
This is the reason for the admonitions in scripture: “glorify God in your body … let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works … bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples.”
Putting this in the language of E+R=O, the Lord calls you to respond to the events of life in a way that is worthy of the Lord’s calling on your life. The word for “worthy” is the Greek axios, and it means “weighing as much as, of like value, worth as much.”
Axios has the root meaning of balancing the scales—i.e., the weight of the item on one side corresponds to the weight of the standard on the other side. By extension, axios came to be applied to anything that was expected to correspond to something else. For example, a person worthy of his pay was one whose work corresponded to his wages.
In the biblical context, axios focuses on what kind of life you live in response to your relationship with Christ. It refers to the kind of character you develop as a result of being saved. God has called you to develop and display a Christ-like character. The scale illustrates the extent to which your day-to-day life is axios … that is, the extent to which the way you respond corresponds to God’s standards.
The principle of axios should be applied to how you respond to any situation you face. Before you speak or take action, press pause and consider, “Is the response I am considering axios? Is the response worthy of the Lord’s calling on my life?”
For those who believe in Jesus Christ, “the scale of salvation” has already been balanced by God’s grace in Christ. There is no work we can do that is worthy enough to compensate for the “weight” of our sin. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6.23), and the payment has been made by Christ’s death on the cross. As Paul teaches in Ephesians 2.8-9, our salvation is by grace through faith and not the result of works.
God calls us to receive the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ, and then respond to the events of life in a way that is worthy (axios) of the Lord’s calling on your life.
