(Colossians 1:9-12)…..For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.
No one is worthy to be saved, the worthy walk is not a walk that qualifies us to be a Christian. It’s not the reason for our salvation. It is our response to our salvation. In light of all that God has done for you and for me, the only reasonable thing to do is to live for Him. So are you walking worthy of your calling (1 Thessalonians 2:10-12)? When you hear and see the words “walk worthy” in Scripture, what comes to your mind? The question we have to ask ourselves as Christians is this, “Am I walking worthy of God, Who has called me into His own Kingdom and glory?”
Just what would it look like in the life of a Christian who is walking worthy in his/her faith? First, I firmly believe that God calls us out of sin and into a radically transformed lifestyle of righteous living, where we are no longer free to do as our sinful hearts desire. We’ve been bought with a price and are called to glorify God with our actions (1 Corinthians 6:20). Second, it is not that we are to live up to the gospel, but rather we are to live out of the gospel. We need to look at “walking worthy” as not “Here’s your calling…now live up to it, but here’s your calling, now live out of it.
Let me read a quote from John Piper……. “I don’t think that we merit from God or the gospel or our call; but that they merit from us. That is, to “walk worthy of the Lord” means to walk in a way that the Lord deserves from us, not in a way that we deserve from the Lord. So it is with the phrases “worthy of God” and “worthy of the Lord” and “worthy of the gospel” and “worthy of the calling.” They mean: Act in a way that fits the great value and glorious nature of God and the gospel and your calling.
To live out the Gospel through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit – notice what Paul says in (Ephesians 3:14-19). Now with that in mind we are to…….
- Walk in the light – (1 John 1:5-10)
- Walk in the truth – (3 John 1-8)
- Walk in Christ – (Colossians 2:4-7)
- Walk in the Spirit – (Galatians 5:16, 22-25)
- Walk in love – (Ephesians 5:1-21)***
- Walk as Christ walked – (1 John 2:5-11)
- Walk with self control – (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8)
- Walk properly – (Romans 13:13-14)
- Walk different from the world – (Ephesian 4:17-32