Worthy of His calling

Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. – 2 Thessalonians 1.11-12

I am always challenged by the sound of the words ‘worthy of His calling’ but I never can really ‘get’ what it means. I know in another place we are called to walk worthy of His calling, but here Paul prays that God would count us worthy of His calling.

But then he goes to explain the meaning of what this worthiness involves.

Fulfil the good pleasure of His goodness

Fulfil the work of faith with power

Let Christ be glorified on our lives

Depend on His grace to do the work

The point is, I think, that our lives ought to reflect the worth of Christ's work in us. We ought to live lives that are worthy of the price He paid on the cross.

Paul’s prayer is that God would be able to consider us worthy of His calling. He wants our lives to match up to the value He saw in us when He saved us. We can do that by, as Paul puts it elsewhere, by walking worthy of His calling.

When I think about this and look at my life I am ashamed at all the decisions I have made and all the things I have done that are not worthy of His calling and His sacrifice. When I choose to sin I devalue the cross.

Do our lives reflect the worth of the death of Christ? Or do we make light of the worth of His sacrifice by our foolish and selfish choices?