Every one of us used to walk, to live our lives, as dead people (2:1-2). But moved by great love, God shows us kindness beyond what we can imagine (2:4-5; 3:20). He acted to include us in his cosmic plan to unite all things under Christ (1:10). He “made us alive together with Christ” (2:5) so that we “walk” in the “good works” he prepared for us (2:10). Between walking in deadness and walking as new creatures, God made us alive. The same way Jesus called his dead friend Lazarus out of the tomb, “Lazarus, come out!” (Jn. 11:43), he calls us. His call is what makes the dead come to life! Through the word of God preached in the gospel (1:13), God raises spiritually dead people. He gives us new life and faith to follow him. 

And his call has a goal or a hope. “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called in the one hope of your calling,” (4:4). The hope of our calling is everything that heaven has to give us because of Christ’s work. We have been blessed “in Christ with every spiritual blessing” (1:3)—we will stand before him holy and blameless; we have been adopted; we have redemption; God reveals his will to us; he gives us his Holy Spirit. He makes us fit so that he can live with us by his Spirit (2:22). He raises us to life “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus,” (2:7). 1 Thessalonians 2:12 uses the same language, “walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.” The blessings are summed up as entering God’s kingdom, going into glory.

Here's the point. In Chapter 1, Paul prays that we may have “the eyes of [our] hearts enlightened, that [we] may know the hope to which he has called [us]” (1:18). It is as we grasp the glories of what God has done for us in Christ and the hope that is before us—an immeasurably great and beautiful and satisfying future—that we will walk in a worthy manner.

Our walk, the way we go about life, is transformed as we set our hearts on our calling. If we saw, if we knew, if we embraced and treasured these things for what they are, our walk would be worthy of them. This doesn’t mean we become worthy, deserving of the calling. It means the calling is worth so much that it brings about this kind of life—our life conforms to the worth of the call. 

God acts in a mighty, undeserved, costly way to save. The effect is a tremendously beautiful future for us! God will spend an eternity lavishing the grace of his kindness on us in Christ Jesus. Recognising the preciousness of our calling is what will produce a life that is fitting, suitable, worthy of that treasure.

Madhush.