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If someone paid the highest price to give you an extraordinary gift, you wouldn’t take it lightly. You wouldn’t despise their generosity—or their sacrifice—by casting aside what they intended for your good.

That is why Paul urges believers in Ephesians 4:1 to “walk worthy of the calling with which you were called.”

God created us. He called us. He sent His Son to redeem us. He gave us His Spirit to dwell within us. Why would we ignore all of that and settle for the same empty life we once lived, acting as though we had never been rescued?

To help us understand what we’ve been saved from, Paul reminds us what life apart from Christ looks like. In Ephesians 4:17–19, he describes those who do not know Christ—and the people we once were.

They are:

• Futile in their thinking.
• Darkened in their understanding.
• Excluded from the life of God.
• Ignorant because of the hardness of their hearts.
• Calloused.
• Given over to sensuality, practicing every kind of impurity.
• Always craving more.

Read that list again.

Then remember: that was us.

By grace alone—as Paul has already explained in Ephesians 2—we have been rescued from that life. Why would we ever choose to return to it?

Instead, Paul tells us to continually **put off** the old self, **put on** the new self, and be continually **renewed in the spirit of our minds** (Ephesians 4:22–24).

We were made for more.

We have more in Christ.

We are more because of Christ.

And we are headed toward an eternity that is infinitely more.

So don’t grieve the Holy Spirit by allowing the world’s lies and temptations to pull you back into the life Christ died to save you from.

C.S. Lewis captured this tragedy so well:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

Too often, we settle for mud pies when Christ has offered us the ocean.

Walk worthy of the calling you’ve received. Don’t settle for the old life when you’ve been given something infinitely better.

Copyright © 2026 by Bill Elliff @ billelliff.org. No part of this article may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from Lifeword.org