Walk

I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. EPHESIANS 4:1

The letter turns at chapter four. Having spent three chapters describing what God has done, Paul says therefore — and for the next two chapters he deals with conduct. Nee’s point about this hinge is simple and important: the therefore is load-bearing. Christian behaviour is not a set of requirements imposed upon us in order to make us acceptable. It is the appropriate outworking of a position already occupied. We do not walk in order to sit. We walk because we are seated.

Worthy of a calling, not worthy of a wage

Note the phrase: walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. Not worthy of God — no one is. Worthy of the calling. There is a fittingness being asked for, the way a man’s clothing should suit the occasion he has been invited to.

That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. EPHESIANS 4:22–24

Nee laid weight on the metaphor of clothing. Putting off and putting on are not the same as killing and creating. The old man was crucified — that was settled at the cross and is not repeated. What we do daily is decline to wear him. The garment is discarded, not the corpse reexecuted. This distinction saved a great many of his hearers from a wearying spiritual practice in which every day begins with an attempt to die all over again. The death is behind us. The wardrobe choice is in front of us.

The walk is with others

There is something easily overlooked in Ephesians 4 to 6 which Nee never overlooked: almost every instruction concerns another person. Lying is forbidden because we are members one of another (Ephesians 4:25). Anger must not be carried overnight. Stealing is replaced by working so that there may be something to give away. Corrupt speech is replaced by speech that builds up the hearer. Bitterness, wrath, clamour and evil speaking are to be put away, and in their place: be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you (Ephesians 4:32). Then follow the household relationships — husbands and wives, parents and children, servants and masters. Nee found this deeply significant. The deeper life is not tested in the prayer closet, where no one contradicts us. It is tested at the table, in the marriage, in the workshop, in the way a man speaks to those who cannot answer him back. He had little patience for spirituality that flourished in meetings and collapsed at home. The measure of a man’s walk, he taught, is taken by the people who live with him.

Walking in love, in light, and carefully

Ephesians 5 gives the walk three qualities, and Nee treated them in turn. Walk in love (5:2) — and the standard given is Christ’s self-giving, not our natural affection. Love here is measured by what it costs, not by what it feels. Walk as children of light (5:8) — which chiefly means transparency. The believer has nothing to hide, and the willingness to be known is itself a form of holiness. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light (5:13). Walk circumspectly (5:15) — literally, accurately; walking as a man does who is picking his way across broken ground. Nee connected this to the redeeming of time: because the days are evil (5:16). A short life in a dark age is not to be spent carelessly.

And through all of it, the enabling is the same as the beginning. Be filled with the Spirit (5:18) stands in the middle of these instructions, not as one more command among many, but as the power by which the rest become possible. Nee’s whole point is that Christian conduct is Christ’s life reaching the surface. Where it is anything else — willpower, temperament, culture, fear of what people will say — it may look similar for a while, but it will not hold.

The renewing of the mind

Between the position and the walk, Paul places one more thing, and Nee would not let it be skipped.

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. ROMANS 12:2

Conformity, he pointed out, happens by default. It requires no decision. A body placed in a mould takes the shape of the mould simply by remaining there, and a believer immersed in the assumptions of his age will absorb them without ever consciously adopting one of them. The world does not usually argue us out of our convictions. It simply makes certain things unthinkable and other things obvious, and we adjust. Transformation, by contrast, works in the opposite direction — from within outwards — and it operates through the mind. This is why Nee gave such weight to the sustained reading of Scripture. Not reading for sermon material, and not reading to complete a schedule, but the slow saturation by which a man’s instinctive judgements begin to change. The renewed mind is not merely a mind with more information in it. It is a mind that has come to find different things obvious.

And be renewed in the spirit of your mind. EPHESIANS 4:23

He noted the practical outcome Paul attaches to it: that ye may prove what is …the will of God. Guidance, on this understanding, is far less often a matter of special direction than of a mind so shaped by God that it recognises His will when it appears. The believer who is forever asking for signs may be revealing that the ordinary means have been neglected. There is a test in this that anyone can apply. Take an area where the culture around you holds a settled opinion — about money, about status, about forgiveness, about who deserves respect. Ask what Scripture says. Then ask which of the two your gut agrees with. The gap between them is the measure of how much renewing remains to be done. Nee’s expectation was that this work is gradual and mostly invisible, and that it shows up not in what we say we believe but in what we do without thinking.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask the people you live with, not the people you minister to, how your walk is going. Their answer is the accurate one. 2. Identify one garment of the old man you have kept in the wardrobe — a habit of speech, a way of handling conflict. Take it off deliberately today rather than trying to die again. 3. Take Ephesians 4:25–32 and find the one command you break most often. Confess it as an offence against the Body, which is how Paul frames it.

4. Examine your speech for one week with a single question: did that build up the person who heard it? 5. Where are you walking carelessly with your time? Name one specific redemption of an hour, and make it this week.

A PRAYER

Father, You have seated me in Christ, and now You ask me to walk in a manner that suits it. I confess how often my conduct has contradicted my position.

Let my holiness be tested where it counts — in my home, with my family, among those who can do nothing for me. Guard my tongue. Take the bitterness out of me before the sun goes down.

I cannot produce this by resolve. Fill me with Your Spirit, and let Your own life come to the surface in the ordinary hours of this day. Amen.