Ephesians 4:1
Ephesians 4:11As a prisoner in the Lord, then, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling you have received:
— "I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called" — is read by JWs as the practical introduction to apostolic teaching. The "calling" is understood primarily as the calling of the 144,000 anointed class to heavenly life; the Great Crowd's earthly hope is a different calling with its own set of expectations.
Paul's letter is addressed to "the holy ones who are in Ephesus" () — the whole congregation, not a select spiritual subset. The "calling" of 4:1 is the shared calling of every believer in Christ, and verses 4-6 unpack its content: "one body and one spirit, just as you were called in the one hope to which you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all." The sevenfold unity is the test for any two-class reading: if "one hope" secretly means two hopes, then "one baptism" means two baptisms, "one Lord" means two Lords, and "one God" means two Gods. The logic of the passage disintegrates under a tiered reading. Paul is writing the opposite of a two-class ecclesiology — he is "maintaining the unity of the spirit in the uniting bond of peace" (v.3), and the calling he is urging every Ephesian believer to walk worthy of is the one shared calling that unites them all.