Walking Worthy of Our Calling

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Christ Alone and the Wrath of God

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Ephesians 4 and the Call to Walk Worthily

All right, if you do have a Bible today, please turn to Ephesians 4, and we're going to be reading Ephesians 4, 1 -3. Ephesians 4, I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity in spirit and the bond of peace.

Now, if you've been in church for any length of time, you might realize that there is almost no reason that it's too petty for people to leave churches or to refuse to come to a church, okay? So I've been involved in leadership in churches for over a decade now, and I've seen a lot of things in the course of my ministry within churches that are related to how strong of a culture of church shopping there is in many churches.

So when you're talking about the American church in general, you're talking about a church that seems to have this high priority of unity. It's a church that talks and talks incessantly about the importance of unity, and they're trying to do everything that they possibly can to manufacture some sort of unity centered around something.

But then the problem is that the kind of unity that they're trying to achieve is a kind of unity that, for the most part, is divorced of truth, is divorced of doctrine, is divorced of theological propositions.

And as I've said, I mean, if you've been at church for any length of time, you know, I'm sure that you can even think within your own mind of scenarios where individuals are either not feeling unified with a particular church.

You may have invited people to come to this church, and they've communicated to you that they didn't feel at home here, or they didn't feel welcome here, or they didn't feel unified with this place. And if you think about the reasons that they might give for these kind of things or the reasons that I've heard over the course of my ministry, most of the things that people mention are pretty petty when it comes down to it.

So I mean, I've been involved in churches where behind the scenes these churches were about to face a church split over issues about what color paint the church was going to pick to paint the church, or what color carpet the church was going to pick.

We've had people who will come into this place and not want to come back because there isn't enough people that are in their own demographic, their own stage of life. And then you have couples who will come and say that they don't feel unified with this place because there's not couples that match their unique age difference within themselves.

And so we've had couples like that. And if you think about it, we've had people leave our churches over particular stances that we've taken. I mean, I've been in churches in the course of my ministry where people have left because we decided to change the worship time from 1045 to 1030.

And those 15 minutes were so precious to them to the point where they refused to come anymore because that change was just beyond the pale of their imagination for what they thought was acceptable. But as I'm saying, we live in a church shopper culture, and we live in a time where churches in general in America, they feel a lot of pressure to try to cave to this church shopper culture.

And so the basic question that most pastors are trying to ask is, what is the minimum amount of truth that we can give to a group of people in order to build the biggest gathering of people and figure out what kind of music they want to hear so we can give them what kind of music they want to hear, figure out what topics they want us to talk about, what topics they're going to find offensive.

And so for many people, particularly as it relates to the secret sensitive movement in general, they're going to tailor their services to exactly what they perceive their people will want to hear in an effort to manufacture some sort of false sense of unity that's centered around ultimately the God of self.

So ultimately in this kind of framework, the individual, the consumer, he or she is sovereign. Their will is sovereign. And what you have is you have a group of pastors who are trying to do whatever they can to figure out what these people want, to try to give them the most of what they want so they'll feel compelled to want to come back because it's a church that's ultimately built around people and it's not built around God.

But then when you read a passage like this, as we're studying through Ephesians, we've been walking through a series of messages that are centered around this concept of unity. And we're getting into Ephesians 4 as basically the application portion of the book of Ephesians in general.

And so as we've been talking about this subject of unity, what we find here within Ephesians is we find some instructions that are given to us to tell us how we're supposed to be achieving this unity that so many people crave.

And the way that we achieve this unity that so many people crave is not the way that most people think. And so the way that Paul wants Church at Ephesus and all Christians by extension to pursue unity is going to be very different than the way that you might imagine and the way that people in our culture imagine in general.

And it all centers around this broader idea of walking worthy of the calling with which you've been called. So Ephesians 4 .1 starts by saying, I therefore a prisoner of the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called.

And so we're going to be talking about today is how to do this. How do we walk worthy of this calling with which you've been called? And what is the natural results of walking worthy of the calling with which you've been called?

But then in order to do that, you basically have to say a few words about what we're even talking about when we're talking about this idea of walking in a manner worthy of your calling. So the idea of like your Christian walk, I'm sure that if you've been in the church for any length of time, you've heard people talk about your walk.

That really is a pretty distinctly Christian way of speaking. I don't know that many like I've never heard a pagan come up to me and ask me, you know, hey, Tim, how's your walk going? Right. I've never heard that before.

And I remember growing up in the church around my college age or something like that. I have like a youth pastor come up to me. And this is the first time I heard someone speak this way, even though I knew that like the Bible talks like this in some sense.

It was just a odd way to speak. So I had a youth pastor come up to me at some point and say, you know, Tim, how's your walk going? And I just kind of looked at him and got a little bit of a grin on my face.

And I was trying to figure out how to answer. And, you know, I said, well, you know, I think I normally lead with my left leg. And then after that, I try to move my right, try to keep them moving at equal distance lengths so that I don't walk crooked.

But I knew what he was talking about. But the point there is just to say that it is a distinctly Christian way of speaking. And it is something you have to think about. Well, what is actually being communicated with those kinds of expressions?

And so what does Paul mean when he urges us to walk in a manner worthy of the calling of which you've been called? Well, the idea of a walk is the idea of someone's conduct of life. It's the manner in which they live their life.

It reflects like all the habits, all the practices that they engage in, the way they order their affairs, the way they order their life. And so what we're going to be talking about today is how to have a Christian walk that is worthy of the calling with which we've been called.

The Basis of Christian Conduct in Ephesians 1–3

And the first thing I want to say about this is just talk about the basis for a walk. So Ephesians 4 .1 begins with the words, I therefore, you know, a prisoner of the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called.

But that therefore is a very significant therefore. And, you know, as we've said in the past, that whenever you see the word therefore, you're supposed to ask yourself, what is this word therefore? And in this case, this therefore is a very pregnant therefore.

So it's a therefore that has a lot of content that's attached to it. Now, you know, as you read through Paul's letters, one of the things you're going to find is that frequently Paul spends the first half of the letters dealing with basically the theology that he wants his people to hear.

And then, you know, as you get to the second half of the letters, what you're going to find is you're going to find the practice or the application that's related to that theology that he just taught.

So basically what happens in most of Paul's letters is he lays the groundwork in the first three letters, like a theological groundwork for what he's talking about. And then in the last portion of the letters, you're going to have the application.

And this is a book where, you know, I know that the chapter divisions aren't inspired here, but you have a six-chapter book that's divided very neatly up between theology and application. So first three chapters are theology, second three chapters are application.

The same thing happens in many of his other letters as well, particularly Colossians. It's the same kind of formula that you're going to find there. So the point here is just to say when we're talking about walking worthy of the calling with which we've been called and we're going to talk about the basis for our walk, the basis for his instruction about how we should be living is found in the first three chapters of this book.

And so what you're meant to do when he says, I therefore, prisoner of the Lord, encourage you to walk worthy of the calling with which you've been called, you're supposed to ask, well, therefore, on the basis of what?

And that therefore is on the basis of basically everything that he's said in the letter up until this point. And I know that we've spent, you know, sermon after sermon after sermon walking through Ephesians to get to this point.

But it may do us some good to try to reflect on all the things that are included in this therefore. So I'm not going to read the first three chapters of Ephesians for you today, but I do want to remind you of some of the things that we're talking about.

Now, you talk about the opening chapter of Ephesians. The book starts with the words, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

So this book starts with thanksgiving to God for all the things that God has done for Christians. So blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

This book starts with thanksgiving to God for what he's done for us in Christ. Okay? And what he's done for us in Christ is he's given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. And then as you read the letter, what you're going to find is he's going to make a list of those blessings.

So what are the blessings? What are we thanking God for? What is Paul thanking God for? Well, one, three, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. What did God do for us? He chose Christians in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, what did he do? He predestined us for adoptions as sons through Jesus Christ. Verse 7, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. So he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

He predestined us for adoption as sons. In him we have redemption through his blood. Verse 11, in him we've obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

So we've been chosen, adopted. We've received redemption. We've obtained an inheritance. Verse 13, in him also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.

You were sealed with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 2 .1, and you were dead. What is our fundamental condition for Christ? You were dead in your trespasses of sin. But God, verse 4, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you've been saved. Verse 6, and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Chapter 2, verse 11, remember at one time you were Gentiles in the flesh, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God and world.

But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

Verse 19, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. On the basis of all these things, God choosing us before the foundation of the world, giving us an inheritance, adopting us into his family, redeeming us, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles, making them all members of one family.

On the basis of all of these things that God has done, these blessings that we have in our union with Christ, Paul tells us that we need to walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called. So the point here is just to say that these doctrines are not abstract doctrines.

These doctrines are not just unnecessary doctrines. These are not just things that we say that might be meaningful to us in a very narrow sense of telling us how we're going to be saved. These are doctrines that affect the entirety of the way that you not only live your life, but how you relate to other people.

And if the vast majority of American church shoppers understood these doctrines, they would realize that coming into a church that doesn't have the carpet color that you want it to have or the paint color that you want it to have or the specific demographic makeup of people that you want it to have or the age ranges of people that you want it to have or the types of ministries that are geared particularly towards you that you want it to have, if you understand all of these things that Jesus has done for you, and you as a person who once walked according to the course of the world, according to the mercy of the power of the air, the spirit that's now at work in the sense of disobedience, if you understood that you were dead in your trespasses of sin and God being rich in his mercy made you alive, he raised you up, he's sealed you with the Holy Spirit, right, who is the down payment for your inheritance, he's made you one with fellow believers.

If you understood those things and valued those things, then what you would do is you would be eager to find a group of people who are very different than you, right, very different than you, and none of that would matter.

What would matter is that God's broken down the dividing wall of hostility and these are your people and they're your people because they're the same people that Jesus died on the cross for so that you could all be devoted to not just finding, you know, a place that looks like you and shares all of your self-centered preferences and does everything exactly the way you think it should do, but you would be set free to learn to love a group of people just the way that God sacrificially loved you.

And so the point here is just to say, you know, how do we pursue unity as a church? How do we live the Christian life? How do we walk together? What is that all going to look like? The basis for all of that is going to be found not in some like disconnected doctrines that you argue about on a theology exam or something like that, but you look to all this list of what Jesus has done for you and that fundamentally should shape how you live, how you walk in life, and how you interact with other people.

So the basis of your walk is going to be found in all these blessings that God has given you in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The second thing we see in this passage is the gravitas of your walk.

So Paul says, I therefore, you know, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in the manner worthy of which you've been called. This prisoner of the Lord phrase, it may seem like a throwaway phrase when you look at it.

So you think, well, why did he include that there? It seems like a kind of a throwaway phrase, but really it is a phrase that's pointing to the gravitas of what Paul is talking about. And by extension, it has very serious implications for how we think about the nature of what we are even doing in the Christian life.

So gravitas is a word that means high seriousness, as in a person's bearing or in the treatment of a subject. And so there's often people who when they speak, you listen, you pay attention, right? There's people who, when they have something to say, they may have a long track record of saying things that are particularly helpful.

So, I mean, you can imagine this in like a business scenario where, you know, you have a group of board members arguing over things. And, you know, whenever that one board member speaks, everyone shuts up and listens because they've learned over the course of their life that when that individual says something, if they don't listen, bad things typically happen.

Well, that's a word to describe just the bearing of an individual, the seriousness of an individual, the high seriousness with which people even respond to a certain kind of individual. And when Paul is making a statement like this, he's saying, I as a prisoner of the Lord, that's a statement that basically tells all of us to shut up and listen, essentially.

That's what he's saying. And that's not Paul demanding that. That's Paul just saying, when I'm talking about you walking in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, I am saying that not just, you know, as some Joe Doe that just has some tips for you that will help you that I think you should pay attention to and give me some money so I can, you know, be an influencer on social media or something like that.

Paul is saying that as an individual who's lived this truth out to such a degree that now he's in jail for these things, right? So he's an individual who has said, I'm so committed to walking in a manner worthy of the calling with which we've all been called that me trying to be faithful to do that has meant that I've ended up in jail as a prisoner for the Lord.

So over and over again, as you read the Bible, one of the things you're going to find is that Jesus tells us all those who desire to live righteously in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. The servant is not above his master.

If they persecuted the master, they're going to persecute you. Jesus says, I didn't come to bring peace on earth. Don't think I've come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword to set father against mother, sister against brother.

Men's enemies will be those of his own household. You know, like these enemies, they're going to be so deceived that they're even going to think that they do God a favor when they throw you over to jail, when they hand you over to be flogged in their synagogues and they put you out of the market, everything else.

And so Paul is just looking at church and he's saying, all those things that Jesus said are right. And he's saying, you know, follow me as I follow Christ. And if you follow me as I follow Christ, and if you walk the way I walk, there's a destination that is ahead of you that you need to be aware of.

And that destination might be jail, right? But this is anyone who loves Jesus is going to want to honor Jesus so much that they're going to willingly face that destination with Paul. And that's part of what you have to think about when you think about being a Christian.

I mean, growing up when you live in a nominal Christian culture, there's a strong, unspoken, powerful agreement among basically every church you're going to go to. And that strong, powerful, unspoken agreement basically is that, you know, I'm not going to talk about your sin if you don't talk about my sin, right?

We're all sinners. I'm not going to talk about yours. You're not going to talk about mine. And I remember like, you know, growing up in kind of a nominal Christian environment in general, there was a lot of pressure to basically just not take the Christian life too seriously.

Like whatever you did, you didn't want to be one of those Christians who took this thing too seriously, right? See, because you don't want to be crazy. You don't want to get carried away with all this stuff, right?

What you want to do is you want to kind of go through the motions, just show that you're trying a little bit, but you don't want to get crazy, okay? Because like if you just really commit yourself to the things the Bible says, then you'll know that there's a lot of cultural expectation around you that you don't do that.

And then the moment you do that, people are going to start getting mad at you, okay? And one of the things I've found is that the more that I've read the Bible, the more difficult it is to interact with the world around you.

You know, at some point, people really have to understand that if you decide like I'm all in, like whatever this says I'm going to do, that simple decision will instantaneously make you the bad guy in almost every encounter you're in.

I mean, I could tell you story after story after story of church scenarios where, you know, for instance, you have a lady who works in the nursery before church and immediately after working in the nursery, she leaves.

And you look at that and you say, why is that happening? That's weird, right? Someone ought to talk to her and ask her, why is she leaving right after nursery every week and not going to the main service?

What's going on with that? And if you're a committed Christian, what are you supposed to do in that kind of scenario if you notice that? Just ignore it? So there's been situations like that in my life where I'm looking at a situation just like that and I'm saying, everyone around is just ignoring this and they've been ignoring it for years.

No one has even had to talk with her about why she's doing that. And I know the moment that anyone talks to her, what's going to happen? The moment you ask her just a simple question, why are you leaving every week?

What's going to happen? Who's the bad guy? You're going to be the bad guy, right? And what's she going to do? She's going to leave, right? She's going to leave the church. That's the way it's going to go down.

But then what does the Bible say? What does Jesus do for the lost sheep? He goes after them, right? Are we our brother's keeper or aren't we our brother's keeper? If anyone's caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual, what do we do?

We restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself also lest you be tempted. If you see your brother sin, what do you do? You go and you tell them their fault between you and him alone.

What does Hebrews 10 .25 say? We're not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some. What do all those verses mean for that scenario? What should happen in that scenario? If you try to apply all those verses to that scenario, if you're aware of those verses, if you read the Bible, you're aware of those verses, you're looking at this scenario.

You have a person who's forsaken the assembly of the saints for years, right? She's caught in some kind of transgression, isn't she? Something's happening there. We need to be people who go after lost sheep.

She seems to be prone to wander, right? Someone's got to say something. Someone's got to love her enough to speak the truth and love to her. But then the moment you do that, then who's the bad guy? You're the bad guy, right?

Who's really the bad guy in this scenario? Not the one who talks to her, right? Do you understand what I'm saying? The one who talks to her is not the bad guy. Objectively, who's the bad guy in this scenario?

She's the bad guy in this scenario. But then the point I'm trying to say is, Paul says, I, a prisoner of the Lord. Paul understands this basic point. If you commit yourself to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called, that means that whatever the Bible says goes.

And that means that the strong and powerful unspoken expectation that you don't talk about my sin, I won't talk about your sin, needs to go. And the moment you do that is the moment you might end up in prison, right?

That's the way it works. And that's what Paul was saying. I know that all of us in this room, we face certain temptations to not fully do everything that we think the Bible is saying because we know that there will be entailments to that for our relationships, for our life, maybe things we don't want to give up.

And there's some prison or there's some kind of negative consequences you fear if you just say, I'm all in, whatever it says goes, that you need to be made aware of. And you know what? The Bible isn't a health, wealth, prosperity book.

The Bible isn't a book that's basically saying, hey, don't worry about all that, right? If you just follow Jesus, everything will be great. Like that isn't actually the message. And actually the message is, if you just follow Jesus, things might get rough.

But we're not people who are looking to hope in this life only, but we're people looking to hope in the next. And so, as I said, I mean, first, as we're thinking about what does it mean to walk worthy of the calling with which we've been called, think about the basis for a walk.

Second, the gravitas of your walk. And third, the motivation for your walk. So Paul says, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. Now, this motivation to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called, Paul's not urging Christians to try to earn this calling that God has given to them.

So this is not Paul in this chapter four, verse one, basically undoing the entire theology of the first three chapters by saying, now that God has called you, you need to pay Him back or you need to justify it somehow or you need to show or you prove yourself like that that was a good choice that God made.

So when God looked at you before the foundation of the world, now you're gonna show that His trust in you, His confidence in you, man, that was well placed by the way that you actually walk. And so the point here is just to say that worthy in this context doesn't mean like worthy in the sense of now you're demonstrating that all of that was justified.

In fact, everything in the passage up until this point, like everything in the book goes to show that you are not a worthy recipient and of yourself at all whatsoever. In fact, when God chose Christians before the foundation of the world, that means that God chose you before you did anything good and bad.

It chose you before you were born, right? Before you're even a thought in your mom and dad's room. He chose you before anything that could ever be created was created. And He chose you according to His good pleasure.

He didn't chose you according to like looking down the corridors of time and trying to see like what kind of worthy people I can pick and then I'm gonna pick the most worthy people imaginable. In fact, there's nothing objectively, like in terms of in the mind of God, there's nothing objectively that distinguished you from anyone else.

It was a choice based solely on God's good pleasure. It wasn't based on foreseen faith. It wasn't based on any merit intrinsic to you at all. So it's made completely on the basis of God's good choice.

And when you think about like before you were saved, Ephesians 2 ,1 says, and you were dead in your trespasses of sin. So before salvation, you were dead in your trespasses of sin. Verse two, in which you once walked, right?

So we're talking about walking worthy of the calling which you were called. Contrast that with how you used to walk. How did you used to walk? You used to walk following the course of the world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, right?

Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. And we were all by nature, children of wrath, just like the rest of mankind. But what did God do? But God who is rich in mercy because of the great love with which he'd loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses of sin, he made you alive together with Christ for by grace you've been saved through faith, right?

So here's the issue. Like when you're walking in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called, what you're not doing is trying to justify this free unmerited grace that God's shown to you.

You're simply expressing gratitude for the fact that for whatever reason, not only to God, according to his own good pleasure, he decided to pick you instead of picking someone else, right? Not because you were wonderful.

So what you're not trying to do is you're not trying to justify that choice and trying to pay him back. What you're trying to do is express like legitimate thanksgiving to the kind of mercy that God showed to you, which was completely undeserved.

I mean, so undeserved that before God saved you, you're like a spiritual corpse in the ground that can do nothing whatsoever to earn God's grace. And in fact, your entire manner of life is walking hostile to God, being defined by all of the things that he hates and all the things that he set in opposition to.

Yeah, and despite all of that, God showed unmerited favor and mercy towards you. And if you understand the magnitude of that grace and that mercy that he's shown to you, what you'll realize is that like, how could I, who have died to sin, continue to live in that sin?

You know, God showed me unmerited favor that I absolutely do not deserve, that I can't do anything to earn. And so my life no longer belongs to me to live as Christ and to die as gain. My life belongs to him.

He is Lord. What he says goes. And out of love for what he's done for me, I'm going to live to him, you know, as a show of gratitude, you know, not like as a, hey, I'm going to pay you back, but as just pure gratitude, thanksgiving to the unmerited grace and favor that he's shown to you.

Humility, Patience, and Peace in Christian Unity

So we've seen the basis for our walk, the gravitas of our walk, and the motivation of our walk. And finally, we're going to talk through the nature of our walk. Now, this nature of our walk, it basically has three points here.

And I'll list them out, and then we'll talk about them one by one. But if you're going to ask the question, you know, what does it mean to walk worthy of the calling with which you've been called, there's three basic components to what that walk is meant to look like.

And those three components are the nature of our walk should be humble, should be patient, and it should be peaceable. And you find that in verse, you know, from two to three. So we're told to walk worthy of the calling with which we've been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing one another in love, and then eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and peace.

So, you know, this unity that we long for is going to be found in reflection of how we walk. How we walk is determined by all the things that God's done for us, right? Being motivated by a desire to please Him.

But what is that walk that's going to result in all this unity that we long for? What is it going to look like? What's it going to be? Humble, patient, and peaceable. Now, if you notice the first two words here, you have with all humility and gentleness.

In English, it may seem like these are two distinct concepts, okay? But then if you understand the Greek behind these English words, you'll realize that these are meant to be synonyms in certain ways.

And you do have three distinct thoughts that are separated by commas here. So look at verse two. It says, with humility and gentleness, comma, right? With patience, bearing with one another in love. So the bearing with one another in love is an expansion on the patience, if that makes sense.

And then eager to maintain the unity of spirit and bond of peace. So this with humility and gentleness, that's a distinct first thought. Does that make sense? Humility and gentleness. Distinct thought.

With patience, bearing one another in love. Thought two. Eager to maintain the unity in the spirit and bond of peace. Thought three. Three thoughts, right? First thought is humility. And you have, basically, you have two Greek words here.

Now, the first of these words is the word that's being translated with all humility. This is a word that, basically, in first century Greek, it had a lot of negative connotations. The word is tapenaphrasoune in Greek, but that's a word that basically had negative connotations.

So Josephus is a first century Jewish historian. He tells us a story about the Roman Emperor Galba, who was accused of this tapenaphrasoune by the Praetorian Guard because he refused to offer an expected celebratory pay bonus at his extension.