"Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service, you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already." – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Everything we have been given is a gift. Everything. This includes the car you’re driving, the house you live in, the job you have and the family you were born into. God was purposeful in placing you in this time and in these circumstances. The dictionary tells us a steward is “a person who manages another’s property or financial affairs.”
In the parable of the talents, a man asks three servants to steward his property. Each one responds to this call according to his character. Two servants increase their master’s investment, bringing him greater wealth and honor, and the master rewards them for their faithfulness. But one servant acts foolishly and hides the master’s money. He is rebuked and punished. The little he was entrusted with is taken back, and he is abandoned.
What does stewardship look like in our lives today?
Unfortunately many Christians today only associate the idea of stewardship with sermons they have heard about church budgets and building programs.
If the term stewardship makes you think of sermons you've endured about church budgets and building programs, think again. In the ancient world, stewardship was not a religious term. Rather it was a key component of commerce. Almost every business concern had a steward who served like an ancient chief operating officer, running the daily affairs of the master of the house. Simply put, a steward was someone entrusted with the management of someone else's affairs.
Stewardship takes the idea that everything we have is a gift to its logical conclusion. If all that I am and all that I have is from God, then how should I care for and use it? Psalm 24:1 says, “[t]he earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” Therefore, I ought to consider why God gave me what I have and use it to those ends. We have been given body, knowledge, resources and relationships, not to squander as we wish, but to glorify God. “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
How do I spend wealth so it honors God?
How do I steward friendships?
How do I take care of the body He gave me to be His temple?
How do I use knowledge and education in the best way possible?
We do all of these things by seeking God’s will in every decision, reading his Word and listening to the Holy Spirit. We do this by acting generously and obediently, ethically and morally.
Bill Peel at The High Calling recently wrote an excellent essay entitled Leadership Is Stewardship. His essay can help us build a framework to begin unpacking this biblical idea of stewardship.
Peel suggests that there are four important principles about biblical stewardship we must understand:
1. OWNERSHIP
Psalm 24 begins with,
"The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness,The world and those who dwell therein."
In the beginning of Genesis, God creates everything and puts Adam in the Garden to work it and to take care of it. It is clear that man was created to work and that work is the stewardship of all of the creation that God has given him.
This is the fundamental principle of biblical stewardship. God owns everything, we are simply managers or administrators acting on his behalf.
Therefore, stewardship expresses our obedience regarding the administration of everything God has placed under our control, which is all encompassing.
Stewardship is the commitment of one’s self and possessions to God’s service, recognizing that we do not have the right of control over our property or ourselves.
Echoing Deuteronomy 8:17, we might say: “then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth." But Deuteronomy 8:18 reminds us to think otherwise:
"And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day."
2. RESPONSIBILITY
In explaining responsibility, Peel writes,
Although God gives us “all things richly to enjoy,” nothing is ours. Nothing really belongs to us. God owns everything; we’re responsible for how we treat it and what we do with it. While we complain about our rights here on earth, the Bible constantly asks, What about your responsibilities? Owners have rights; stewards have responsibilities.
We are called as God’s stewards to manage that which belongs to God. While God has graciously entrusted us with the care, development, and enjoyment of everything he owns as his stewards, we are responsible to manage his holdings well and according to his desires and purposes.
3. ACCOUNTABILITY
A steward is one who manages the possessions of another. We are all stewards of the resources, abilities and opportunities that God has entrusted to our care, and one day each one of us will be called to give an account for how we have managed what the Master has given us.
This is the maxim taught by the Parable of the Talents. God has entrusted authority over the creation to us and we are not allowed to rule over it as we see fit. We are called to exercise our dominion under the watchful eye of the Creator managing his creation in accord with the principles he has established.
Like the servants in the Parable of the Talents, we will be called to give an account of how we have administered everything we have been given, including our time, money, abilities, information, wisdom, relationships, and authority.
We will all give account to the rightful owner as to how well we managed the things he has entrusted to us.
4. REWARD
In Colossians 3:23-24 Paul writes:
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
The Bible shows us in the parables of the Kingdom that faithful stewards who do the master’s will with the master’s resources can expect to be rewarded incompletely in this life, but fully in the next.
We all should long to hear the master say what he exclaims in Matthew 25:21:
Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!
As Christians in the 21st century, we need to embrace this larger biblical view of stewardship, which goes beyond church budgets or building projects, though important; it connects everything we do with what God is doing in the world.
We need to be faithful stewards of all God has given us within the opportunities presented through his providence to glorify him, serve the common good and further his Kingdom.
Stewardship implies a two-party proposition. One person owns the resources and the other person is entrusted with the resources. By definition, a steward is accountable to his master for how resources are invested. So how does this apply to us today? Since God owns all things, he is the Master; he distributes gifts and resources at his discretion. We are stewards, accountable to him for all that we do with all that we are given.
References: Bill Peel, Theology of Work Project Online Materials by The High Calling are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.