The Oxford Dictionary defines the word ‘steward’ as a person whose job is to take care of passengers on a ship, an aircraft, or a train and who brings them their meals. It also defines a ‘steward’ as a person employed to manage another person’s property.
A biblical view of stewardship is utilizing and managing all resources God provides for the glory of God and the betterment of His creation. “ The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1).
Thus, Psalm 24 begins by reiterating that ‘The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it’. The Book of Genesis underscores how, God created everything in the beginning of time and put Adam in the Garden of Eden to take charge of His creation and manage it, except for the Tree of Life. It is clear that man was created to work and fruitfully manage what God had bestowed upon him. Adam was thus the first steward of all that God created for man.
The fundamental principle of biblical stewardship is that God owns everything, we are simply His stewards. Stewardship is therefore, our managing everything God has placed under our care and control. Thus, stewardship is the commitment of one’s self and one’s God given possessions’ to God’s service. We must recognize that we essentially do not have the right to control our possessions or our lives, as we will, Scripture makes it clear that though we may think that the strength of our hands produce our possessions and our wealth, God reminds us in Deuteronomy 18:8 that ‘the LORD our God gives us the ability to produce our possessions or our wealth.’
Although God gives us ‘all things to richly enjoy’ nothing is ours. Nothing really belongs to us. God owns everything. We are responsible for what we do with what He gives us. While we often think about our rights here on earth, the Bible reminds us of our responsibilities. We need to acknowledge that ‘Owners have rights, but 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 creation and His Blessings on our lives in accordance with His desires and purposes.
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 upon, to give an account for how we have managed what the Master has given us. This is the moral of the biblical story in the Parable of the Talents. God has entrusted us with authority over His creation and we are not allowed to rule over it as we see fit. We are called to exercise our responsibility under the watchful eye of the Creator. We are to manage His creation in accordance with the principles He has ordained.
Like the servants in the Parable of the Talents, we will be called upon to give an account of how we have administered everything we have been given, including our time, our talents, our treasures, our abilities, our wisdom, our relationships, and our authority. Each one of us will have to give account to the rightful owner (God himself) as to how well we managed the things He has entrusted to us.
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 that as faithful stewards who do the Master’s will with the Master’s resources, we can expect to be rewarded incompletely in this life, but fully in the next. We all should long to hear the Master say to us, what he exclaimed 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 today, we need to embrace this larger biblical view of stewardship, which goes beyond Church and Mission budgets and 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 provided to us,through His providence, to glorify Him and to serve Him for the furtherance of His Kingdom.
In his book ‘Mere Christianity’, the well known British Writer and lay-Theologian Clive Staples Lewis (1898 – 1963) observes – ‘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.’
Peter writes to Christ’s Followers in Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia in I Peter 4:10-1 ‘Each of you should use whatever gift you have received, to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so, as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ’
In his letter, Peter urges Christians to take on Jesus’ attitude toward suffering, regard it as essential for our fulfilling God’s purpose on earth, stay alert and continually pray in these end times, keep loving each other, using God’s gifts to serve each other. Peter urges that we must regard all we have as a gift from God. We must regard whatever we have as an opportunity to serve others. We must view everything we have as means for serving others. Peter reminds us that we are Stewards – entrusted to manage all that God has given us to be used for His purpose. If we fail to use God’s gifts given to us to serve others, we fail to be a good steward.
Therefore, use everything you have to serve each other to fulfil our purpose as God’s stewards on earth.