On Being A Faithful Steward

By virtue of our union with Christ, the Holy Spirit, the down payment (arrabon) of our final redemption, has granted us the “already” of salvation. Our current benefits of redemption are his assurance of the fullness of redemption we shall receive when Christ comes the second time to consummate his creation. In the meantime, those that have been born again by the Holy Spirit of God are filled with a deep longing and an aching hope for the “not yet” glory that awaits us when Christ comes to gather us up and to present us to the Father. This is the hope that drives us as we live out our days on this earth. This confidence determines how we spend our time and money; impacts the nature of our relationships; governs the way we raise our families; controls our choice of vocations; etc.; etc. In short, this glorious, eschatological hope is that redemptive rubric that controls our brief stay in this fallen world, a sojourn that is at the same time a pilgrimage towards our final destination, the new heaven and earth.

How then shall we live? is the pressing question to be asked urgently and answered accurately. We are to live as faithful stewards of all that God has given us. The Scripture clearly teaches us that God owns everything, Pss 24:1; 89:11; 1 Cor 10:26; etc. and that our relationship to this divine ownership is one of stewardship. This means that God has given us the privilege as well as the responsibility of managing his creation. In this regard, we stand in the same line of accountability as our forefather Adam to whom the Lord God declared in his Creation Mandate, ““Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”” Gen 1:28. Part of Adam’s responsibility of being made in the image of God required him to be God’s earthly vice-regent protecting, purifying and prospering God’s creation. As it was with Adam, so it is with us; we are to be faithful stewards of God’s possessions. “Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. ..What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” 1 Cor 4:2, 7.

Being faithful stewards requires us to be governed by the controlling perspective that the Lord God is preparing both us and the rest of his creation for our eternal consummation. As such, our posture is to be of a twofold nature. In the first place, it is to be passive in the sense that we are being fitted, framed and formed for eternal occupation of God’s eternal kingdom. We are being conformed into the image of Christ, Rom 8:29, while at the same time “.. we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. ..” 2 Cor 3:18. In this regard, our role as we await our consummation is that of radical transformation into the image of Christ. In the second place, our role is active. Faithful stewardship requires that we seek the kingdom of God by demonstrating its presence, power, priority and perspective in our lives. This is our active role as faithful stewards of God while we live in the period between the First and the Second Coming of Christ.

Both of these postures produce in us a holiness that God requires of us in the new age. It is a holiness that is already present with those who have entered into Christ’s victory over sin. However, it is a holiness that is still being perfected and that will attain its fullness when Christ comes again. Stewardship therefore can never be separated from the teleology of redemption. Faithful stewards, unlike faithless Adam, seek the establishment of God’s kingdom and his glorification through his Son, as they order they are lives on earth with Christ at the center and as they earnestly pray, “…Come, Lord Jesus!” Rev 22:20.