Stewarding Our Wealth

For Meditation

We’ve been saying for the last couple weeks that stewardship is a comprehensive identity statement that describes what it means to be human. God made the world, it belongs to him, and he entrusted it into the hands of his image bearers to reflect his rule and care for his creation. Stewardship is about the whole of life.

At the same time, the Bible gives lots of attention in particular to financial stewardship. This is likely because there is hardly anything in our life in which we are more tempted to claim ownership over than our money. This is especially the case for us 21st Century Americans. In our free market society that rewards hard work and diligence, it is very easy to believe that our wealth belongs to us and that our earnings have come to us through our own abilities. One of the biggest reasons why we don’t give more than we do is because we actually believe deep down that our wealth and possessions belong to us.

But there is another reason as well that we often do not give generously. We don’t just suffer from the myth of ownership; we also suffer from the myth of scarcity. Even as we live in the wealthiest society in history, we live with the pervasive lie that there is not enough. We don’t have what we need, it’s up to us to secure it, and we need to protect ourselves from loss.

Both these myths of ownership and scarcity stem from our parents Adam and Eve in the garden. The gospel addresses them head on! Against the myth of ownership, we’re reminded by the Lord that he is the one who has given us everything we have, that everything belongs to him, and that even our ability to sustain ourselves comes directly from him (Deut 8:18). We are not owners, but stewards. And against the myth of scarcity, God reminds us that he is an abundant and generous God who provides all that we need (Deut 8:7-9). Scarcity is a myth- abundance is our reality. For from him and through him and to him are all things (Romans 11:36).

When we allow these truths about God’s ownership and provision to penetrate our hearts, we can be changed into generous stewards. We are those who know that nothing belongs to us, that we have been invited into the feast by our generous host, and he now calls us to freely extend his blessings to others, without any fear of loss or abandonment. 

Genesis 1:27-31a

So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Deuteronomy 8:7-18

7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9 a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.