Ministers Are Stewards

In Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church, there was a issue of division over who was following whom. According to the Bible, people in that church were exclaiming they followed Paul while others followed Apollos. Paul told the church that he and Apollos were just "Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each" (1 Corinthians 3:5).

Paul continues by saying, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor" (1 Corinthians 3:6-8). Paul was trying to get the church to take their eyes off them because they are just servants. Later on in chapter four, Paul writes, "This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God" (1 Corinthians 4:1). Paul said that the church should look on them as servants and stewards.

We all know what a servant is, but I think we have lost what stewardship means. To put it simply, stewardship is managing something belonging to someone else for a short time. When churches talk about stewardship, they talk about how Christians handle their money and earthly possessions, which is true, but that is not what Paul is talking about here. Paul is talking about being a steward to the mysteries of God as He has revealed Himself through the Person of Jesus Christ. Paul has gone from place to place proclaiming those mysteries. Even the Bereans in Acts 17 were checking in the Scriptures to see what Paul was true.

We may own a Bible, but we call it God's Word. The Bible is God's message to us and preachers are stewards of it. It amazes me how we see in our day men who has misused the Word of God for their own gain. The Bible does say those who teach "will be judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1). Paul told Timothy, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15).

Ministers of the gospel are called to be stewards of the word of God. We need to correctly handle it. The world will try and interpret the Bible to fit their desires but Christians are the one who should take care of the Bible especially those who preach and teach. When we get something wrong in our study of the Bible, we repent and admit we are wrong. When a preacher preaches, we need to hold him accountable because he is a steward of a word that does not belong to him.