Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “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.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Genesis 1:26–31 (ESV)
Taken from the sermon “Stewardship: Putting Away an Owner Mindset” by Mark Vroegop.
Before reading this article, catch up by reading about the first two principles of biblical stewardship: God is creator of all and bearing God’s image.
The third principle from Genesis 1is that stewardship is responsive; it acts upon particular commands given by God.
Stewardship Requires Action
Immediately after creating man and woman, God gives them a charge. In Genesis 1:26, a command follows the statement about bearing God’s image, so the charge and the issue of being an image-bearer are linked together.
What are the commands or the actions given by God in Genesis? Probably the most important word is found in Genesis 1:26—dominion. The NIV renders this as “rule,” and the idea is that men and women are to exercise authority over the created order—to use what God has created and make it even more useful.
Connected to that word is the idea of representation. Human beings are to represent God by doing what God did in the world. In our limited way, we are to image him by how we create, manage, and live in the created world.
Genesis 1:28 issues the same command saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over . . . everything.” These words describe some of the expressions of what it means to have dominion. If you look over in Genesis 2:15, you will find that the command sounds like God putting Adam in the garden “to work it and keep it.” We see one of the first tasks recorded in the Bible is Adam naming the animals.
If you skip ahead the Genesis 4, you will find that Adam and Eve’s first children were involved in occupations related to the animals and the ground. Abel was a keeper of the sheep, and Cain was a farmer. Later in the chapter, we find that the descendants of Adam and Eve are already making musical instruments and learning how to forge metal (Genesis 4:21-22).
Martin Luther on Working for God
Protestant theologians have often called this the cultural or creation mandate. This means that we take what belongs to God and we use it to image and glorify him. In the Protestant Reformation, this was a revolutionary concept because it meant that normal tasks and occupations were now imbued with meaning. Instead of thinking that priests were the only ones who did spiritual work, reformer Martin Luther identified that every Christian worker offers his or her work to God as a steward.
Luther said:
A cobbler, a smith, a peasant—each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops . . . Everyone must benefit and serve every other by means of his own work or office so that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community, just as all members of the body serve one another.[1]
The creation mandate means that human beings are placed on earth for the purpose of making good use of their work so that it says something about God. In Colossians 3:23, Paul connects this to the gospel when he says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men . . . You are serving the Lord Christ.”
Bad Stewardship is Sinful
It is sinful to be lazy, and it is sinful to be a perfectionist. The lazy person is a bad steward because he or she fails to make use of what God has given. But the perfectionist is a bad steward because he or she makes what God has given a mirror of self-affirmation. The lazy person lives out of love for self and the pleasure of doing something other than what is useful. He enjoys the escape of video games and incessant TV watching, the satisfaction of gluttony, or the thrill of spending hours at the mall rather than doing what he should be doing.
But the perfectionist over-plans, overthinks, and overworks because he loves the feeling of success. That is one of the reasons why God established limitations on Adam and Eve in the garden, and I think it is one of the reasons God built sleep into the fabric of our humanity. We must work hard, but we must also remember our God-ordained limitations.
Biblical stewardship means that we work and we work for the right reason and in the right way. Whether you have a lot of money or a little money, you steward it well. Whether you have a high-profile job or a behind-the-scenes role, you work hard. Whether you have a high IQ or an average IQ, you find ways to be a good steward of what God has entrusted to you.
[1] Trueman, Carl. Luther on the Christian Life, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishers, 2015), 178.
