Editor’s note: Monthly articles from LCMS Stewardship Ministry are hosted here on The Lutheran Witness site. Visit the “Ministry Features” page each month for additional stewardship content.
Stewardship, while not always a topic that is appreciated, is essential to our life as the baptized children of God. It goes to the very purpose of our existence. Every man, woman and child has been created to carry out the office of steward, which was inaugurated in the Garden of Eden. It was there that God spoke the human being into existence. He did so both powerfully and purposefully. What makes the creation of man unique is the conversation that takes place among the Godhead in Genesis 1. “Let us make man in our image,” they said. God spoke. Male and female, they were created!
A qualified dominion
But no other spoken-into-being element of creation is in the image of God. The Hebrew word that is rendered “image” carries with it the idea of reflection. God created man and woman to reflect the Creator within the created order. This reflection is conducted in the way that they “subdued” creation and “had dominion” over the same creation.
This was a qualified dominion. They were not entrusted with the created order to do with as they pleased. It was to be brought under subjection in the very same way that the Lord would have done it. Remember, He said it all was “good!”
Tend and defend
Genesis 2:15 further encodes the purpose of the steward. The freshly-minted Adam, formed purposely from the Adamah (Hebrew word for “dust”) receives the breath of life and becomes a living being. As a living being, Adam is tasked with two-fold stewardship. He is to “work” the creation, and he is to “keep” the creation. Stewardship from the beginning was intended to be work. But in the garden this work was free of toil and tribulations.
The “work” of the garden was to tend it. Here is where it is helpful to imagine what farming in the garden would have been like. It would look nothing like the farming that we think of today. There is real labor involved in plowing, planting, rock picking, spraying and harvesting, all while being totally at the mercy of the weather conditions.
But in the garden, not so much! Garden of Eden farming was just receiving. Harvest. The ground produced fruit in season without the effort of the man. No back-breaking labor or worry. Just receive.
The “keep” part of the steward’s job was not any more difficult either. The idea behind the “keep” is to defend. Like a sentry standing guard at a miliary post, this was the second task of the steward. Like farming, this defending would be easy. There were no natural predators. Because of this, the only real thing the steward had to defend was the Word of God. The one command: to not eat of one specific tree. Sounds easy enough!
Redeemed and restored
But Chapter 3 tells us how that goes! The steward, Adam, failed long before Eve ever thought about, took, ate and shared that forbidden fruit. While we are told later in the Scripture that Eve sinned first, Adam failed first. He failed to defend his bride and the creation from the alien word of the slippery serpent. He allowed the words, “Did God really say…” to go unchallenged. If only Adam would have stood tall, stared down the deceiving devil and crushed His head! But alas, he did not. Stewards have been failing in the same vein ever since.
There are two amazing facts that come out of this. First, amid judgment, God promises a Second Steward. We know Him as Jesus. He does everything the first steward should have done, all the way to the point of death on a cross! In this gracious action that employs the currency of the holy, precious blood and innocent suffering and death of Jesus, God reconciles man and the cursed creation to Himself. He balances the accounts. He does this in mercy.
But He does not stop there. He restores the steward to His identity and task. The judgment of Genesis 3 holds no termination notice for Adam. He is to remain a steward, but with suffering, pain, toil and eventual death. He is never excused from the task of steward. This is the very thing for which he has been created. The stewardship struggle starts immediately. You and I bear that same struggle to this very day.
One task of stewardship: steward the Gospel!
But the Holy Spirit has clothed us with Christ in Holy Baptism. We bear a new image. We wear the image of Christ, who is the image of the invisible God! We are restored to a stewardship we do not deserve, to highlight the very grace of God that comes to us in the Gospel. One-task stewardship is what is restored to us. The one task: steward the Gospel!
How do we do that? Working and keeping. The task of the steward is not new. We work the Gospel by receiving it: Daily in the Word. Weekly in the Divine Service. Read. Heard. Eaten. This is how the Gospel comes to us. It is a trust from God. Like the talents and minas of the Gospel, they Gospel is put to work for the benefit of others and the glory of God. Our work keeps the Word before us, and then through us, to others. As stewards, we do for those around us what Adam failed to do for Eve.
This is what makes the “keeping” part of stewardship even more critical. We keep, that is we stand guard, over the Word. We make sure that those entrusted with the Office of the Holy Ministry are faithful stewards of the mysteries of God revealed in the Scriptures (1 Cor. 4:1). We stand ready to defend the Word when the devil, the world and our own sinful flesh want to twist it and water it down. We put our comfort, our reputation and even our lives on the line for the sake of the Gospel. For to fail as a steward defending this can leave us on the outside looking in on the Last Day (Rev. 22:15).
Working and keeping. Tasks of a steward from which we have never been recused. This is not an option for us. It is our sole purpose in the order of creation and the order of redemption. God in His mercy and grace has entrusted this task to us. His mercy and grace are the only way we can carry it out. He has breathed into us His Spirit so that we bear that image of Jesus to a world that needs the Word that leads to the Tree of Life, made possible by Jesus alone!
LCMS Stewardship ministry features may be reprinted with acknowledgment given to The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
RE: “Garden of Eden farming was just receiving. Harvest.”
Could life before the Fall have included the joyful activity of propagating plants without toil, cultivating and fertilizing them without drudgery, and then marveling at how they responded with flowers and fruit? Why did God tell Adam and Eve that he gave them seeds through the plants (Gen. 1:29)? Might Adam and Eve and their offspring have creatively reshaped and expanded the Garden as their numbers grew?
RE: “They were not entrusted with the created order to do with as they pleased. It was to be brought under subjection in the very same way that the Lord would have done it.”
God was glad indeed to allow Adam and Eve a great deal of liberty as to how to shape their habitat to fulfill richly the purpose and vision that God had given them. He didn’t say just, “Pick fruit.” He said, “Be fruitful.”
Wasn’t there more than one way for them to live and flourish in accord with God’s will for them? And since they were human beings, how could they even have grasped precisely how “the Lord would have done it”, let alone accomplish “in the very same way” what God with his almighty power and perfect knowledge would have accomplished?
RE: “We work the Gospel by receiving it.”
I see the Good News as bringing a twofold reason for joy: It announces that an entrance into the Kingdom of God has been established by the atoning work of Christ, and it conveys what a life of blessedness and fruitfulness for citizens of that Kingdom entails. So if we are faithful disciples we will not only receive the Good News, but also take it to heart and cheerfully aspire to be fruitful according to it (2 Peter 1:3-11, James 1:22-25), thereby fulfilling the purposes for which God has redeemed us and still gives his gifts (Eph. 2:10, Titus 2:14, 2 Cor. 5:15).
RE: ”We keep, that is we stand guard, over the Word.”
Yet Jesus’ Parable of the Sower depicts the Word as being like seed that is broadcasted widely and liberally. So out of an interest in being fruitful as God counts fruitfulness (John 15:8), we want to protect the quality of the seed but not constrain its distribution in any way.
Fundamentally, God does not need anything from us. Yet, as in the Garden, he gives us the opportunity to be fruitful in relationship with him. He grants us :
• the joy of hearing his loving message,
• the rewards of believing and living accordingly,
• the privilege of conveying the message to others, and
• the delight of seeing it bear fruit wherever God “gives the growth” (1 Cor. 5:7).