Newsletter

It’s September, and everything is in full swing again: back to school and back to church attendance after vacations and weekends away.  And since everything is back into full swing, it’s a perfect time to get back to basics, back to the foundation.

At the end of the first of his chapters on the virtue of faith in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis provides a helpful reminder, by way of analogy, for the foundation of stewardship.  He wrote:

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God.  If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already.  So then, when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, “Daddy, give me six pence to buy you a birthday present.”  Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is six-pence to the good on the transaction.  When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. (128–129).

This is the first thing we are given to confess about stewardship, and it has to do with ownership. God owns everything, and we are simply managers — stewards — acting on His behalf.  This is true not only of all that we have in this life (Deuteronomy 8:17–18), but also all that we are in this life (1 Corinthians 6:20).

The rest flows from here.  Since we are stewards, or managers, of what belongs to God, entrusted to make use of it according to His will, there is an expectation of responsibility and accountability.

For the Lord said, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48b).

And from this comes blessing and reward: “Well done, good and faithful servant.  You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much.  Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21).

We have everything we need to support this body and life from our God’s fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us.  We have everything we need for our spiritual life also from His merciful hands.

On account of the sacrifice of His Son, our Lord Jesus, through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments, we have the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and everlasting salvation delivered to us with absolute certainty that it is ours — not as stewards but as sons (Galatians 4:1–7).

Let us then, as His own sons, press all that He gives to us into the service of His church and to His glory.

When it comes to stewardship, a favorite Bible verse is the account of the widow’s mite (Luke 21:1–4).  It’s a moving account.  Our Lord praises the seemingly small gift of two copper coins given by a poor widow above the abundance of gifts given by the rich, saying, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them” (Luke 21:3).

And that is usually where we stop.  But the text goes on. “For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:4).

“She … put in all she had to live on.”  She gave everything.  She held nothing back.  She trusted that the Lord who made her and all creatures, who gave her everything she had, who redeemed her from her own sin, from death, and the power of the devil, who called her by the Gospel and enlightened her with His gifts of Word and Sacrament, would continue to do this.  He would provide her with all that she needed for this body and life because that is the character of the God she had.

But this is not why we give small gifts.  Her gift, though it appeared small, was actually large.  When we are tempted to give small gifts it is precisely because we want them to be small!  We don’t trust the Lord to provide for us.

We give small gifts because we lack faith in the One who created us, redeemed us, sanctifies and keeps us in the one true faith.  We give small gifts because we doubt that God will really give us what we need and desire. We give small gifts because we are not content with what God has already given.

We are not slaves, children of the slave woman, under the Old Covenant (Gal. 4).  We are adopted sons of the free woman.  And since we are sons, we are also heirs.  And heirs receive the inheritance.  For everything is already ours in Christ.  And thus, moved by the willing spirit of adoption, we do the will of God in financial matters far beyond all that done by those under the Old Covenant who were forced by legal demands.

So what have you decided to give?  How do I decide what to give?  Let the Scriptures be your guide.

We are to give proportionally to what we have received from God’s giving to us (Luke 12:48; 1 Cor. 16:1-2, 2 Cor. 8:12).  But you have not been set free to give nothing.  See that you excel in the grace of giving (2 Cor. 8:7).

We are not free to live selfishly outside the Gospel, without regard for God who gives us all good gifts, without generosity for our neighbor who needs us and our gifts, without supporting the community of faith in which we live, without care for our spiritual fathers and those who teach and help raise our children in the faith, without resources for the poor and needy – in short, we are not free to live unto ourselves, hoarding what God has given us only for us.

For love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10).  And the sum of the law is this:  Love God and love your neighbor (Matt. 22:34-.40).  We love because He first loved us.  We give because He has given to us.

Luther once said, “Possessions belong in your hands, not in your heart” (LW 14:240).  There is a reason your 10 fingers spread apart.  With your hands you catch God’s gifts for what you need and let the rest fall through your fingers to your neighbors – your family, your friends, your community, your church.