Valuing the Servant Steward Principle
1 Corinthians 4
Proposition: The Servant Steward principle defends us against the pull of pride by reminding us of how we got here and where we’re going.
Introduction: When I was about 15 my family moved to Africa. It was a different world with all kinds of new things including having servants in our home. It was expected of all visiting ex pats or foreigners that they should hire two or three local residents, a houseboy, a garden boy, a house girl. This might sound luxurious but it was both a responsibility and a necessity, helping the local people with work but also adjusting to the conditions there. To do laundry for instance meant hanging all the wet clothes on a line outside and then when dry everything had to ironed because flies would lay their eggs on the damp clothes and the iron was needed to kill the eggs or they would hatch under your skin. The reason I bring this up is because the passage we are about read begins with Paul describing himself as a servant and it was critical that he did. Have a look at 1 Corinthians 4 with me.
I. You Are Servants of Christ, a Description of Both Identity and Task.
Paul the Apostle, educated, a person of class as to birth, a man gifted and called to do what few could or would do calls himself a servant of Christ. He does so because of a great pattern set before him. In Matt.20:27, 28 Jesus once said, “And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Jesus is the suffering Servant Messiah whose life became our ransom. So what exactly did Paul have in mind when he referred to himself as a servant of Christ? The word which we translate into ‘servant’ or in some translations, ‘ministers’ is the Greek word ‘hypēretēs’. It refers to a person who though a freeman is subordinate to another. It is often used to refer to people in an appointed position hence the translation ‘ministers’. Paul may have had that use in mind since it was believed that the Corinthian church looked down on Paul’s credentials as an Apostle. He hadn’t walked with Jesus, been present to learn directly from Him, seen His death and seen Him right after He was resurrected and then present when He ascended.. Those were the general criteria for what an apostle was. Yet Paul was an Apostle and was at the same time a servant, a minister, one called or appointed to serve Jesus. Lorne Sanny, founder of a ministry called Navigators, was once asked, “How can a person could know if they were truly acting as a servant of Christ”. Sanny’s answer was simple, ‘It’s how you respond when someone treats you like one’. To be a servant of Christ means that the Master calls the shots, not the servant. The who, when, where, how and why are ultimately in His hands. It means that His appraisal of His servant far outstrips the appraisal of other servants or even other masters. It’s what he was aiming at in verse 3. It also means that the Masters appraisal of the servant even outweighs the servants own appraisal of themselves…verse 4, “For I know of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord.” The conclusion, be slow to judge others and yourself. Don’t get handcuffed or thrown off track as a servant of Christ because of the way you judge or are judged for one day you will indeed meet and receive the real appraisal of the Master whose servant you really are… verse 5. As I considered what Paul meant when he described who he was and what he did as the servant of Christ I remembered something that Jesus once said to all His disciples past, present and future. “No longer do I call you servants (dulos), for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” (Jn 15:15) From Christ’s perspective disciples are friends who serve because they know Him. There’s a series of ‘no longer’ statements in Scripture, over a hundred of them. Many of them describe what it means to be a servant of Christ. Some were used as literal metaphors to describe our lives… “ ‘and the two shall become one flesh' so then they are no longer two, but one flesh….A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” No longer, a point of change, a line in the sand, a change in identity or task. Then there were others more direct… “ and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again… Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”
No longer… as a disciple of Christ something has changed, perhaps something needs to change. You like Paul are a servant of Christ, no longer a captive, no longer single from Him, no longer without identity. You too are in an appointed place as His minister servant. You too are hypēretēs’, the servant of Christ, it’s central to who you are and what you can and ought to do as a disciple of Jesus.
II. You Too Are Stewards of the Mysteries of God, Manage the Known.
The steward is like the teller at the bank, it’s not their money they give you at the counter but it’s critical they be honest with how they handle it. They can’t just slip you an extra fifty because they want to brighten your day. Paul says, “Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.” So stewardship extends to everything that is within out realm of care or responsibility or management… your health, your family, your resources, your time and even your faith. It’s especially your faith that Paul speaks of here when he says that he is a steward of the mysteries of God. The way Paul uses this term ‘mysteries’ is to refer to something not obvious to the understanding. It’s not obvious to the understanding that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Most wouldn’t acknowledge the reality of sin and certainly would not see the glory of God as something they were supposed to be aiming their lives at. The thing is, as a Christian you now know the truth about sin and God’s glory, about the deity of Christ and the cross and so many other things that for most people are not obvious to their understanding. You are a steward of the ‘mysteries’ of God, they are not yours in the sense that you own them just for you, you manage them, are accountable for them. A steward must above all things be faithful to do what they were entrusted with.
One of the most toxic substances to any disciple of Christ is pride. Pride cuts the Master out of the picture and envisages Him as either a subordinate or a distant uninformed ruler. Pride was killing the Corinthian church, it’s why Paul used such sarcastic language to expose their pride. So he offers an acid test for every disciple to help filter out the influences of pride. In verse 7 Paul asks three questions: “For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”
Was it fate or luck or your hard work that makes who you are differ from another? Pride would say yes, I’m lucky, I did it, I deserve it. The mystery of God says that you are who you are because you are God’s craftsmanship created for good works which He prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. So what makes me differ… well God is the Creator, that’s the short answer. What do I have that I did not receive? Answer, nothing! Life, health, wealth, identity, purpose, it’s all received. If I get that then why boast as if it was not received, the answer can only be my pride which the self-exalting part of my nature where sin thrives.
So what’s the conclusion of the matter? We are servant stewards of Christ, no longer who were once were as a tangled mess but now connected to Christ with an entrusted treasure, the understood mysteries of God that are to be handled with humility to others. That’s what disciples are called to be and do, valuing the servant steward principles.