What It Is

The definition of Parables is that they are earthly stories with heavenly meaning. Jesus Christ often speaks in parables and everytime he does this, he is trying to teach us a lesson.

Christ teaches us about the principle of stewardship through His parable of the talents as written in Mathew 25:14-27. The importance of Stewardship is emphasized by the fact that except for the Kingdom of God, Christ talked more about stewardship than any other topic.

We can see from both the Old and New Testament that as Christians and as human beings we are stewards of everything that has been given to us by God. A steward is a person who manages and administrates what has been entrusted to him by another. The Bible says in Genesis 1:28 that man should “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Several passages in the New Testament reminds us that we are stewards of God’s resources.

So what are the things that we should be stewards of ? We are to be stewards of our time, money, our abilities and our life. In the parable of the talents, the principles of stewardship that we can learn from Christ is as follows:

1.) PRINCIPLE OF OWNERSHIP - The goods entrusted and committed to the servants belonged to the Master (verse 14)

Similarly we should realize that what we have is the Lord’s. We are just entrusted with the things that we currently posses. This mindset is the most important principles of stewardship because having this mindset helps us become more responsible stewards.

2.) ABILITY & DISCRETION - In verse 15, the determination as to how much goods was entrusted to each servant was determined on the basis of the ability of each servant and the master’s discretion.

God has blessed us with different abilities, gifts, economic status in life and other blessings. We are what we are right now because of God’s design and purpose. The blessings that God gives us depends on His discretion and our ability. We cannot question God if He gives others more wealth or more abilities than us. How much he gives each of us also depends on His discretion. Our main task is not to question Him, but to develop or make the best of the abilites that He has given us.

3.) PRINCIPLE OF FREEDOM - Each servant was given full freedom on what to do with the goods turned over to him (verses 16-18)

God gave us human beings a certain freedom as to how we are to go about fulfilling the purposes that he wants us to accomplish. He did not make us robots. He made us human beings. He gave us the ability to decide. He gave us free will. In order to make the best out of our lives we must freely act only within the given parameters according to his plan.

This concludes part 1 of this 2 part series. Please visit my blog if you want to view the entire article.