Stewards of the Mystery of God’s Grace

(Ephesians 3:1-3)

Those of us who have come to Jesus Christ have learned the gospel of Christ Jesus through and because of the stewardship of the mystery of God’s grace that He gave to those early disciples. In this verse Paul speaks of the stewardship of the mystery of God’s grace saying:

1 For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles– 2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. (Ephesians 3:1-3)

And they were good stewards. They first learned the truth f the gospel from Jesus Christ Himself, and they entrusted it to others who would carry on this stewardship down to this day.

The Lord, through those early disciples also made sure that those who were to come later could have access to all that is necessary to understand the fullness of God’s grace. And here we see Paul speaking of the stewardship he was entrusted with to explain and expound the mystery of God’s grace.

Stewards

The first thing we see is that those who hear the word and receive the call to be stewards are in a place of trust. God and the Lord Jesus Christ are entrusting the truth of the gospel to men to spread it to the people. This is a tremendous blessing of the Lord to be entrusted to be a steward of the word of God’s grace.

We are told that those who are entrusted to be stewards of the gospel and the grace of God are required to be good stewards. As we see in these words:

1 This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 2 Moreover it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. (1 Corinthians 4:1-2)

To be a steward of God’s grace is to be charged with an extremely important role. One should use the example of Timothy to aspire to the role of stewardship.

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

The key here is, “…rightly handling the word of truth.”

Being stewards of the mystery of God’s grace is all about understanding and bearing witness to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To be able to do this effectively the steward must first understand the mystery of God’s grace so as to rightly handle the truth of the gospel. Those who do so are rewarded and blessed by God. But those who do not, but seek their own pleasure and their own ends will be cast out and rejected.

We are shown the judgement of good and bad stewards in the following teaching that Jesus gave.

45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that servant whom his master when he comes will find so doing. 47 Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. 48 But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ 49 and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eats and drinks with the drunken, 50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, 51 and will punish him, and put him with the hypocrites; there men will weep and gnash their teeth. (Matthew 24:45-51)

Thus it is essential that as stewards of God’s grace, we give the people of God the right spiritual food at the right times as we serve Christ. But those who do not will suffer the consequences.

And there are some stewards in the modern church who are effectively “beating” their fellow servants and getting drunk on the things of this world. When they put all kinds of demands on the congregation, especially financial or time demands, they are effectively “beating” their fellow servants. When they teach ministry that causes people to fall into condemnation. When they use worldly gain as an indicator of spiritual blessing, then they have failed as stewards of God’s grace.

God cares nothing for the wealth of this world. An increase in financial wealth does not suggest an increase in God’s blessing, nor does a substantial loss of wealth suggest God’s blessing has been taken away. These and other such teachings form parts of the prosperity ministry, which is a pack of lies and deception. It is not of God but is a ministry of demons. In too many places Jesus condemned those who seek riches saying how hard it would be for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.

But there are those in ministry today, stewards of God’s grace, who are doing the exact opposite of God’s word and the words of Jesus Christ. They are “beating” their fellow servants and congregations, not for the sake of the Lord, but for their own ends.

Can the Lord bless someone financially? Of course He can. But wealth is never an indicator of spiritual health. That is a lie.

Mystery

Which brings us to the mystery.

The mystery of the New Covenant is freedom and release. Grace is the mechanism through which God has freed man from sin, from the law, from certain death and removed the barriers that stand between man and his fellow man, and man and God.

It is a mystery because it is counter to the thoughts of man and the way that man operates.

Consider this for a minute. If some issue arises in a country or state, what is the approach taken by man to overcome the issue?

Simply put, they enact a law or series of laws aimed to address the issue and force compliance to the law on the people in their charge with varying degrees of punishment meted out to those who choose to reject or ignore the law.

The process of man is based upon compliance. It says, “Keep the law…or else!”

In the Old Covenant there was a system of laws enacted and handed down to man for the purpose of identifying sin for what it is, and to try to reduce sinfulness in the world.

It failed.

It failed not because there was any fault with the law, but because there is fault in man.

Man could not keep the law because man is flawed with sin in his nature. And this sinfulness separates man from God.

More laws could not make it better. More laws could not take away sin. The only way that sin could be taken away was to remove the law that made sin what it is…sinful.

So we see that this process is the same as man’s process in that it is based upon compliance. There is no doubt that the laws of God a re better, simpler and more realistic than many of the laws of man, but they still fell short because they relied upon the compliance of men, some of whom chose not to comply.

This is not the way of God. In fact in Jesus Christ He has done the exact opposite.

In Jesus Christ, through His sacrifice and death, God has opened the way for us to be set free from our sins, set free from the law and released from condemnation.

God’s way under grace in the New Covenant is not based upon compliance but on commitment.

Grace is about being committed from the heart to do what is right in the eyes of God, not because there is some law that says, “Do it, or else!” but because the person is committed to want to do what is right. God seeks people who want what is good and right and true and who feel that way from the heart.

A person who is committed to doing what is right does not need the law because they will not break the law. They would not even contemplate breaking the law because they are committed to pleasing the Lord Jesus and God the Father. So the law CAN be removed because those who follow Christ and receive the grace of God will not break it.

This is part of the mystery of God’s grace and the truth of the New Covenant. To get people to a place where they do not sin, you do not add more laws, you take away the ones that are already there. And if you take away the laws that are already there, then you can no longer break them anyway because they are gone. So even if someone slips up and does something wrong, it is not counted as sin because there is no law to condemn the action as sin.

I am sure you may be thinking this would lead to chaos. After all, isn’t anarchy the state of being without law?

But the difference here is that those who come to Christ and receive the grace of God do not do so for the sake of anarchy, but to seek to do what is right. They WANT to do right by God and to please God more than anything else in the world or in their life. This is the driving force of their lives. And so even though there is no law in either grace or anarchy, under grace the people are led by the desire to do right rather than wrong. Grace and anarchy then oppose each other. Anarchy leads to destruction, but grace leads to life.

God’s Grace

And this is the thing about God’s grace. It is freely given to those who seek God through Jesus Christ by faith.

Faith is the key that brings us into the grace of God. There are some very specific things we must believe if we are to stand in the grace of God.

The points mentioned above about being freed from sin, freed from the law, freed from condemnation and so on are all part of the things we must believe. In Jesus Christ we receive all of these things through the grace of God who has made this possible.

And His grace is boundless. He knows that we are works in progress and we will make many mistakes. But that is also a part of God’s grace in that when we do fall or fail, He still holds us blameless as we get back on our feet and continue to move forward in Jesus Christ.

There is a learning process and we all begin at rock bottom knowing nothing other than the fact that Jesus died for us. From that point on we begin to learn and as God unfolds the truth, we are expected to learn and grow until we become mature in Jesus Christ.

But while we are learning and growing, and falling and failing as we do, God continues to offer His grace until the lessons are learned and ingrained in us so that we do NOT fail or fall.

This is but a small discussion on being stewards of the mystery of God’s grace (and it is already too long), but I hope it helps you understand at least in part.

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