Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 108:430 (Apr 1951)
Article: Giving under Grace Part 4
Author: Ray Charles Stedman

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BSac 108:430 (Apr 51) p. 205

Giving under Grace
Part 4

Ray Charles Stedman

(Concluded from the January-March Number, 1951)

{Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original printed edition were numbered 29–37, but in this electronic edition are numbered 1–9 respectively.}

Giving and Grace Principles

The Scriptural phrase, “when the day of Pentecost was fully come,” marks the introduction of a new age in human affairs and a revolutionary change in the relationships between God and man. So completely different from the old order were these new principles thus introduced, that now, after nearly two millennia, it is still true as it was then that men are dazzled by the brilliant promises of grace and can scarcely be persuaded to believe them. The external approach to God through natural means, as sacrifices and offerings, were no longer effective and the principle was declared that worship must now be “in spirit and in truth.” A cataclysmic change was wrought by the death and resurrection of Christ that has entered into every phase of relationship between God and His own. It is not to be thought strange, therefore, that the ancient practice of giving should enter upon a new and more vital ministry in the age of grace.

Perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of the failure of any to grasp what it means to live by grace is the persistent effort of Christians to limit their relationship to Christ to spiritual things (affairs of the soul, mind and heart), and to exclude from that relationship all control of material things. This is a thoroughly false conception, but one that affects the modern believer more than he suspects. As one writer states: if the subconscious reasoning of most Christians were reduced to writing, it would be about as follows, “Money, property, things, are essentially evil and filthy and must be separated from the things of the spirit. To be completely surrendered, I shall have to rid myself of all these—which I am not yet willing to do. I shall count these sordid material things as necessary evils and encumbrances,

BSac 108:430 (Apr 51) p. 206

meanwhile yielding to His control in spiritual things.”1 The only antidote to this latent asceticism is a thorough apprehension of the position of the New Testament giver as a steward. To this we briefly give our attention.

I. The New Testament Steward

Lewis Sperry Chafer points out there are three Greek words in the New Testament that convey the thought of stewardship. These are, παιδαγωγός, a slave charged with the training and discipline of children; ἐπίτροπος, a slave having ...

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