Stewardship. It’s a “buzz” word in Christian circles. Many times when churches talk about money they talk about stewardship. Even though this is sometimes the case, most Christians recognize that the biblical idea of stewardship goes far beyond what we do with our money. Ultimately we find in Scripture that stewardship is foundational to our very lives. The Bible emphasizes in almost countless ways that God is the true Owner of everything and that our highest calling is to manage what he has entrusted to our care well by Loving Him and loving each other.
In the end, we are servants and managers and stewards. Not owners. Accepting this truth is paramount. “Most of all, it is required that a steward be found faithful.”
This is the position in which Adam and Eve find themselves in the Genesis account. They are sacred stewards. We know the story. They sinned. They fell. They violated their stewardship. They sought to possess for themselves what they could really only administer for God. They came under the serpent’s spell.
So humanity fell. But how does that impact us today? What does it mean to be “under the Serpent’s spell?” Beside the obvious penalty of physical (and more importantly, spiritual) death (Gen. 2:17), how has our perception changed? What has changed about how we think and how we feel?
God does give us some insights in this area. He says to Eve, “Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.” (Genesis 2:16) He says to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it…. By the sweat of your brow… until you return to the ground… for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 2:17-18).
There is a temptation to make these statements too gender specific. They are better understood as summaries of the fallen human condition. They may tend to follow something of a more specific pattern in marriages, but nevertheless they are applicable to all people in various degrees. These feelings and thoughts we have are not illusions. They are real responses to our fallenness and the fallenness of the world we see all around us. Here they are in a nutshell:
They idea behind “desire” (Gen. 2:16) is one of “a turning to something (Septuagint) to meet our excessive desire (Masoretic) for fulfillment. The first step toward healing is to accept that my desires are excessive and cannot be satisfied by any other person, place, or thing. To ever think that a created thing could satisfy me when I am made for an infinite Creator is part of the Serpent’s spell. Now, our desires are excessive and will drag us into dangerous territory (James 1:4, 13-14)
The idea behind “rule over you” or “dominion” is that we tend to be controlling, willful, and determined to get our own way. Our willfulness is destructive and insensitive to God and others. The lengths we will go to to try to fulfill our excessive desire and impose our malignant will on others is hard to measure.
Finally there is life’s innate “defiance.” Life is hard. Our excessive desires are unfulfilled and our insensitive willfulness brings no real peace. In the face of life’s frustrations, we are inclined to develop a victim mentality because of the hardness of life.
These three things (our excessive desires, our insensitive willfulness, and our victim mentality) are the immediate consequences of falling under the Serpent’s spell. They color our view of God, others, life, and what constitutes true happiness and blessedness.
But there is a final ‘D”:
There is deliverance. There is one man who can crush the Serpent’s head and save us from our self-inflicted wretchedness. One man who emptied himself of his rights and desires. One man who completely surrendered his will back to God. One man who refused to play the victim in the face of life’s hardness. Instead of protesting about his deadly fate, he gave his life to that which would try to take it. What you are proactive in giving away no one can then take from you, for you have already given it.
He needed no deliverance for himself. He had no need to repent. His core “mind” did not need to change because his perception was not bewitched by the Serpent. His name is Jesus Christ. He can help free us from the cursed spell.
But we have a part to play. We have to BELIEVE what God’s Word says. We have to admit that our desires are excessive. We have to admit that our willfulness is destructive. We have to stop playing the victim. It is not enough to say, “I will stop doing this or that.” Particular behaviors are not the root problem. They are evidences of the root problem. Begin the journey back to the mind of Christ and reclaim your birthplace as God’s steward.