A Reflection on 1 Corinthians 4:1–5
1 Corinthians 4:1–5 (ESV)
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 faithful. 3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.
Reflection
Paul has spent much of this letter dealing with division within the Corinthian church. They had attached themselves to different leaders, measured themselves against one another, and somehow turned the people God had given them to help build the church into reasons for boasting. Paul has already reminded them that Apollos and Cephas and himself were servants. They were workers in God’s field. They were builders working on a foundation they did not create. Now Paul shifts the language slightly. He calls himself and the other leaders servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. A steward is someone who has been entrusted with something that does not actually belong to him. That distinction matters. The steward has responsibility, but he is not the owner. He is given something valuable and expected to care for it according to the wishes of the one who entrusted it to him.
That seems simple enough until I start asking myself what God has entrusted to me. Every believer has been given something to steward. Our time, our relationships, our abilities, our resources, our influence, our testimony, and the opportunities God places in front of us are not ultimately ours. They are gifts. We didn’t create ourselves, choose our gifts, or determine every circumstance that brought us to where we are today. Yet we often live as though we are the owners instead of the stewards. We make plans, build ministries, pursue careers, raise families, and dream about the future, and somewhere along the way we can forget to ask the most important question: What does the Owner want me to do with what He has given me?
Paul gives us a surprisingly simple standard for the steward. Faithfulness. Not success. Not influence. Not recognition. Not how much we accomplish compared to somebody else. Faithfulness. That word has been sitting with me because I tend to measure things by what could be next. I can get laser focused on potential. I can see a ministry that could grow, a podcast that could reach more people, a teaching opportunity that could become something bigger, or a room that could become a place where men gather and grow. I can see the destination so clearly that I begin moving toward it before I have taken care of what God has placed directly in front of me. I can become so interested in what could be that I neglect what is.
Maybe that is one of the dangers of vision. Vision is good. Dreams can be good. God absolutely gives people vision for things that don’t exist yet. But even a God-given vision can become something I try to accomplish for Him instead of something I allow Him to lead. I can get ahead of God while convincing myself that I’m pursuing God. That is a difficult distinction to make because the outside of those two things can look almost identical. I’m working. I’m serving. I’m building. I’m teaching. I’m planning. I’m moving. But what is happening inside my heart? Why am I doing it? Who am I trying to please? What am I trying to prove? Am I stewarding what God has given me, or am I quietly building something that I want God to bless?
Paul’s words about judgment make that question even more uncomfortable. He tells the Corinthians that it is a small thing for him to be judged by them or by any human court. He doesn’t even place ultimate confidence in his own judgment of himself. That part catches me because I think we are often far too comfortable being the judge of other people’s faithfulness. We look at another person’s ministry, marriage, parenting, leadership, decisions, or spiritual maturity and start measuring them against our own understanding of what they should be doing. Sometimes we do it openly. More often, we do it quietly in our minds. We compare. We evaluate. We decide who is doing well and who isn’t. We become convinced that we understand what is happening in another person’s heart because we can see the outward results.
But Paul says the Lord will bring to light what is hidden and disclose the purposes of the heart. God sees what we cannot see. He sees the motive underneath the action. He sees the insecurity underneath the ambition. He sees the fear underneath the anger. He sees the sacrifice nobody noticed. He sees the obedience that never received applause. He sees the sin we have justified and the repentance we have quietly offered. He knows me better than I know myself.
That should humble me.
It should also give me some freedom.
Because if God is the ultimate judge of my faithfulness, then my job isn’t to constantly compare my life against everyone else’s. My job is to faithfully steward what He has actually placed in my hands. I don’t need to know whether I’m doing more than someone else. I don’t need to know whether my ministry is bigger or smaller. I don’t need to know whether someone else is further along than I am. I need to know whether I am being faithful with what God has given me today.
And that brings me back to the idea of light.
I think about how easy it is to live with things hidden in the darkness while still trying to proclaim the light. The light can still be there, but it can become dim. It can be covered. It can be neglected. It can be surrounded by things that keep it from shining as brightly as it should. I don’t think most of us wake up one morning and decide to hide the light God has given us. It happens gradually. We get tired. We become distracted. We become comfortable. We allow little compromises. We stop confessing things because we’ve learned how to explain them away. We stay busy enough that nobody notices what is happening underneath the surface.
The light doesn’t disappear.
But it can become dimmer.
And I have to ask myself: How am I stewarding my light?
Not the light I wish I had. Not the influence I hope to have someday. Not the ministry I imagine building five years from now. The light God has given me today. The people He has placed around me today. The opportunities that are sitting directly in front of me today.
Am I teaching others while I am still willing to be taught? Am I encouraging people toward Christ while making excuses for the areas where I refuse to surrender? Am I talking about the Gospel while allowing parts of my own life to remain hidden? Am I asking God to expand my influence while neglecting the people already within my influence?
Those questions make me slow down.
Because I have dreams. I have visions of what could be. I can see possibilities that excite me. I can imagine a place where men can walk through the door carrying the weight of their lives and find brothers willing to sit in the muck and mire with them. I can imagine teaching, discipleship, conversations, podcasts, resources, and spaces where people can encounter Jesus. I believe some of those things may actually be part of what God is preparing me for.
But I can’t allow the vision to become more important than the people.
I can’t become so focused on building the room that I forget the man standing outside it.
I can’t become so focused on getting somewhere that I stop noticing who God has placed beside me along the way.
Maybe stewardship looks a lot less impressive than I sometimes want it to look. Maybe faithfulness means stopping when someone needs help. Maybe it means listening to my wife instead of thinking about the next thing on my list. Maybe it means having a conversation that wasn’t on the schedule. Maybe it means putting down the plans long enough to notice that someone beside me is struggling to keep his head above water.
Jesus was constantly interrupted.
People came to Him when He was going somewhere else. Someone needed healing. Someone needed forgiveness. Someone needed to be seen. Someone needed to ask a question. Someone needed Him to stop.
And He stopped.
I think about that because I can become so focused on where I’m going that I forget that the people I encounter along the way may actually be part of where God is sending me. I keep looking toward the ends of the earth while sometimes neglecting my Jerusalem. I think about Judea and Samaria while overlooking the person standing right beside me.
Maybe faithfulness isn’t always about getting farther.
Maybe sometimes it’s about stopping.
And maybe the greatest stewardship opportunity in front of me isn’t the thing I’ve been dreaming about building. Maybe it’s the person God has placed directly in front of me today.
A Prayer for Today
Papa,
I know I can get ahead of You. I can see what something could become and start running toward it before I’ve taken the time to ask whether You are actually asking me to go there. I can get so focused on the potential that I miss the person standing right in front of me. I can become so focused on the big picture that I overlook the small opportunities You put in my path every day.
Teach me to slow down.
Teach me to live a life interrupted.
You never seemed to be in a hurry when someone needed You. You stopped for people. You went out of Your way for people. You allowed the needs of others to interrupt the plans of the day, and somehow those interruptions were never really interruptions. They were the ministry.
Help me see my life that way.
I keep thinking about Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. I want to go farther. I want to reach more people. I want to teach and lead and build things that matter. But I don’t want to chase the ends of the earth while neglecting the people You have already placed in my Jerusalem.
Show me the people directly in front of me.
Show me where my time is needed.
Show me where my attention is needed.
Show me where I need to stop.
Father, keep me from becoming so enamored with the vision that I neglect the work. Give me patience to prepare. Give me discipline to hone the skills You have given me. Give me courage to get into the muck and mire with people who are struggling to keep their heads above water. Don’t let me become someone who talks about helping people without actually being willing to get dirty with them.
I want to steward the light You have given me well.
I want my life to shine, not because I have everything figured out, but because Christ is becoming more visible in me. When there is darkness in me, expose it. When there is sin, help me confess it. When there is pride, humble me. When there is selfish ambition, show me. When I am hiding behind plans, preparation, or productivity, help me recognize it.
I don’t want to live behind a mask.
I don’t want to convince myself that I’m doing better than I really am.
Keep me in confession. Keep me in accountability. Keep me in community. Give me people who love me enough to tell me the truth and enough grace to walk with me while I grow.
And when You give me opportunities to teach, help me remember that I am still a steward. The message isn’t mine. The people aren’t mine. The ministry isn’t mine. The influence isn’t mine. None of it belongs to me.
It all belongs to You.
So let me work.
Let me prepare.
Let me plan.
Let me dream.
But teach me to hold all of it loosely enough that You can interrupt it whenever You want.
If the next step takes longer than I thought, give me patience.
If the podcast goes quiet for a season, let me be okay.
If the room isn’t ready yet, let me keep preparing.
If the ministry grows slowly, let me remain faithful.
And if You put one hurting man in front of me tomorrow, help me recognize that he may be more important than everything else on my calendar.
I don’t want to measure my life by how far I got.
I want to measure it by whether I was faithful with what You placed in my hands.
Give me joy in the work.
Give me endurance when the work is hard.
Give me wisdom when I don’t know what to do.
Give me humility when things go well.
Give me grace when I fail.
Give me eyes to see what You are doing right now.
And Papa, when I start running ahead again, catch me.
Slow me down.
Bring me back to You.
Let’s go together.
With joy and suffering.
With purpose and plans.
With provision and providence.
Let’s go.
Amen.
Reflection Questions
- What has God placed directly in front of you right now that you may be overlooking because you are focused on what comes next?
- Where might your desire for influence, success, or accomplishment be competing with simple faithfulness?
- What would it look like for you to live a more “interrupted” life this week and allow someone else’s need to change your plans?
- When you look honestly at your time, talent, and resources, what do they reveal about what you are actually stewarding?
- Where are you tempted to judge someone else’s faithfulness when God may be asking you to examine your own?
- What part of your life might you be keeping hidden because bringing it into the light would require confession, accountability, or surrender?
- Who is in your “Jerusalem” right now—the person closest to you whom God may be asking you to love, serve, encourage, or disciple before you start looking toward the ends of the earth?
Final Thought
I keep thinking about the light.
Not the light I hope to have someday.
Not the influence I imagine building.
Not the ministry I can see in my head.
The light I have today.
Maybe faithfulness is less about making that light bigger and more about making sure I am not covering it.
There will always be another plan to make, another goal to reach, another place to go. The ends of the earth will still be there. But the person sitting across from me today may not be.
Maybe the stewardship God is asking of me isn’t found somewhere far away.
Maybe it is sitting right here.
Maybe it is the conversation I didn’t plan for.
The person I almost walked past.
The prayer I almost skipped.
The wife I need to listen to.
The man who needs someone willing to sit in the muck with him.
The work I don’t feel like doing.
The small act of obedience nobody will ever see.
I don’t know exactly where all of this is going.
But I know who I’m following.
So I’ll keep preparing.
I’ll keep learning.
I’ll keep serving.
I’ll keep getting back up.
And when You interrupt the plan, Papa, help me remember that the interruption may be the plan.
Let’s go.