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I Corinthians 4:1-2
Excerpted from: Conviction and MosesRemember Moses, the servant of God. Now we have a new word, a new term, thrown in here—a steward.
Now, Moses was faithful in all of God's house. And, as we are going to begin to see, he was the steward of God's house at that time. The context here most directly applies to the ministry; but I will show you, in another minute or two, that it applies to everybody who is a part of the Body of Christ.
"Servants" here is a Greek word that appears only here in all of the Bible. This is the one place that it appears. And I am pretty sure that the apostle Paul chose this word because of what it indicates in terms of being a servant. It literally means "a rower." (You know, like 'row, row, row your boat.') It is somebody who rows a boat. However, it has a very specific application in regard to rowing because it describes a galley slave who rowed on the very bottom row of oars that were powering the ships.
Most of the ships in those days had three rows. I guess, if you were on the top row, you were a higher slave than the ones who were on the middle; and you were higher still than the ones who were on the bottom. And so the word "servants" here are the very lowest of slaves—doing the most menial and strenuous of tasks I think that the apostle could possibly think that a person could be doing at that time. That is, a galley slave on the bottom tier, rowing a ship across the Mediterranean Sea.
A "steward" is a deputy, or agent, of the owner. A steward had authority to administer the property of the owner, including the other slaves. But the steward himself was under the authority of the owner; and, therefore, he was a slave too.
What Paul has done here is link the word "servant" (rower, the most menial of slaves) together with the word "steward." He says: "Let a man so consider us, even though we have authority as a steward, as the lowest in the Body of Christ." So Paul has linked steward and servant together. This is a wonderful attitude.
And it is the kind of attitude that Moses had too. If we had read another verse or two there in Numbers 12, we would have found that it said that Moses was humble above all men on earth. Even though he had the greatest amount of authority as God's steward over the household, he nonetheless thought of himself though as nothing more than a galley slave in terms of his relationship to Christ. He was merely Christ's deputy.
That is the way Paul was looking at it as well. So he had linked "servant" and "steward" together as being one and the same. Putting this together with verse two then: As a servant/steward, above all things he must be faithful. Let us change that word, because in some modern translations they change the word "faithful." They feel that there is another English word that fits better. They are likely to use the word "reliable." Another word that they will use is "dependable." Another one that they use will be "responsible." Another one that they will use will be "trustworthy."
Above all things, a servant must be faithful, reliable, dependable, trustworthy, and responsible in carrying out his obligations to his owner. Probably one of the most outstanding examples in all of the Bible that everybody is familiar with was Joseph. Joseph was steward over Potiphar's household. From the indication in the Bible, he ran everything.
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