What the Bible says about Mankind's Stewardship Responsibility
(From Forerunner Commentary)
Notice the seven major, broad overviews within which mankind's specific responsibilities are addressed:
1. This covenant introduces the sovereign Creator God Himself. In Genesis 1:1-5, He stands alone; the focus is on Him and what He wants us to learn first about Him. He stands at the beginning of all things and precedes everything. Everything He gives to man—God is the sovereign Creator and Giver of every good gift—he must use responsibly within God's purpose. This pattern of focusing on the sovereign Creator God and His purposes appears in all covenants with Him. God rules!
2. This covenant reveals that He is orderly. Every step in creation is taken in a scientifically logical progression, establishing that the creation and His purposes are not haphazard. Randomness is not part of His nature. God is purposeful and already has a plan that He is following step by step.
3. In the beginning, like God Himself, everything was morally perfect. No sin is present, nor are any demons there to interrupt His thoughtful construction of a practical and beautiful place for Him to work out His purpose for mankind.
4. No aspect of the creation is to be worshipped. Everything God made and gave to mankind is a product of and inferior to the One who made all things. No animal or object is to be used as an intermediary between the Creator and mankind. Only the Creator is to be worshipped.
5. Beginning with Adam and Eve, humanity is charged with populating the earth and subduing it. Men are not to have an adversarial relationship with the earth but to harness its potential and use its resources for human benefit. In this case, subduing indicates activities like cultivating its fields and mining it for mineral riches. Mankind is not to rape the earth but to work to manage properly what he has been given. Humans, created in God's image, are to exercise their God-given authority as His servants to care for the earth as He would. That is, men are to follow God's pattern. There is, of course, far more to being made in His likeness, but ruling is part of the reason for it.
6. Simply being born gives a person a stewardship responsibility. People are to treat God's wonderful gifts with the same loving care in which God designed and created them.
7. Mankind is to enjoy the foods produced in the Garden as well as the bountiful productivity God placed within humanity's purview.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Leadership and Covenants (Part Five)Related Topics: Edenic Covenant Introduces Sovereign Creator | Every Step In Creation Scientific Progression | God Precedes Everything | God's Purposes Not Haphazard | Man's Stewardship of the Earth | Mankind's Stewardship Responsibility | No Aspect of Creation Is to Be Worshipped | Only the Creator to Be Worshipped | Randomness Not Part of God's Nature
Two things are made especially plain. God states three times in verse 27 that man is created. In verses 26-27, He says four times that man is created in the image of God. He wants us to grasp those points because the same applies to us! Even though we are now about 6,000 years from when He first spoke those words, these realities have not changed one iota.
In addition, God clearly gave us beings created in His image authority over animals. That authority has not been taken from us. This dominion implies responsibility in managing them that we owe to our Creator.
Many people seek to escape the responsibility of answering to our Creator, devising complex explanations to deny His existence to themselves and others. They may reason that, if He does not exist, how can they be responsible for submitting to His commands?
They will move heaven and earth, as the saying goes, looking for proof to back their denial of God. The great bulk of mankind lacks the resources, the time, or the education to make such a search, so for their own benefit, they simply deny His existence by ignoring Him. These two categories of people are part of the “Nones”—those who claim no spiritual attachment whatever—of this generation.
Others, without making any real effort to search out the truth, create a god or goddess they are comfortable with and worship him or her to salve their consciences. They do not seem to grasp that their dodges do not alter their responsibility to conform to what God laid out in the beginning.
Another category is quite worrisome: the sincere folk who consider themselves Christian. However, either due to false teaching in their churches or perhaps their own laziness, they believe that much of the Old Testament no longer applies to them. In their minds, it has been “done away” along with what they consider Old Covenant laws, deliberately ignoring what Jesus Himself says about those same laws (Matthew 5:17-20).
However, God's Word still stands, and mankind is still responsible to follow this covenant, as Romans 1:20-21 declares:
For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead [margin, divine nature], so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Leadership and Covenants (Part Five)Related Topics: Debased Mind | Denying God's Existence | God's Invisible Attributes Seen in Creation | God's Law Done Away | Ignoring God | Man Created in God's Image | Mankind Created in God's Image | Mankind's Dominion over Animals | Mankind's Stewardship Responsibility | NONES | Old Testament Done Away | Reprobate Mind