Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 162 · June 11
Found Faithful
“Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.”
What would have to happen by December for you to call this a good year? Nearly every answer comes out as a yield: something finished, something grown, somebody's opinion of you revised.
The Corinthians have been ranking their ministers, and Paul opens by relabelling himself. Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. A steward ran a household he did not own, holding keys to rooms belonging to somebody else. Then the requirement, and there is only the one. Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.
What follows is a man refusing three verdicts in a row. Yours first: with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you. Then the public's: or of man's judgment. Then his own, which is the startling one. Yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself, old English for being aware of nothing against himself, and he will not take even that as a result. Yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come.
Two things to carry out of that. What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Everything in your hands this week came from somewhere else, which is what makes you a steward. And Jesus set the review in the same terms: if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? Your assessment has a date on it. Somebody else set it. That date falls a good deal later than December.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 162 is Established and Sealed (2 Corinthians 1:21-22).