<p>19:17 <i>And he said to him: Well done, you good servant. Because you were found faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities</i>- 1 Cor. 4:2 speaks of us as stewards being &quot;found faithful&quot; in this life by our actions; there is a definite sense in which the Lord's judgment and assessment of our stewardship is ongoing in this life. The judgment process, from His perspective, is now. And &quot;we make the answer now&quot;.</p><p>&ldquo;In a very little&rdquo; (<i>elachistos</i>) is the very same word found later in Matthew 25, when we read that the final judgment will be based around how we have treated &ldquo;the very least&rdquo; of the Lord&rsquo;s brethren (Mt. 25:40,45). The minas we have been given relate to them- how we have used them, what we have done for them, how we have served them with the riches given us by the Lord. There is obviously a connection between the manner in which we rule over the &ldquo;few things&rdquo;, and how we shall be given &ldquo;many things&rdquo; to rule over in the Kingdom age. Clearly what we are doing now is in essence what we shall eternally be doing, but on a greater level. If our lives are centred merely around ourselves and doing what we want, developing ourselves, rather than developing the Lord&rsquo;s work and doing&nbsp;<i>His</i>&nbsp;work, then we will be out of step with the life eternal. We are to start living that now. And then we shall live it eternally. Our care for the little one or two individuals now is related to how we shall care for whole cities in the Kingdom.</p><p>The parable describes the reward of the faithful in terms of being given ten or five cities. This idea of dividing up groups of cities was surely meant to send the mind back to the way Israel in their wilderness years were each promised their own individual cities and villages, which they later inherited. The idea of inheriting &quot;ten cities&quot; occurs in Josh. 15:57; 21:5,26; 1 Chron. 6:61 (all of which are in the context of the priests receiving their cities), and &quot;five cities&quot; in 1 Chron. 4:32. As each Israelite was promised some personal inheritance in the land, rather than some blanket reward which the while nation received, so we too have a personal reward prepared. The language of inheritance (e.g. 1 Pet. 1:4) and preparation of reward (Mt. 25:34; Jn. 14:1) in the NT is alluding to this OT background of the land being prepared by the Angels for Israel to inherit (Ex. 15:17 Heb.; 23:20; Ps. 68:9,10 Heb.). We must be careful not to think that our promised inheritance is <i>only</i> eternal life; it is something being personally prepared for each of us. The language of preparation seems inappropriate if our reward is only eternal life.</p><p>The reward was way out of proportion, both to what had been given, and to what they had achieved with it: ten cities The Master's words almost seem to be a gentle rebuke: &quot;Because you were found faithful in <i>a very little</i>, have authority over ten cities&quot;; &quot;you have been faithful over a <i>few things</i>, I will make you ruler over many things&quot; (Mt. 25:23). The &quot;Truth&quot; we have now (and it is that) is &quot;a very little... a few things&quot;. We mustn't see it as an end in itself. Yet because of our humanity, our limited vision, the way we are locked up in our petty paradigms and parameters, we tend to think that the Kingdom will be rather similar to our present experience of &quot;the Truth&rdquo;. Yet the Lord emphasizes, at least twice, that what we have now is pathetically limited compared to the infinitely greater spiritual vision of the Kingdom. We (personally) will then be made ruler over <i>all </i>that Christ has (Mt. 24:47; the &quot;many things&quot; of Mt. 25:23); and in him are hid <i>all </i>the riches of spiritual wisdom (Col. 2:3). &nbsp;</p>