Get Your Pretense On!

124 • Get Your Pretense On!

accomplishment of their task. This final principle is intimately connected to the review principle above. The results that a representative accomplished are reviewed, and when they have been found to be faithful, they are often publicly acknowledged. The sender acknowledges and recognizes the behavior, conduct, and product of the representative’s actions, and the reward and recognition corresponds to the level of faithful obedience to the task. If a representative is found to have done well, they are usually rewarded with new levels of responsibility and authority, depending on the level of faithful execution of the task. If they did remarkably well, they received great reward, and if they did reasonably well, they received lesser reward. This cycle of representation (commissioning, equipping, entrustment, mission, review, and reward) is cited throughout the Bible, with Old Testament and New Testament characters alike, and fills the parables of our Lord. Jesus referred to this cycle often in his teaching, i.e., of a master entrusting a task to his servants who are allowed to do work, and then, at its end, receive a reward for the quality of work they performed. This cycle is fully displayed in Jesus’s parable of the Talents, in Matthew 25. Here are a few highlights of this important teaching: For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. [15] To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. ~ Matthew 25.14-15

Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. [20] And he who had received the