“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 43
A businessman cannot function without a prudent sense of self-interest, and one of the reasons many Christians struggle in their oversight of business is that they do not understand this virtue properly. And the reason they do not understand it properly is that certain high-flying definitions are allowed to trump what the Bible expressly teaches.
For example, it sounds very noble and altruistic to say that we should want to serve God without any thought of reward. (And the reason it sounds altruistic is that this sentiment is altruistic, but only at certain levels.) If the altruism kicks in at the wrong level, it is doing so as a sentimentalist idol. For example, if we are supposed to serve God without any notion of blessing or reward, then why does Scripture repeatedly promise us certain blessings for serving God? What would we think of an uncle who secretly taught his nephew that he should honor and obey his parents without any sense of reward-when at the same time the parents were offering blessings for obedience? The uncle is in effect telling the son to honor his parents by paying no attention to what they are telling him.
People say that we shouldn’t serve Christ simply because we are afraid of hellfire. But Jesus taught that this was an outstanding reason to fear God (Matt. 10:28). God is not mocked-a man reaps what he sows. This is how God made the world, and He demands that His servants make their calculations accordingly. Of course, they must do this without assuming that God is an infallible vending machine. But at the same time, all Christian businessmen must operate on the assumption that God is a covenant-keeping God.