Is Business Biblical?

Sometimes, however, we must grapple with a much more basic concern: would Jesus ever make profit? Some insist the answer is an unequivocal no, and so they reject all investing outright. But is their assumption correct?

Jesus and Business

First, as a base fact, Jesus did engage in a trade, a business. Both Mark and Matthew refer to Jesus as a carpenter, and the Greek word (tektón) gives the idea of one who possessed more than mere rudimentary skill but was an artisan, a fine craftsman in wood (Mark 6:3, Matthew 13:55). Jesus, it appears, did not merely punch the clock at a tedious job, a mindless or purely utilitarian effort to put food on the table. Rather, Jesus learned an ancient craft, over years, at his father Joseph’s side. Jesus learned the glide of the plane, the art of joinery, the joy of spreading the final fresh layer of stain. Jesus helped to build the family business which would have served both as a primary foundation for the family’s financial stability but also as a resource supporting the whole community.

Of course, when Jesus left the family profession to pursue his public ministry, we don’t know what Jesus did with the money he’d made. How much of his accumulated resources did he contribute to the disciples’ money bag to provide for their shared needs and to care for the poor? How much did Jesus give to his mother once Joseph died to help provide for his siblings? Scripture doesn't tell us.

Jesus and Profit

However, we do know Jesus never denounced but instead honored the idea of hard work and good profit. In Jesus’ parable of the talents, each servant who “put his money to work and gained…more” was commended for being “good and faithful,” a stark contrast to the dishonored servant who did nothing with his money and let his resources lie dormant (Matthew 25:14-30). Jesus knew Deuteronomy intimately and surely affirmed the Scriptures’ insistence that “it is [God] who gives [us] the ability to produce wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18). The idea of profit always being evil would have been foreign to Jesus.

In the same spirit, Jesus’ followers never understood Jesus to have denounced all profit and never assumed everyone would give away everything they made. The early church admired Lydia, who owned a lucrative garment business, for her generosity but apparently also for her entrepreneurial vigor and her managerial skill. Lydia’s whole enterprise was impressive and noteworthy.

Even with the tragic tale of Ananias and Saphira (when many in the church were selling what they had, contributing to a shared purse, and living in common), the story makes clear how the couple’s great evil was not at all because they kept some of the profit they’d made from the sale of their property, but how they lied about what they had done. “Didn’t [the property] belong to you before it was sold?” Peter asked. “And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.” (Acts 5:4).

Jesus and Generosity

While Jesus never condemns good business or earning a fair profit, we should never downplay how Jesus’ understanding of wealth is peculiar and demanding. Across the whole New Testament, we discover a persistent, fundamental conviction: pursuing the way of Jesus inevitably leads to radical generosity. Jesus’ entire life was bound up in self-giving sacrifice for the sake of love, and the early church understood how following Jesus would always propel us to become people who care for one another and serve the poor. Christians are ones who are being remade by Jesus’ sacrificial love. And, transformed by this Christ-shaped posture, we learn with increasing clarity how our resources are not intended to insulate us from a suffering world but rather they provide one way for us to move toward the world’s pain and become part of God’s healing.

Sin corrupts every human idea and effort, and we certainly experience the harm whenever we encounter unhinged lust for profit or a distorted capitalism unmoored from moral principles. Proverbs warn against “ill-gotten gain”–not denouncing profit itself but rather rejecting every kind of profit secured through duplicity, extraction, or exploitation (Proverbs 1:19). Jesus condemns greed, runaway self-interest, and exploitation; and unfortunately, history reveals how these evils thread their way into every economic system. However, both Jesus and the Scripture seem to approve of good work (thus, good business) and fair profit (which we’re always to share with the poor). When we create wealth the right way and for the right reasons, we sustain good business, provide for our needs and the needs of others, and fuel the generosity necessary to care for God’s world.