Products at fair price

That leads to the second aspect of what is biblically lawful. It is not only good for those who are your clients, your customers, your consumers, not only that which is beneficial with regard to what you are providing them in return, but again, you are procuring; but there is another aspect of what makes a calling lawful: it has to do with the product of one’s labours being made available at a fair price.

Proverbs 11:1; Proverbs 16:11; Proverbs 20:10; Proverbs 20:23; Leviticus 19:35–36; Deuteronomy 25:13–16—all of those texts speak of balances, weights, scales, and measures. And that is the language of commerce. That is the language in buying and selling. That is the language of business and trade. And those texts reveal God’s concern with thorough going honesty in that realm. That is their summary which they are teaching. The principle issue of those texts is that one gives a product or service worthy of the expenditure made by the customer. No price gouging. There is to be a worthy correspondence between the purchase price and the quantity and quality of what one gives for it. The occupation we choose must be lawful in terms of offering the result of one’s labour at an honest price.

It is not the mindset of getting all that one can possibly extract from an unknowing, unaware customer. That is biblically unlawful. It is not the mindset of maximizing my gain no matter what. That is biblically unlawful. Proverbs 10:2 reads: Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, not in the end. Proverbs 14:11 reads: Wealth gained hastily will dwindle. Lastly, Proverbs 15:27 reads Whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household. Those texts come to play on this second criterion: the matter of an honest, fair price. It makes a vocation lawful.

Our gains, our wealth, our profits are to be gained in a trade in a field of endeavour in a vocation that deals with people in terms of reasonable pricing. Pricing that covers cost and yes, pricing that yields a profit, but we are not to be engaged in vocations where people are taken advantage of, where people are exploited due to their ignorance, or due to some other factor; perhaps having a monopoly on a particular business. We are not be engaged in a vocation wherein price gouging is the practice, wherein the price is the exclusive concern to the neglect of the quantity or quality of useful goods and services offered. That may be how much of the business world operates, but it is not how those operate who, in the language of Colossians 3:17, do all in the name of Jesus Christ. It is not how they operate [by taking advantage of people].

Proverbs warns against get‑rich‑quick schemes and schemers whose work is driven by raw greed. Proverbs 28:20 says, whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished. Then Proverbs 28:22 goes on to say, A stingy man hastens after wealth. If our labour is to meet the criteria of lawfulness, if it is to be a biblically, lawful field of endeavour, it should be characterized by the provision of beneficial products or services, that are correspondent to the price paid by the customer.

Another way to sum that up can be found in Matthew 7:12: So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. You pursue a field of endeavour where you have the liberty to live out the golden rule. In the language of Luke 6:31 we find the parallel expression: And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

Now that does not exclude profit. Profit must be made. Yet, does the vocation, the field of endeavour, the pursuit to which you aspire, does it meet the criterion of lawfulness? Does it provide, in the language of Ephesians 4:28, what is good for those with whom I do business? Does that field of endeavour market its goods or services at prices that are honest and reasonable fair to the customer in terms of amount and quality? Those are the questions that characterize this first consideration.¹

George McDearmon