Becoming God’s Business Partner

By Dennis Peacocke

This is the heart of the difference between someone, Christian or non-Christian, who builds his business on Christian principles, and someone who doesn’t. The latter is satisfied to get employees who make him rich. The former is satisfied only if he can produce new proprietors who become partners in the business and prosper in it themselves. In other words, Christian leaders are committed to making others wealthy, not rich.1

I continue to stress that our goal is not to make a profit or gain employees; the goal is to make partners and proprietors. This is the pattern God sets for us. Multiplying proprietors is the focus; profit is the by-product. When people are born again2, they become “children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16,17).

God’s aim is not that we should remain mere employees for eternity, but that we should become members of the family and partners in His business. We’re junior partners, to be sure, but partners all the same. That is why Christ said this to His disciples in John 15:15-16: “No longer do I call you slaves; for the slave does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit…” It is also why He challenged His disciples with this question in Luke 16:12: “If you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?”

Anyone can, by offering enough wages, get employees to work for him. He’s merely buying people’s work. But employees are not what the Christian business vision is all about. It is about partners, associates, and proprietors. It is about people who have a stake in the business that goes beyond their weekly paycheck. It is about transforming people from employees to co-owners, from orphans to heirs.

1 Riches are perishable assets that we can gain with or without ethics or morals. Wealth is primarily achieved through the skills, spiritual knowledge, and character developed in obeying God’s ways of approaching resource management.
2 To be “born again” refers to the new life that Jesus offers us (John 3:3).

From Almighty & Sons: Doing Business God’s Way, by Dennis Peacocke, © 1995, Rebuild Publishers, Santa Rosa, CA. Used with permission. Available from Strategic Christian Services, (707) 578-7700.

Dennis Peacocke is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, a former research economist, and a business owner. He is founder and president of Strategic Christian Services, Inc., which helps leaders apply Biblical truth to businesses, churches, and culture.