Christians must seek in every way to inject the healing balm of grace into their economic activities, and to decry the absence of grace wherever sin, greed, and corruption have infested commercial activity of every kind.

Kingdom Commerce

Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord,
But a just weight is His delight.
When pride comes, then comes shame;
But with the humble is wisdom.
The integrity of the upright will guide them,
But the perversity of the unfaithful will destroy them.
Riches do not profit in the day of wrath,
But righteousness delivers from death.
Proverbs 11.1-4

The Rot of Sin and Corruption

Human systems and institutions are susceptible to corruption for the simple reason that they are created, managed, and used by sinful people. The more sinful people give in to covetousness and mere self-interest, taking greed rather than grace as their base currency, the more they will configure their systems and institutions to support their objectives. Corruption becomes inherent in any system—including a system of commerce—when people lack the integrity and will to regulate their practices according to the Law of God.

Where the holiness, righteousness, and goodness of God’s Law are compromised in a system, there the rot of sin and corruption will take hold. Love—grace—grows cold where lawlessness obtains (Matt. 24.12). People become mere objects of exploitation to satisfy the material wants of the “haves.” Soon enough, economic practices that polarize people become the new normal, as the corruption of commerce becomes a cancer on society.

It may be helpful to review just a few examples of how corruption has created or affected elements of our own economic system, so ensconcing itself in the system as to corrupt entire institutions. Among these we may mention slavery, the sex trade, abortion, and political favoritism.

Slavery

Slavery was a crucial part of the economy of the American colonies and southern states for over 200 years. It was based on a practice common to many nations at the beginning of the 17^th century, but it was justified as an economic tool among the Christian nations of Europe and their colonies by specious appeal to certain passages in Scripture and the claim that slaves were better off than they had been in their home country.

Slaveholders ignored the larger teaching of Scripture (cf. Col. 3.11; Philemon) and the long tradition of Christian manumission of slaves in order to prop up a sector of the economy on which they had become dependent, and which allowed them to maintain their comfortable lifestyle. And this was true throughout the colonies, as John Woolman and others observed.

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