It’s that age-old question about wages. What is fair?
I’m guessing you did not stumble in here by mistake. As a Christian entrepreneur, you want to follow Jesus and pay what is fair to your workers. That’s true. We should follow Jesus in everything that we do, in homes, in church, and in our place of business.
It’s not going to be easy. Being a Christian doesn’t make things easy. Jesus said, “You must take up your cross every day and follow me (Luke 9:23). As a Christian business owner, you will have to carry your cross. The Bible says a lot about wages and the relationship between masters (employers) and servants (employees).
Colossians 4:1 says “Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.” What the Bible says in this verse and many others is that employers should not delay their worker’s pay, assure living wages, and give just reward for extra work.
This verse also says that even as a business owner, you still work for someone. And that someone is God. That’s why, as Christian business owners, we have to set the bar of our ethics and moral standard higher than the world.
Minimum wage or living wage
A higher ethical and moral bar means Christians shouldn’t settle on the bare minimum. Just because the law allows it and everybody is doing it doesn’t mean we should do it.
When Boaz saw Ruth was gleaning behind the harvesters, he instructed his men to let her gather right among the sheaves and not scold her (Ruth 2:15). He even ordered the harvesters to pull out some stalks from the bundle to drop where Ruth can gather them.
Boaz knew that Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi just came back from a foreign land. They had no land nor source of livelihood. Gleaning behind the harvesters was a way for the poor and foreign residents to have food. The Lord gave specific instructions for this in Leviticus 23:22. What Boaz did was beyond what was required by tradition, the norm, and the law.
The principle is more important than the method. It is love and mercy for the poor. That’s why we can still apply the principle of Biblical gleaning in our day and age.
Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 or $15,000 a year. I wouldn’t know how to survive on that much less feed my family. If I was a single parent with one child, I would need $19.75 an hour to be able to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment. Even a person working full-time at minimum wage wouldn’t be able to rent a one-bedroom apartment.
Look, I am not saying that you should run your business to the ground. You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t care. You need to ask the Lord Jesus and be guided by the Holy Spirit in finding ways to pay your workers a living wage.
What you can do is ask and research around about the cost of living in your state or city. You can be creative. Maybe give out gift checks, provide health benefits, paid leaves, upskill training, and other things that can be a way to lift up your workers from living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Disparity in remuneration
In the last 12 years, We were shaken by the Great Recession of 2008 and the Great Lockdown of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The gap between the high-income earners and minimum wage workers has become even greater. It’s simply scandalous how much most CEOs take home in pay, rewards, and bonuses.
In Great Britain, CEOs get paid £3.9 million on average while the average UK pay is £28,200. That’s a ratio of about 140:1. This pay gap is even wider in the States with a ratio of well above 300:1. While executive pay continues to rise, real-wage earnings for many workers have not moved in decades.
Greed governs our society. The top one percent of Americans have more money than the bottom 50 percent. Celebrities, sports stars, social media influencers, entertainers, and rock star CEOs flaunt their supercars, luxury yachts, lavish homes, and extravagant lifestyles.
Dan Price is the CEO of Gravity Payments, and a Christian. Dan found out that his employees were struggling to make ends meet. Price decided to flesh out his faith. He took a huge pay cut, gave up his stocks, mortgaged two of his houses and made $70,000 the minimum wage of any Gravity Payments employee.
Since then, Gravity Payments is now twice as big, the business has tripled, and — most importantly, according to Price — his employees can afford to start families of their own.
That’s called being the change that you want.
“Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages, — Jer 22:13. In your company, is there someone who is barely getting by? Are you in a position to do it? Sin is not only the bad that you do, but it is also the good that you don’t do. James 4:17 declares, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”
Biblical principles to apply
1. Pay them on time
Never delay your workers’ pay. God repeatedly warns against that. “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning. – Lev 19:13. And also “, Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, “Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give it”—“when you have it with you.” — Pro 3:27-28
Don’t start a project unless you already have the funds. The priority budget is always your payroll. Some of your workers may barely be hanging by a thread.
2. Pay them what is fair
God’s justice decrees that workers’ pay should be enough to keep them from ruin. Not providing for the family is a sin, any employer is complicit in this sin if the employer unjustly depresses his workers’ wages. “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” — 1 Tim 5:8
God wants his people to treat each other with dignity. This includes all areas of work. Whether master, servant or independent laborer, the Bible mandates that they should fulfil their role with honor.
3. Reward them for doing an exceptional job
The principle of reward gives a sense of purpose to workers. You provide them something to aim for and reason for bettering themselves. This benefits the group in the long-term. God encourages us to strive to be blessed and rewarded here on earth and in heaven. In Matthew 25:21, the master said to the servant ‘,Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
Final thoughts
No matter how you look at it. We are not here to make money. 1 Timothy 6:10 “,For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” You are here for something far better. Your business is made for something better. Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last…”
When all is said and done and we are face to face with Jesus, what fruit are you going to show him? Are you going to show him the properties that you owned, the houses that you built, the cars that you drive, your bank passbook? Or are you going to show him the lives that you guided into the kingdom and scars of sacrifice for helping the destitute.
One day, the scene in Matthew 25:34-45 will play out before us. Are you going to be standing on the right or will you be herded to the left?
Bible verses
Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. – Rom 4:4
Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. – James 5:4
“You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns. You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin — Deut 24:14-15
For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.” — 1 Tim 5:18
Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven. – Col 4:1
