The key to a blessed life, both now and into eternity, is Christ. A blessed person has received Christ as Lord and Savior. The assurance that a person has received Christ is revealed by the fruit of the person’s life. The fruit is progressive obedience to the will and ways of God and is revealed through words and actions congruent with Christ.¹ The power to produce this fruit is from God not man.

Salvation to eternal life is the sovereign work of God alone,² and those who have received the gift of eternal life will live as obedient servants of Christ.³ They will be blessed both temporally and in the next life, and those who don’t so live display that they have not received the gift of life in Christ and are, therefore, under a curse. In other words, obedience leads to blessings and disobedience leads to curses. This maxim is found in many texts of Scripture such as Deuteronomy 28.

In the above excerpt from Deuteronomy 28, there is a specific warning. Disobedience to God will lead to calamity. The calamity may not be immediate and may not be obvious, at least initially, but the calamity is certain. For example, in the case of the Tower of Babel, the sponsors of this project used God’s ways to execute their will.⁴ They had a modicum of success for some time but, in the end, they were judged.

It is easy to misconstrue the principle that obedience leads to blessings and disobedience leads to curses. Even the psalmist struggled with it as he observed the prosperity of wicked people while his life was difficult. But the Lord graciously opened the psalmist’s eyes to see that the temporal prosperity of the wicked would not endure.⁵

Today this principle is also misconstrued by those who believe that Christians are entitled to temporal wealth. God promised to provide for the needs of his people, so they can do his will according to his ways.⁶ This does not mean that his people will be materially wealthy, but they will have the requisite provision to do God’s will.

Another distortion of this principle is the assumption that obedience requires perfection. Learning to live obediently to God is a process of growth and maturity. A person’s ability to live accordingly should be progressively improving but setbacks can occur. And maturing is not completed temporally. Learning to live obediently is like an asymptotic curve in geometry—the curve gets progressively closer to the axis but never reaches it. It is the same with maturity in Christ. Christians should always be growing in their ability to obey but will never be fully grown or mature in this life.

Here is your business tip. To build any organization on a sound basis, one must build with people who are under God’s blessing, that is, those who are seeking to live aligned with the will and ways of God. The words and actions of such people will validate the reality of Christ progressively at work in them, though this work is never temporally completed. Those who live in rebellion against God will be cursed. The curse may not be immediately obvious, but it is real and will, in time, manifest for all to see. As a maxim, organizations should not be built with stakeholders who live in rebellion against God. Management that builds with even one cursed stakeholder is at risk to experience collateral damage when the fullness of the curse is executed. This standard of management is very high and no one will do it well, but it should be the target. Seek to build with those who experience the blessings of God and avoid those who are destined for the curses of God.

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¹ Matthew 7:15–27.
² Ephesians 2:8–9.
³ Philippians 2:12–13.
⁴ Genesis 11:1–9.
⁵ Psalms 73.
⁶ Matthew 6:33.