The Christian in the Pasar: Where Does Your Faith Live?
We begin with a question that may sound simple, but cuts to the very core of our spiritual identity:
Is your life best described as “a Christian in the Pasar” or as “a Pasar that happens to have a Christian in it”?
This is not mere wordplay. This small shift in phrasing reveals one of the most profound struggles in the life of faith. It draws the line between a faith that permeates our existence and one that remains compartmentalized, reserved for sacred spaces and Sundays.
Two Realities, Two Ways of Living
If you are “a Christian in the marketplace”, then the marketplace—whether an office, a school, a home, or an actual wet market—is simply the place where your life in Christ unfolds. Your identity as a follower of Jesus travels with you. You pray, you work, you interact, and your faith naturally shapes how you conduct business, treat people, and make decisions.
But if it is “a marketplace that happens to have a Christian in it”, everything changes. Here, the marketplace takes the leading role. Its rules, culture, and pressures set the agenda. The “Christian” part becomes an add-on, a secondary label—like describing someone as “a banker who also happens to be a Christian.” This easily fosters a spiritual split: one person in worship, another in the workplace.
This duality is not a modern invention. It is as old as faith itself.
What Amos Saw in the Marketplace
The ancient prophet Amos spoke to people who were devout in the temple but entirely different in the marketplace. In Amos 8, God confronts those who can’t wait for the Sabbath to end so they can return to cheating the poor with dishonest scales and selling moldy grain (Amos 8:5–6).
These were religiously observant people. They attended festivals and kept Sabbath rituals. But their hearts were already counting the cost of worship and calculating their next deal. Their faith did not inform their ethics. Their worship and their work lived in separate worlds.
Could this be us?
Honestly, Amos stings when we read him today. Because we all feel this tension:
Praying passionately on Sunday, but showing no patience with a colleague on Monday.
Giving generously in the offering plate, but refusing to yield in a negotiation.
Mourning suffering far away, yet overlooking the need right beside us.
This isn’t about Christians being unprofessional or not working hard. It’s about this: What truly defines us? Does our faith reshape our work, or has the world’s logic reshaped our faith?
When Market Logic Invades Faith
Amos reveals how “market logic” quietly replaces the logic of faith:
Time becomes a cost—even worship can feel like a “waste of time.”
People become resources—valued only as “useful” or “useless.”
Faith becomes transactional—minimized to what “works,” just enough to get by.
Worship becomes clocking in. Fairness is redefined as “Is this worth it?” We may still sing, serve, and give—but once we step into the real marketplace, we often:
Tamper with the measures (“How much is enough?”).
Overlook the vulnerable (“Efficiency comes first”).
Tolerate injustice (“Everyone else is doing it”).
This is what Eugene Peterson called “a spiritual life tamed by market logic.” We haven’t denied God—we’ve just slowly made Him a tool, pushed Him to the edges.
And the most dangerous result is not poverty or failure, but what Amos warned: You stop hearing God’s voice. When your ears are filled with the noise of the market, you miss the gentle whisper of God.
Today’s Marketplace
The “pasar” today is no longer just a physical market. It’s your KPIs, your sales targets, your online metrics, your promotion ladder, your efficiency reports. The question is not whether we are in the marketplace, but whether we have brought our faith into a transactional relationship with God.
Do you recognize these symptoms?
Worship becomes “the energy boost for Monday to Friday.”
Devotional reading turns into a tool for productivity or anxiety relief.
Prayer starts to sound like submitting a resource request to heaven.
God is asking us, just as He asked through Amos:
When you step into the marketplace after worship—what are you really selling? Whose logic are you living by?
The Cross Dismantles Transactional Faith
But God’s word through Amos is not merely condemnation. It is a grieving invitation: “Are you still willing to listen?”
What breaks the logic of the marketplace is not a stricter moral rule—it is the cross.
Market logic says:
Your worth depends on what you can exchange.
Your importance depends on your usefulness.
The cross declares the opposite:
God saves the world not through exchange, but through surrender.
Not by efficiency, but by love.
Not by calculating cost, but by bearing it.
Jesus Himself was judged by the market, religion, and power as “worthless.” Yet on the cross, God proclaims:
“A person’s value is not determined by the market, but by the price I paid for them.”
The cross dismantles our “transactional faith”—the idea that we give offerings so God gives blessings, that we obey so He makes us successful. The cross declares that God does not accept worship without love, yet He never abandons this broken world.
He enters our marketplace not to agree with its rules, but to buy us back from that very system.
So Who Defines Whom?
We return to the opening question:
“A saint in the marketplace” means my identity in Christ comes first. The marketplace is where I live it out.
“A marketplace that happens to have a saint in it” means the marketplace sets the rules. Faith becomes a sticker, a label, not a life.
The difference is not location—it is who defines whom.
To be a saint in the marketplace means:
Choosing integrity when the system allows gray areas.
Seeing the person, not just the resource, when everyone else sees a transaction.
Fearing the God who sees, even when no one else is watching.
As Eugene Peterson wrote, “Discipleship is learning to be faithful in the ordinary, the mundane.”And Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated starkly: “When Christ calls a person, He does not offer a new religion—He calls that person to die.”
We are not called to leave the marketplace. We are called to live within it a life that cannot be traded, cannot be assimilated.
True Worship Begins Tomorrow
True worship does not end with “Amen.” It begins with tomorrow’s first transaction, first decision, first word.
At that moment, the cross gently asks us:
This time, will you price things by market logic, or live by the price I paid for you?
That first transaction is more than a financial exchange—it is a choice of loyalty. There, we decide:
Will we let the marketplace define who we are, or let the cross redefine everything?
Let God redefine your ordinary days. Live in the marketplace as one who has been bought back—not by gold, but by grace.