PROSPERITY?
Seeking the True Gospel
Michael Otieno Maura
Conrad Mbewe
Ken Mbugua
John Piper
Wayne Grudem
Africa Christian Textbooks Registered Trustees
The Gospel Coalition
2015
Prosperity? Seeking the True Gospel
Published by Africa Christian Textbooks Registered
Trustees. Copyright ©2015 All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form by any
means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from
the publisher except for brief quotations embodied in
articles and reviews.
ISBN: 978-9966-1655-3-4
The mission of Africa Christian TextbookS (ACTS) is to
strengthen the church in Africa by providing evangelical,
relevant and aordable literature for Christian leaders
and Bible students in order to advance the cause of Christ.
www.actskenya.org | [email protected]
ACTS main bookshop in Kenya is located at Africa
International University (AIU), Karen, Nairobi.
Contact ACTS in Nigeria at ACTS Bookshop,
International HQ, TCNN, PMB 2020, Bukuru 930008,
Plateau State, Nigeria.
www.acts-ng.com | [email protected]
Published in partnership with The Gospel Coalition.
www.thegospelcoalition.org
Book Design by Beau Walsh, The Cultural North | www.culturalnorth.us
Contents
Preface
Introduction: A False Gospel – Mbugua .......................... 1
Chapter 1: Misunderstanding
the Bible – Mbugua ........................................................15
Chapter 2: True and False
Prosperity – Otieno ........................................................33
Chapter 3: The Gospel Life – Mbugua .......................... 49
Chapter 4: Suering – Mbugua .....................................65
Chapter 5: The True Gospel – Mbewe ...........................79
Chapter 6: The Blessings of the
True Gospel – Otieno .....................................................91
Appendix I: Twelve Appeals to
Prosperity Preachers – Piper ......................................107
Appendix II: Money – Grudem ....................................123
Appendix III: Prosperity Preachers ............................ 127
Appendix IV: Further Reading:
Other Books on Prosperity Teaching ..........................129
PREFACE
This book has been published as a result of a partner-
ship between The Gospel Coalition and Africa Christian
Textbooks Registered Trustees (Kenya).
The book builds on the foundation of the earlier title
Gaining the World, Losing the Soul which was rst pub-
lished in 2012. Over the last few years new chapters have
been added and the original chapters have been updated
and revised.
This book has been written to counter the great dam-
age that the so called “prosperity” or “health and wealth”
gospel is doing in Africa and around the world. Some
preachers are making promises of worldly prosperity to
men and women and leading them far away from the Lord
Jesus Christ and the genuine gospel that is found in the
Bible. So widespread is this false teaching that many peo-
ple may not even realise that they have been inuenced
by it.
Our task in this book is to address the core principles
and ideas of this prosperity teaching, rather than argue
with particular preachers. But there are many inuen-
tial people we have in mind who, in dierent ways and
forms, have articulated and spread this prosperity gospel
PROSPERITY?ii
(we reference some examples in Appendix III). More
than anything else, we encourage readers to examine the
preaching they hear in the light of the Bible. This book
strives to help you do that.
Through this book, our desire is that those who have
been deceived or confused by prosperity preaching will
come instead to cherish the gospel of the Bible and nd
salvation in Jesus Christ. We also hope that this book will
equip Christians to speak out against the false teaching
they hear proclaimed from many pulpits. We pray that
prosperity teachers themselves would read this book. We
believe that some of them need to repent of their errors
and submit to and embrace Jesus Christ as their saviour,
while others need to learn how to properly handle the
Bible as the word of God.
This is a deadly serious issue and we publish this book
with a sense of urgency. We know that Peter used strong
language in his second letter to condemn arrogant and
greedy teachers who took advantage of Christians. As we
see teachers around us today leading people astray with
unbiblical and ungodly promises, we cannot stand by and
do nothing. With this book we point you to our sovereign
God and his perfect gospel. On this we stand against the
prosperity gospel.
We are grateful to Michael Otieno Maura, Ken Mbu-
gua and Conrad Mbewe for giving their time and energy
to writing these chapters as well as to their churches for
allowing them to devote that time and energy to this task.
We are thankful to Baker Publishing Group for al-
lowing the publication of the chapters by John Piper and
Wayne Grudem.
We are also very grateful to Caleb Nakina for his re-
view of the whole book and for his editing.
PREFACE iii
Once again we have been saved by our friend David
Reynolds who pulled everything together at the end and
completed the nal edit. This book was made possible
because of the hard work that David put into Gaining the
World, Losing the Soul back in 2012. Thanks David!
It has been a privilege to partner with The Gospel Co-
alition in this project. It has been a delight to work with
Bill Walsh and also with his son Beau who designed the
cover of the book and formatted the chapters. We are so
grateful for Bill’s leadership and patience.
This book would not have been published without gen-
erous donations from many people. We are thankful and
praise God.
Africa Christian Textbooks Registered Trustees
The Gospel Coalition
INTRODUCTION
A False Gospel
Kenneth Mbugua
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting
him who called you in the grace of Christ and are
turning to a dierent gospel—not that there is
another one, but there are some who trouble you
and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even
if we or an angel from heaven should preach to
you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to
you, let him be accursed. As we have said before,
so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you
a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him
be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval
of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man?
If I were still trying to please man, I would not be
a servant of Christ. For I would have you know,
brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me
is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from
any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it
through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians
1:6-12)
PROSPERITY?2
If even an angel preaches a gospel contrary to God’s
word, he is under a curse. There is not a Christian in the
world that does not need to seriously consider Paul’s
words to the Galatians. The gospel is the church’s most
precious gift to cherish, protect, and pass on. And so as
Christians, and particularly preachers, we must never
stop checking what we believe and preach and then ask-
ing the question: is this the gospel? Is this the gospel that
God has revealed to us in the Bible? That is what we seek
to do in this book.
This book is not based on our ideas. It is not personal;
we are not pitting ourselves against other preachers in
a contest of egos. Like Paul, we seek to not preach our-
selves, but Christ (2 Cor. 4:5). We labour to base all that
we write on the authority of the word of God revealed in
the Bible. We strain to not twist it for our own purposes,
but to handle it faithfully (2 Cor. 4:2).
And as we carefully read the gospel that we have re-
ceived in the Bible, we have come to the conclusion that
there is a false gospel—the prosperity gospel—sweeping
our continent. Across Africa, there are many churches
preaching this false gospel. It is a dangerous lie wrapped
in a covering of religion. Those aected by it are being led
away from God’s good news to a man-centred deception.
Paul took nothing more seriously than the danger of a dif-
ferent gospel and we feel the same way. Nothing is more
serious; our souls depend on it.
We write this book to address those who preach this
false gospel, and those who have bought into it, praying
that God would grant us patience, kindness, wisdom, and
gentleness as we humbly seek to correct error, bringing us
all under the authority of God’s word.
INTRODUCTION 3
We will not sugarcoat the truth. Paul was most erce
and sharp when dealing with those who were corrupting
the gospel. As he did, we want to urge believers to reject a
“dierent gospel” that is not the gospel. This message will
be hard for many to hear. And one of the reasons it will be
hard is that the voices of inuential and trusted men lend
their support to this false gospel.
But it is not big names that count. Large congregations,
celebrity status, and wide inuence have never been the
mark of what is true. We must stand on the revelation
of Scripture and not shape our gospel according to the
approval of the crowd. Paul warned the Galatians not to
believe anyone who preaches a gospel dierent to the one
given him by Christ—not even an angel. That is our con-
cern too. We entreat you in love; humbly receive the word
of God. It can save your soul (James 1:21).
What is the prosperity gospel? It is a ‘gospel’ claiming
freedom from sickness, poverty, and all suering on the
basis of Christ’s death on the cross. Promising material,
physical, and visible blessings for all who would embrace
it, the prosperity gospel insists that God’s will is for all
his children to prosper here and now. But this prosper-
ity gospel contains four crucial distortions that are four
dierences from the biblical gospel. It proclaims a small
God; it fails to identify man’s greatest need; it empties the
gospel of its power; and it robs God of his glory.
Distortion One: A Small God
What do you long for the most? The answer to this
question will help you identify your god. Preachers of
the prosperity gospel call people to turn to Jesus. But the
motivation they give people is health, wealth, husbands,
PROSPERITY?4
wives, jobs, and promotions. In this false gospel, we
are not persuaded to desire, pursue, or treasure Jesus.
Instead, Jesus is regarded as merely the way to get the
material things our worldly hearts hunger for. And what
your heart desires more than God has become your god.
Scripture is clear that the goal of our salvation is God,
not gold. Knowing him, being united to him, and being
reconciled with him are the purposes to which the Bible
points us. “For Christ also suered once for sins, the righ-
teous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”
(1 Pet. 3:18). Take note of the word that in this verse; it
helps us understand why Christ suered and died. He
suered and died in order that he might bring us to God.
Jesus Christ himself perfectly summed up the heart
and purpose of our salvation in his prayer to the Father:
“this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). When
Paul taught the Colossians about the glory of God’s work
in us, he centred on our union with Christ. “To them God
chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are
the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in
you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).
The gospel is about an innitely great God who oers
us the best gift imaginable: himself. That is the incredible
beauty of the gospel—sinners can know God and enjoy
him forever. God’s people through the ages have under-
stood that there is nothing better. But the prosperity
gospel reduces God to a sugar daddy by treating material
gifts as the purpose of the gospel. The temporary benets
of material prosperity are not what Jesus died to win for
us.
Jesus died to bring us back to God. And the heart of
the salvation he bought for us is that we can know God in
INTRODUCTION 5
a deep and personal way. Can you see why a message that
exchanges God in these statements with wealth, health,
and prosperity is oering us a little God who is no God
at all? Wealth, health, and prosperity are not the glory
of the gospel, they are not the purpose for which Christ
died, and they are inferior gifts compared to fellowship
with Almighty God. These are the very things the world
pursues; they are false gods. To preach that temporary
and material blessings are the purpose of our salvation
turns Christianity into idolatry and trades in the glory of
God for a cheap substitute.
Distortion Two: Our Greatest Need
When you visit a hospital because of illness, the doc-
tor’s most important task is to diagnose the cause of your
symptoms. If he gets the source of your problem wrong,
then his solution will also be wrong. Moreover, such a
‘solution’ could lead to even greater suering. In order to
truly bless people, we also need to correctly diagnose their
greatest need.
What is humanity’s greatest need? What problem
did God address when he sent his only son to die? The
prosperity preacher points people to their physical, nan-
cial, and relational struggles as the main problem that
requires xing. Christ is then preached only as a means
for solving those problems, even though the Bible is clear
about man’s greatest problem. It is far worse than being
broke or hungry.
One of the most famous miracles happened when Je-
sus fed ve thousand people with ve loaves and two sh.
But many people do not know what happened after the
crowd had been fed. Amazed by what they saw, the crowd
PROSPERITY?6
decided that they needed to lead a coup and make Jesus
their king (John 6:15). Did they have the right idea of
the gospel? Not according to Jesus. The crowd zealously
sought Jesus to the point of jumping into boats to follow
him across the lake (John 6:22-24). But, when at last they
found him, he did not commend them. Jesus saw their
motives and strongly rebuked them:
Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not
because you saw signs, but because you ate your
ll of the loaves. Do not work for the food that per-
ishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him
God the Father has set his seal. (John 6:26-27)
They were following Jesus for material advantage.
Jesus performed signs and wonders in order that people
would believe in him and receive eternal life (John 20:30-
31). But these people were more interested in a free lunch.
They thought the Messiah would give them all they want-
ed in this life, but they were missing the incomparably
better thing that he oered. If you are following Jesus for
material benets, you have failed to identify your greatest
need.
So Jesus is clear; health and wealth are not our great-
est needs. But what is? In order to understand this, we
have to go back to basics: who is God and who are we?
In Romans 1, we are reminded that God is righteous and
we are sinful. And because of God’s righteousness and
our wickedness, his just judgement stands against us. If I
understand that the almighty and holy God is angry with
me, then my nancial struggles, relationship stresses, and
INTRODUCTION 7
career ambitions can no longer be my rst priority. My sin
problem becomes the priority.
What exactly is this sin problem? Again, Romans 1
is helpful. It explains that although we know God, in
our corrupt nature we do not glorify him as we should.
Instead, we give the glory that belongs to the Creator to
what he has created (Rom. 1:22-23). This idolatry is the
heart of sin. Our greatest need is to x the problem of sin.
When we grasp that all the pains of life are symptoms
of our real disease, our God-defying sin, we will seek a
gospel that addresses not just the symptoms but the root
cause. We need God to forgive our sins, take his wrath
away from us, and make us right in his sight. This is what
we need both now and for eternity. When the preacher, as
a spiritual doctor, misdiagnoses the problem, he treats his
patients with a false gospel that, like bad medicine, just
makes them worse.
Distortion Three: Emptying the Gospel of its
Power
When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he was
correcting problems that we see all around us today. The
Corinthians had received the pure gospel from the lips
of the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 15:1-4), but over time their
preachers had changed the message in order to suit the
audience. And as they modied the gospel message, they
did not just change its emphasis; they emptied the gospel
of its power.
Churches that preach the prosperity gospel make a
similar mistake. Their preachers might mention the cross
in their preaching and even say that Christ died for our
sins. But they say that the purpose of Christ’s death was
PROSPERITY?8
our healing and prosperity. Of course, this is a relevant
issue to any congregation. Many people are suering and
struggling with nancial or health issues. We all have
material needs and desires. It is an appealing message:
come to Jesus and have your best life now. But it is an
inferior message because it lacks the power that the real
gospel has to save men, women, and children from their
sins (Matt. 1:21).
People do not like to be told they are wretched sinners
destined for hell. We prefer to hear about how we can get
promoted at work, get ahead in the world, and get quick
xes for our earthly troubles. Therefore, a gospel that does
not emphasize these things does not make any sense to
many people (1 Cor. 1:18). And that is because, naturally,
we are spiritually blind and have no sense of the eternal
beauty of God. But instead of wielding the gospel that God
uses to awaken sinners to the glory, beauty, and salvation
of God, prosperity preachers abandon the gospel and seek
only to satisfy godless desires. Their message does not
and cannot save. Prosperity preaching swaps the power
of the gospel for a powerless message.
If you believe that Christ saves you in order to give
you prosperity in this life, then you have put your hope
in a powerless message. Unlike God’s good news revealed
to us in the Bible, the prosperity gospel can neither save
your soul (Rom. 1:16) nor give you life (2 Tim. 1:9-10). It
cannot grant you peace with God (Rom. 5:1), or reconcile
you to him (2 Cor. 5:18-20). The prosperity gospel cannot
bring you into God’s family (John 1:12-13), give you hope
for eternity (Col. 1:21-23), or secure your resurrection to
life (John 11:25-27). But the power of the gospel is that
God can save you forever by changing your status from a
INTRODUCTION 9
hell-bound subject of wrath to an eternally justied child
of God. That is power.
If you have turned away from preaching the cross,
you have turned away from the only message that has the
power to save anyone from sin. Christ had to die because
it was the only way to pay the price for our sin. Does that
new house, car, or job require the death of the Son of
God? The prosperity gospel might seem relevant and it
certainly is popular, but by focusing on material blessings
it misses the point of the gospel and robs the gospel mes-
sage of its essential purpose and power.
Distortion Four: Robbing God of his Glory
The most basic mistake every person has made is to
think: I am the centre of the universe. When we read the
Bible, we realise not only that God made everything, but
also that the creation is about him. The Bible and the gos-
pel itself relentlessly point us to God. And when we think
about the reality of God in the world and in the Bible, the
word we most often use is glory. We cannot understand
either the seriousness of sin or the design and purpose of
the gospel until we grasp the glory of God.
God’s glory is his overowing and overwhelming
nature and character. His glory includes his innite at-
tributes of holiness, righteousness, love, justice, grace,
mercy, purity, beauty, power, and wisdom. And the happy
duty that comes with being alive in this world that God
created by and for his glory is to glorify him. The purpose
of our lives is to focus on, draw attention to, live for, and
delight in God’s glory. God deserves this from us. When
we rob God of his glory, it does not mean that God be-
PROSPERITY?10
comes less glorious; that is impossible. But it means that
we fail to glorify him as we should.
As we looked at man’s greatest need, we saw that re-
fusing to glorify God, while glorifying what he has creat-
ed, is at the heart of sin that separates us from our maker.
When the prosperity gospel obscures this understanding
of sin, it fails to point us to the glory of God as the missing
focus of our lives.
When prosperity preachers emphasise material needs,
they do not lead people to repentance because their mes-
sage does not put people in awe of that glory. Instead
of teaching us what God deserves from us, prosperity
preaching encourages us to think of what we will get from
God. Jumping for joy about how God will make you rich
and strong is not worshiping God. A wrong denition of
man’s greatest problem robs God of His glory.
Therefore, the prosperity gospel also robs God of
his glory by misunderstanding the design of the gospel.
Paul explained the purpose and design of the gospel in
Ephesians 1:3-14. In Christ, we have been chosen by God
before the foundation of the world (1:4), predestined to be
adopted as sons (1:5), redeemed through his blood, for-
given (1:7), enlightened (1:9), sealed with the Holy Spirit
(1:13), and guaranteed a heavenly inheritance (1:14). No
wonder it is called good news. And from beginning to end
this gospel of God is “to the praise of his glory” (1:6, 12,
14).
The gospel reconciles us to God. It takes away the
hurdles that keep us from God, enabling us to be in an in-
timate relationship with God in which we can glorify him
forever. And the Father has made these blessings avail-
able to us in his Son (look for the phrase “in Christ” or its
equivalent in Ephesians 1). None of these blessings can be
INTRODUCTION 11
enjoyed outside of Christ because it is his perfect life and
work on the cross that bought these blessings for us. At
every point, the design of the gospel directs us away from
glorying in ourselves (Eph. 2:8-9) and points us toward
the glory of God as our hope and purpose.
The gospel glories God. The blessings of the gospel
that we mentioned (chosen, adopted, redeemed, for-
given, etc.) all bring us to God. And these blessings are
only through the Son of God, purchased by him in a way
that magnies God’s gracious mercy and love. They can-
not be earned; they can only be received, so we realize
where the glory belongs. As we look exclusively to Christ
for the eternal blessings that we could never provide for
ourselves, we are left with no one to glorify except God (1
Cor. 1:30-31).
But the prosperity gospel robs God of His glory at ev-
ery step. It does so by redening the blessings received
in Christ. Those who hear its message go home desiring
earthly treasures instead of fellowship with God. When
earthly treasure is desired more than God, the treasure
receives the glory that only God deserves. In the parable
of the hidden treasure in Matthew 13:44, the man sells all
his earthly possessions to get the kingdom of heaven. The
prosperity gospel oers us the opposite deal.
The prosperity gospel goes further in robbing God of his
glory by turning its audience away from Christ’s sucien-
cy. Instead of Christ alone, prosperity preachers advertise
many methods of obtaining blessing like anointing oil,
“planting a seed”, ‘holy water’, and prayers from ‘the man
of God’. This false gospel downplays Christ’s suciency
by claiming that rituals and men are channels of blessings
from God outside of Christ Jesus. Such a message denies
that he is at the centre and robs God of his glory.
PROSPERITY?12
When we seek blessings outside of Christ that do not
glorify God, we also dislodge the cross from the heart of
the Bible. The Scripture teaches us that God’s master plan
of bringing glory to his name has the cross as its centre.
The Old Testament is full of signs and types that point
us to Christ and his work on the cross (Luke 24:27). The
sacricial system teaches us our greatest need and pre-
pares us for Christ (Heb. 9). The prophets prophesied
of his coming and his suerings (1 Pet. 1:10-12). And for
eternity we will never stop remembering and glorifying
Jesus’ sacrice (Rev. 5:6 & 12).
The cross is at the centre of God’s plan to show and
share his glory forever. But prosperity preachers go
through the Bible highlighting all the earthly blessings
that God’s people enjoyed. And, in direct conict with
Christ’s handling of Scripture (e.g. Luke 24:27), they
make these earthly blessings the main point of the Bible.
This turns people away from the centrality of the cross of
Christ and robs God of His glory. There is no more serious
charge against a message then: it takes glory from God.
Conclusion
The prosperity gospel is a dangerous message because,
while pretending to bring good news, it oers a false gos-
pel that leads people away from God. It presents a small
God who is valued as the means to material benets. It
misdiagnoses our greatest problem—sin and separation
from God—and fails to identify and address our greatest
need. This so-called gospel is powerless to save us as it
diverts our attention from the glory of God to human in-
INTRODUCTION 13
ventions and temporary blessings. The prosperity gospel
glories man and the things of this world instead of God.
That makes it a false gospel.
CHAPTER 1
Misunderstanding
the Bible
Kenneth Mbugua
There are some things in them that are hard to
understand, which the ignorant and unstable
twist to their own destruction, as they do the other
Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this
beforehand, take care that you are not carried
away with the error of lawless people and lose
your own stability. (2 Peter 3:16-17)
The falsehood of the prosperity gospel is rooted in
misinterpretation of the Bible. The word of God has been
twisted, both unintentionally and intentionally, and the
result is a deceptive man-made message. If you are gen-
uinely pursuing the truth and humbly approaching his
word, God can set you free from the lies of this empty,
false gospel and give you life in him. My condence rests
on Christ’s promise in John 8:31-32: “If you abide in my
PROSPERITY?16
word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the
truth, and the truth will set you free.”
God has revealed truth to us in the Bible. But this truth
has plenty of competition; our deceitful hearts (Jer. 17:9),
the Devil who is “the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev.
12:9), and a world full of lies. As Christians, we constantly
have to remember that truth is not determined by a vote,
a point of view, or a popularity contest. God has revealed
truth to us and we must labour to understand what he is
telling us. How can we do this?
We must come to the Bible asking, ‘what does God
intend to communicate through this passage?’ That is the
question we ask when we read each other’s letters and text
messages. We read the whole message, try to determine
what the author meant, keep in mind other things that
person has written to us, and seek clarity on unfamiliar
words. When we are clear on the meaning of the message,
we respond appropriately.
But many preachers treat the words of God with less
care than they would a friend’s text message. Prosperi-
ty gospel preachers regularly approach God’s word as
though it can mean whatever they decide it means. Sen-
tences are taken out of context, the rest of the Bible is
ignored, and words are twisted. If people read our letters
and text messages in the same way, we would also be mis-
understood. We cannot aord to make this mistake with
the most important message. Do not miss out on God’s
gospel because you are too busy trying to come up with
your own version of the good news.
If you attend a church where you hear the prosperity
gospel, you will nd it hard to believe that it is not the
gospel. After all, you will have memorized verses in the
Bible that seem to conrm this prosperity theology. But
MISUNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE 17
the problem is not in the verses you learn but in the way
prosperity preachers are misinterpreting them.
In this chapter, we want to address some of the most
common misinterpretations of the Bible which preachers
use to proclaim the prosperity gospel. We want to look for
what God is really saying to us in these texts by studying
their contexts and drawing meaning out from them, rath-
er than imposing our own interpretations on them. We
need to treat God’s words with reverence and care.
His Poverty and Our Riches
Let us begin with 2 Corinthians 8:9: “For you know
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was
rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his
poverty might become rich.” Prosperity preachers use
this verse to proclaim that Christ died so that we could
be wealthy. But if you read the context of 2 Corinthians
8, you soon discover that it is about Christians giving to
others. Furthermore, the Christians that Paul was asking
the Corinthians to emulate in their sacricial giving were
themselves very poor.
We want you to know, brothers, about the grace
of God that has been given among the churches of
Macedonia, for in a severe test of aiction, their
abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have
overowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.
(2 Cor. 8:1-2)
Paul is holding up, as an example of godliness, the poor
Christians in Macedonia who still sacriced to meet the
needs of others. Then in the ninth verse of the chapter,
PROSPERITY?18
to make his point, Paul compared them to the far greater
example of the one who sacriced himself for our good.
It is completely wrong, therefore, to read this chapter
and conclude that it is about us getting rich. On the con-
trary, giving us two examples to follow, God is teaching us
through the Apostle Paul that we should live sacricially
and generously. The joy of both the Macedonians and
Christ did not come from wealth, but from the love of God
that enabled them to give extravagantly for others’ needs.
But what then are the riches that this verse says Christ
gave up and Christians will have? Did Christ give up ma-
terial wealth to become our Saviour? The Bible, and basic
logic, clearly show us that this is not what Christ gave up.
Let each of you look not only to his own inter-
ests, but also to the interests of others. Have this
mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ
Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be
grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form
of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
(Phil. 2:4-7)
Christ was indeed poor while he was on this earth,
as the Gospels frequently show (Luke 9:58). But, as the
above text explains, Christ lowered himself by leaving
heaven and the intimate spiritual communion and glory
with his Father that he enjoyed there in order to come
to this world as a man. This is far greater than material
wealth. The riches that Christ (temporarily) gave up for us
were heavenly and spiritual riches. And, ultimately, these
are the riches that Christ died to win for us: reconciliation
and communion with God (John 17:24).
MISUNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE 19
But in the age to come, according to Revelation 21,
there will be streets of gold in the New Jerusalem (21:21).
Is that then a Christian’s motivation for wanting to be in
that city? Keep reading and two verses later you will see
that the glory of the Father and the Lamb will light up
heaven (21:23). Surely, that will be much more exciting
for the Christian.
If you doubt the Bible’s emphasis, look for references
to material blessing in the book of Revelation and then
look for references to the glory and worship of God. The
heart that loves God longs for the day when we will be
caught up in worship and adoration of him. And saints
who are satised in God will want to sacricially give as
the Macedonians and Jesus Christ did, instead of worry-
ing about what they can accumulate now.
Health and Healing
A verse that is often used to suggest that God will make
us healthy is Isaiah 53:5: “But he was pierced for our
transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon
him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with
his wounds we are healed.” Note, rstly, that this verse
and the verses around it describe the suering of the mes-
siah and his sacricial death for us. Why did Christ suer
and die? The verse clearly explains that he died for our
transgressions and iniquities—our sins. If he died for our
sins, then what is the nature of the healing that his death
brings? The clear meaning of the text is that we have been
healed of our sinful guilt by Christ’s sacrice.
As the Apostle Peter said, “He himself bore our sins in
his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to
righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1
PROSPERITY?20
Pet. 2:24). Dying to sin and living in righteousness; that
is the eternal and amazing healing that Christ’s sacrice
won for us.
It is also true that, as the Bible explains, Christ’s work
on the cross has implications for all suering. By dealing
with our sin, he made sure that the consequences of our
sin which has corrupted the world, including suering,
would also be removed. But God is equally clear in his
word that this glorious completion of the work of redemp-
tion will not occur until he comes again and brings this
present age to an end (Rom. 8:18-25 & 1 Cor. 15:20-28).
The benets of Christ’s work are not all enjoyed on this
earth.
One day our bodies will be gloried and the earth
shall be restored and there will be no more tears. Faith
in that sure future gives us strength to endure the pains
of this world: “the suerings of this present time are not
worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to
us” (Rom. 8:18). There will be no escape from suering
for as long as we live in our corrupted bodies in a broken
world, but we condently look forward to the time when
everything will be right.
But are there signs of hope now that remind us that suf-
fering, due to Christ’s work, will be completely removed?
Yes, absolutely. There is a reason why the gospel writer
described physical healing as a fulllment of Isaiah 53:4
(Matt. 8:17). And there is a reason why Jesus went about
healing bodies as well as forgiving sins. John MacArthur
helps make the connection between healing, the suering
of Christ, and our suering:
Isaiah was saying that the Messiah would bear
the consequences of the sins of men, namely the
MISUNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE 21
griefs and sorrows of life ... Matthew found an
analogical fulllment of these words in Jesus’
healing ministry because sickness results from sin
for which the Servant paid with His life (vv. 7,8;
cf. 1 Pet. 2:24). In eternity, all sickness will be re-
moved, so ultimately it is included in the benets of
the atonement.
i
Christ’s healing ministry fullled prophecy, demon-
strated his power, and proved he is God. But healing bod-
ies was not the purpose; it was a means to the end. The end
was that we would believe in Christ for the forgiveness of
our sins and be reconciled to God (John 20:30-31). Our
God does still heal from illness. God still performs mira-
cles. And we can be certain that one day there will be no
disease and no suering. But let us not misuse the Bible
to claim promises that God has not given.
God has not promised a life now without suering. But
he has promised us grace in (2 Cor. 12:9-10) and ultimate
good through (Rom. 8:28) our suering. Like the Apostle
Paul we hold on in suering to the hope of resurrection
(Phil. 3:10-11). We put our faith in the gospel and cling on
to the condence that we have in Christ that will outlast
any pain we have in this life.
ii
Our Prayers and God’s Promises
As Christians face the hardships of life, they pray to
God for strength, guidance, and help. Prayer is an essen-
i The MacArthur Study Bible, ed. John MacArthur, Jr., electronic
ed. (Nashville: Word, 1997), Is. 53:4.
ii We will look at this in more detail in the chapter on suering.
PROSPERITY?22
tial part of the life of every believer and every church. But
the health of a prayer life is not determined by a word
count. What we pray for reveals our hearts. Churches that
preach the prosperity gospel often include long prayer
services—and that is a good thing. But the substance of
our prayers is more important than their length.
Prosperity preachers encourage churches to base
prayers on misunderstood promises and to pray them for
the wrong motives. The promise that Christians can ask
anything of the Father and he will give it to them is found
in several places in the Gospels. It is one of the most in-
credible promises in the Bible, and it is much better than
preachers of the prosperity gospel realise.
God promises to answer the prayers of his children.
That is what the verses say and that is what they mean.
But that is also not all that the verses say and mean. Let
us take a closer look at John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and
my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will
be done for you.”
The verse begins with a condition: if you abide in me
and my words abide in you. If you remove this condition
from the sentence, you will inevitably misunderstand the
promise. If we live in Jesus Christ and his words live in us,
then the things that we ask for will be God’s pleasure to
provide. God’s word is God’s will that has been revealed to
us. And as we immerse ourselves in Jesus, as God’s word
has revealed him, to the point where his desires are our
desires, then our own will shall be conformed to his will.
When this has occurred, we will truly desire and pray for
what God wants.
This is the same logic that we see in another misun-
derstood verse: “And we know that for those who love
God all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28). Does
MISUNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE 23
this mean that God gives me anything that I want? Look
again. The people referred to in this verse are those who
love him. If you love God, you want God’s glory and his
will in your life more than anything. And this is a desire
that God is eager and willing to fulll. Jesus Christ him-
self demonstrated this when he prayed: “My Father, if it
be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as
I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). In his humanity, he
wanted release from suering. But there was something
he wanted even more than that—his Father’s will and glo-
ry. This is the kind of prayer that God delights to receive.
The Bible clearly teaches that God does what he pleas-
es: “Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and
on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). But in
Christ Jesus, his pleasure and ours come together. When
we immerse our lives in his word, God transforms us by
his Spirit and shapes our desires, values, and passions to
be like his. These things dene our will, which we make
known to God in prayer.
Does this make the promise of John 15 less remark-
able? On the contrary, the sovereign God has chosen to
carry out his will through Christians’ prayers: “for it is
God who works in you, both to will and to work for his
good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). He has chosen to make your
prayers powerful. God does not say: ‘don’t bother praying
because I will do what is best without you.’ Instead, he
delights in doing what is best through our prayers. He
changes hearts so that people want his perfect will and
when Christians pray their godly desires to him, he loves
to take action.
The Bible is full of good examples of God’s people
praying God’s will. Look at how Daniel’s prayers, for in-
stance, were informed by God’s word. In Daniel 9, we read
PROSPERITY?24
that he discovered God’s prophecy that the desolation of
Jerusalem would end after seventy years; a time that was
fast approaching. Did that make Daniel complacent? No,
it inspired him to pray. Daniel’s response was to fast and
pray to God that he would do his will. God was pleased to
hear Daniel and answer his prayers as the exiles returned
home. This is how God works and this is how we should
pray.
We need to take care to interpret John 15 and similar
texts in the light of what the Bible teaches us about how
God works out his sovereign will through our prayers.
When our hearts are immersed in God’s word, we will
desire God’s will and glory above our own so that we will
pray like Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. But if we
lose sight of God’s will and become obsessed with our own
godless desires, then we are not living in Jesus Christ.
And we cannot claim God’s help while opposing his will.
God has a great design for prayer; we do not want to miss
out on it in selsh misinterpretation of his word.
Sowing and Reaping
One of the most misused concepts in the Bible has been
sowing and reaping. In many churches it is marketed as
the “reaping and sowing principle”. Two of the verses
most commonly used to support it are 2 Corinthians 9:6
(“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and
whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully”) and
Galatians 6:7 (“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked,
for whatever one sows, that will he also reap”). What is
the message of these verses?
We should rstly note that these verses are simple
to understand. They mean what they say and they are
MISUNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE 25
designed to motivate our sowing by the prospect of our
reaping. That is how life works. We all want to live in a
way that produces benet. There is no point sowing, if we
do not hope to reap. The problem with the preachers of
the prosperity gospel is not that they expect reaping to
follow sowing, but that their idea of what is to be reaped
is far too small. They think of temporary gain when they
are oered permanent gain. They focus on unsatisfying
benets and miss a deeply satisfying blessing. And they
preach of monetary treasures when a priceless gift is be-
fore them.
The prosperity gospel’s sowing and reaping principle
deviates from the Bible’s teaching in many particular
ways. It dees the heavenly perspective that the Bible urg-
es us to have. This heavenly perspective ought to regulate
how we sow our time, energy, talents, and money.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust destroy and where thieves
break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves trea-
sures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust de-
stroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will
be also. (Matt. 6:19-21)
The idea here is that treasure is a good thing and so
we ought to aim for eternal treasure, rather than rusty,
moth-eaten treasure which cannot last. What a poor
gospel it is which oers us merely earthly treasure. By
contrast, it has been God’s people’s knowledge that their
treasure is in heaven that has empowered them to en-
dure persecution and put their earthly treasure at risk.
As the writer to the Hebrews testied about his believing
PROSPERITY?26
readers, “you joyfully accepted the plundering of your
property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better
possession and an abiding one” (Heb. 10:34). That is the
sowing and reaping which God oers his people: spiritual
sowing and eternal reaping.
The prosperity gospel also promotes a love for money,
while the Bible is clear about the dangers of this approach
to life. The Apostle Paul’s teaching on this could not be
more apparent:
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.
It is through this craving that some have wan-
dered away from the faith and pierced themselves
with many pangs. But as for you, O man of God,
ee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness,
faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. (1 Tim. 6:10-
11)
A lot of what is called practicing the sowing and reap-
ing principle is merely a cover for the love of money. But
no matter how we label it, if we only focus on material
things we can only expect material benets, not spiritual
ones. You do, indeed, reap what you sow. Many, in fact,
have ended up reaping sorrow and pain after their prac-
tice of what they thought was a biblical principle. If we
love money, as God has specically warned us not to, we
may get some eeting pleasures and temporary benets.
But as money cannot satisfy our souls or heal our hearts,
in the end this disobedient sowing will reap sadness and
death.
Furthermore, the prosperity gospel’s idea of sowing
and reaping denies the Bible by suggesting that God has
no problem with being replaced by idols. What do I mean?
MISUNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE 27
When we use the Bible to justify our idolatrous pursuit of
money, we make God out to be the willing supplier of our
favorite idol. But God’s wrath burns against people who
put his beautiful glory in second place to pursue other
gods. God’s people seek the treasure that is God himself.
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the
sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss
because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suered the loss
of all things and count them as rubbish, in order
that I may gain Christ. (Phil. 3:7-8)
This verse would not make sense to anyone practicing
the sowing and reaping principle of the prosperity gospel.
Paul is saying that the very things for which the prosperity
preachers encourage us to come to God are the things he
has given up in order to have God. What do you prefer:
riches and wealth or God? Where is your treasure?
Let us also look specically at some of these texts that
are used by prosperity preachers to justify their approach
to sowing and reaping. 2 Corinthians 9:6 is located in the
same passage that we looked at earlier, in which Paul was
commending the Macedonians for their generous nan-
cial gift to the church in Jerusalem, despite their own pov-
erty. What does Paul say that such generous givers should
expect to receive and see in response to their generosity?
When Christians sow in generosity, they reap glory
and honour to God. And there is no better harvest. Read
on in 2 Corinthians 9 and you see that Paul wrote that
their generosity “will produce thanksgiving to God”
(9:11). In supplying the needs of God’s people, they had
inspired “many thanksgivings to God” (9:12). And those
PROSPERITY?28
who have received the gift would “glorify God because of
your submission” (9:13). As Jesus Christ also instructed:
“let your light shine before others, so that they may see
your good works and give glory to your Father who is in
heaven” (Matt 5:16). The message is clear: give so that
God is gloried. When we sow for God, we reap the enor-
mous blessing of glorifying and honouring him.
But, even though it was not his focus, Paul did mention
material benets too. In what way and for what purpose
did Paul describe material blessings for generous giv-
ers? Paul said that those who give will receive from God
enough so that they can continue to bless others: “And
God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having
all suciency in all things at all times, you may abound in
every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8). He does not promise them
luxury, but enough. And the purpose of what they receive
is not to accumulate wealth, but to give: “you will be en-
riched in every way to be generous in every way” (9:11).
If you think this text is about our monetary gain, you
have entirely missed the point. God promises his children
enough to serve him, not luxury to ignore him.
As for Galatians 6:7, studying its context also informs
us that Paul taught something very dierent from the
emphasis of the prosperity gospel. The text is not about
getting but about giving. Christians should “bear one an-
other’s burdens” (6:2), “share all good things with the one
who teaches” (6:6), “not grow weary of doing good” (6:9),
and “do good to everyone” (6:10). The sowing in this
chapter is clearly blessing others. So what is the reaping?
Paul mentioned the principle of sowing and reaping
here as a warning of the consequences of refusing to do
good. “For the one who sows to his own esh will from the
esh reap corruption,” Paul warned the Galatians, “but
MISUNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE 29
the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap
eternal life” (Gal. 6:8). Actually looking at the passage
tells us that far from endorsing the prosperity gospel,
Paul rebuked it in the strongest terms. Those who sow for
God reap spiritual blessing.
If you give to others with the motive of nancial gain
for yourself, you are sowing to the esh. Those who walk
according to the esh will not inherit the kingdom. But
selessly blessing others is evidence of the Spirit’s work.
The harvest for the godly is eternal life and the Galatians
were encouraged to keep going because one day they
would receive the fruit of their labour. God gives to us so
that we can give to others and our reward is not material
and worldly, but spiritual and eternal.
Word of Faith Theology
Another popular message of many prosperity preach-
ers today is ‘word of faith’ theology. They teach that our
words have the power to create reality. We can, it is said,
speak health and prosperity into existence by positively
confessing our desires. Once more, this false teaching
is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of several
Bible verses.
The faith that is exercised in this teaching is not so
much faith in God as it is faith in one’s own faith. You
are encouraged to see yourself as the master of your own
destiny. If you just believe and ask condently, you can
chart your own future and acquire the desires of your
heart. When the thing claimed and believed does not ma-
terialize, the blame is laid at a lack of faith.
Although many of these preachers do not try to base
their teachings on Scripture, they will sometimes quote
PROSPERITY?30
Hebrews 11:1 as evidence. The writer to the Hebrews says
that “faith is the substance of things hoped for” (KJV).
Seizing on the word “substance” (which other transla-
tions render “assurance” and “condence”), word of faith
preachers use this verse to claim that faith creates sub-
stance. If that were so, God would not be the only Creator;
we would join him in creating by speaking our will into
existence.
The answer to this misinterpretation can once again be
found by treating the Bible with respect and looking at the
context from which the verse is pulled. Open the book of
Hebrews and it is clear that the author is not teaching his
readers how to use the power of faith to change the cir-
cumstances around them. A few verses earlier, his readers
are commended for having “endured a hard struggle with
suerings” (10:32) and “joyfully accepted the plundering
of your property” (10:34). Then, in verse 35, the writer
urges them to continue with the same condence that
they had demonstrated in those dire circumstances. What
was that condence?
It was, rstly, a faith that ran on patience not a sense
of entitlement. “For you have need of endurance, so that
when you have done the will of God you may receive what
is promised” (10:36). The Hebrew Christians’ faith was
proven real when they endured, not avoided, suering:
“we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed,
but of those who have faith and preserve their souls”
(10:39). Moreover, this was a condence focused on eter-
nal things, as is clear from the armation: “you knew that
you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding
one” (10:34). Their “great reward” was nothing as tem-
porary as the health of a body that will die or possessions
that will be left behind.
MISUNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE 31
The faith of Hebrews 10 and 11 allowed these Chris-
tians to see past their present suering to the reality of
eternity prepared for them. This condence in their fu-
ture inheritance gave them the strength to let go of their
earthly possessions. While the world lives for what it can
get now, Christians have a totally dierent motivation.
Therefore, the examples of faith that follow in He-
brews 11 are not examples of the power of faith changing
circumstances (God changes circumstances, not faith).
On the contrary, they are examples of people acting on
the basis of a future reality that could only be seen and
possessed by faith because it was not material or earthly.
It includes believers who were tortured, beaten, impris-
oned, and even killed. Their faith enabled them to endure
this and, after death, receive the goal and reward of their
faith; the eternal glory that was awaiting them. “They de-
sire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16).
It is a great sin to teach believers, who are called to en-
dure in view of an eternal reward, that they should instead
seek and claim rewards now. This false teaching keeps the
suering saints away from the grace and hope that true
faith contains. The word of faith message, when exposed
as a lie, has also driven people away from the church and
Christianity altogether. May all who have the responsibili-
ty and privilege of preaching the word of Christ remember
Christ’s own words: “whoever causes one of these little
ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him
to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to
be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6).
PROSPERITY?32
Conclusion
The prosperity gospel rests on misinterpretations of
the Bible that completely distort its clear meaning. In this
way, it diverts Christians from serving God to worship-
ping themselves and trusting in a false gospel. We must
treat God’s word honestly and carefully so that we know
the truth and can be set free by it.
When our Lord Jesus Christ left heaven and became a
man, he did not give up or promise us material benets.
He gave up heavenly riches, the glory and love he shared
with his Father, to come to our world so that we could
share in these blessings with him forever. When Christ
lived a life of suering and then died on the cross, his
punishment was designed to heal our deepest wound—
our sinfulness. So God promises us something far more
important and valuable than health or wealth now.
Thanks to his death and resurrection, Jesus promises his
people permanent reconciliation with God and a sin-free
life in the age to come.
As God’s people experience the salvation that is in
Jesus, they want God’s glory more than anything else.
And God’s plan is so great that he then uses the righteous
desires of his people, expressed in prayer, to do his will.
It should not surprise us, therefore, that the Bible encour-
ages us also to sow generously in our deeds for spiritual
motives. As we do this, he promises us an everlasting
harvest prepared for us in heaven.
CHAPTER 2
True and False
Prosperity
Michael Otieno Maura
When he built a city, he called the name of the city
after the name of his son, Enoch. (Genesis 4:17)
To Seth also a son was born, and he called his
name Enosh. At that time people began to call
upon the name of the LORD. (Genesis 4:25-26)
In Africa today, people are talking about prosperity.
It dominates our imaginations and permeates our con-
versations. And as it grips our culture, it is also entering
our pulpits. There are many preachers who are preaching
a gospel of material prosperity. But this prosperity that
grips the hearts and minds of men and women, from the
streets to the churches, is a false prosperity. It is a false
prosperity against which the Bible repeatedly warns us.
PROSPERITY?34
As far back as Genesis 4:17-26, we nd a contrast be-
tween the godless family of Cain and the godly family of
Seth. Cain’s family could boast of great achievements and
material prosperity. They appeared to be successful, but
their achievements were made without reference to God.
Far from God, their prosperity was temporary and eet-
ing; of and for this world. Seth’s family did not have such
material achievements to display. But they called on the
name of the Lord; that was their glory. This family knew
a true and lasting prosperity that was grounded in God.
In many of our pulpits today, the preaching is centred
on worldly achievement and material prosperity: houses
and cars, success in business, money, health, and happi-
ness. Such preaching is in direct conict with the word
of God from Genesis through to the gospels and epistles.
Our preaching should lead sinners to call upon the name
of the Lord. It should lead people to cry out for mercy and
salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ in repentance and
faith, depending upon the promises of God and looking
forward to a future inheritance.
Two Cities
Cain was building a city (Gen. 4:17). Outwardly you
could say that he was prospering. In the eyes of this world,
Cain was making progress and achieving great things.
Like many of us, Cain felt that he needed security. Af-
ter Cain killed his brother, God drove him from his pres-
ence and condemned him to a fugitive life. But to help
Cain when he was afraid of suering Abel’s fate, God had
graciously marked him for protection. Yet despite God’s
kindness, Cain took matters into his own hands. What
does this tell us about Cain and what he was building?
TRUE AND FALSE PROSPERITY 35
Cain was working extremely hard to establish himself
on earth. His thoughts and energy were centred on this
life. He craved family honour and named a city after his
son. And he was doing all this in a time of great social
change. Notice all the rsts that you can see in these
verses: the rst man to farm in a scientic way; the be-
ginning of music and the arts; and progress in metal work
and technology. This was an enterprising and successful
community. But they were living without God. Cain had
walked out of God’s presence and was working for him-
self.
Even today, men and women are struggling and work-
ing hard to make it here on earth. If I get a good job,
people say to themselves, if I nd a wife/husband, if I am
living comfortably, then I will be happy and content. This
is the way of Cain and we must beware of it. Things may
look good outwardly, but spiritually we may be in great
danger. Cain’s story demonstrates to us that having a city
or a big house is not evidence that a person is right with
God. What is important is spiritual wealth which comes
through a radical change in our innermost being. This
is how the Lord Jesus put it: “you must be born again”
(John 3:7).
Cain’s city was built for man’s glory. His misplaced zeal
to establish his name on earth nds echoes down the ages
up to our own materialistic era. Work, possessions, enter-
tainment, fame; this, our world assures us, is the path to
fullment. These are the materials of which our cities are
built. And it is man’s glory that inspires us to build them.
But the way of Cain leads to destruction because “Unless
the LORD builds the house, those who build it labour in
vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watch-
man stays awake in vain” (Ps. 127:1).
PROSPERITY?36
But God is building a dierent city; a city that is for
his glory. Those who love him are looking forward to this
heavenly city. We read of the heroes of the faith that “they
desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore
God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has
prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:16). The reality is that
“here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is
to come” (Heb. 13:14). Paul wrote: “But our citizenship is
in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus
Christ” (Phil. 3:20).
It is tragic that many preachers are no longer preach-
ing about this heavenly city. Instead, they are busy turn-
ing our eyes to Cain’s worldly city. They no longer preach
about the Christian’s sure and certain hope, which is an
“inheritance that is imperishable, undeled, and unfad-
ing, kept in heaven for you” (1 Pet. 1:4). Instead they mo-
tivate people to pursue worldly success, happiness, and
fullment in this short life.
My fellow preacher, there are two cities. Which one
are you preaching? My fellow believer, which city are you
wholeheartedly pursuing?
The city of Cain was not abiding; it did not last. Some
commentators even suggest that Cain never nished
building it. Those who seek fulllment in the things that
this world oers will only be disappointed in the end. They
will nd themselves alienated from God for all eternity.
But the family of Seth called upon the name of the
Lord. They knew true prosperity, they believed in God’s
promises, and they looked forward to the eternal, heaven-
ly city. True believers rest on the hope of eternal life with
God and they will not be disappointed.
TRUE AND FALSE PROSPERITY 37
Polygamy is Not Prosperity
The story of Cain and his family has another warning
for us. It was a descendant of Cain, Lamech
i
, who intro-
duced polygamy into the world. Some people today see
polygamy as a mark of prosperity. In Africa, having many
wives can be associated with wealth, power, and fame.
When I was a young boy, if I saw a man marrying another
wife, I knew that he had been promoted at his place of
work. A man with only one wife used to be referred to as
having one eye. Recently, one African leader married a
fth wife and there was dancing and celebration in that
ceremony. We have seen men parading their wives to
show others how prosperous and mighty they are. There
is even a preacher who said that God appeared to him
and told him to marry another wife; he is now advocating
polygamy.
However, in Genesis 4:19 we see that it was Lamech,
a godless descendant of Cain, who rst corrupted the in-
stitution of marriage with polygamy. Genesis 2:24 clearly
teaches us that only one man and one woman should
become one esh. Lamech violated the clear instruction
given by God. Since God created marriage to be between
one man and one woman (Matt. 19:4-5), polygamy is not
a sign of prosperity as our culture wants us to believe; it
is a sin. If you are married to one wife, it is God’s will for
you to be faithful to her. If you are considering marriage,
I plead with you in the name of the Lord, do not follow the
way of Lamech.
Some of you are already polygamists and I urge you
to come to the Lord just as you are, for the Bible says
i This is a dierent Lamech from the one who was descended from
Seth and was the father of Noah.
PROSPERITY?38
that “each one should remain in the condition in which
he was called” (1 Cor. 7:20). You should not abandon any
of your wives. Some churches wrongly deny polygamists
church membership and the Lord’s Supper. However,
polygamists should not become church leaders (1 Tim.
3:2). Those who are saved and in the church should not
abandon those they have married before they were saved,
but they also must not promote polygamy in any way.
Polygamy is not prosperity, but a transgression of
God’s law, and the Bible makes clear its consequences.
Many wives turned Solomon’s heart from the Lord (1
Kings 11:4). Polygamy caused Rebecca and Isaac grief
(Gen. 26:35); it caused jealousy between wives (Gen. 30:1,
1 Sam. 1:6); and trouble between children (Gen. 37, Judg.
9). I come from a polygamous family and I understand
this well. When the father of the family dies, even before
the burial, arguments and rivalry can pull the family
apart. Polygamy is not prosperity.
Do Not Envy the Godless
Cain and his descendants would certainly be regard-
ed as successful today: property, cultural sophistication,
technology, and multiple wives. The logic of the prosperi-
ty gospel leads many to wrongly assume that the modern
day equivalents of Cain’s family are blessed. But even for
believers who refuse to base their hope on worldly pos-
sessions, there are still temptations to overcome. Envy
constantly distracts us from the single-minded pursuit of
God’s city.
We look at the prosperity and achievements of godless
people and are perplexed like the psalmist: “But as for
me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly
TRUE AND FALSE PROSPERITY 39
slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw
the prosperity of the wicked” (Ps. 73:2-3). The psalmist
then lists some characteristics, similar to those we saw in
Cain’s family, which modern prosperity gospel preachers
are now exalting. The wicked, he writes, appear to have
no struggles, their bodies are healthy and strong, they are
proud and at ease, and they increase in riches.
But while the Bible recognizes how we are tempted,
it also opens our eyes to help us ght temptation. God
showed the psalmist that rich people who are arrogant
and uncaring are standing on the edge of the abyss. The
destiny of these people is destruction (Ps. 73:17-20) and
we need to pity and warn them rather than envy them.
The presence and wisdom of God changed the psalmist’s
perspective on the godlessly prosperous. We must think
and live in the light of eternity.
The descendants of Cain were not known for their
worship but for their worldly achievements and prosper-
ity. They did not know God and their accomplishments
could not cover their rejection of the one they needed the
most. Of course, material things are not necessarily bad.
But if we live for material prosperity and success, then we
are building our house on sand. The descendants of Cain
were on slippery ground and their destiny was judgement.
They thought that they had achieved so much, but they
had built nothing that could last.
God has declared to his people: “And do you seek great
things for yourself? Seek them not” (Jer. 45:5). He repeat-
edly warned the children of Israel not to boast about their
wisdom, strength, and wealth (Jer. 9:23). And yet today’s
prosperity preachers want us to live for these very things.
We see over and over again that the most important thing
in life is having an intimate and right relationship with
PROSPERITY?40
God. As God has declared, “let him who boasts boast in
this: that he understands and knows me” (Jer. 9:24).
True Prosperity
But what exactly does this spiritual prosperity, which
God wants us to seek, look like? After showing us the bad
example of Cain’s family, Genesis 4 points us in the right
direction: “At that time people began to call on the name
of the LORD” (Gen. 4:26). For these early believers, God
was where he belonged—at the centre of their lives. They
trusted, sought, and worshipped God. And worshipping
God is what man was made for; as the Westminster
Shorter Catechism puts it, “Man’s chief end is to glorify
God and to enjoy him forever.”
From the descendants of Seth to the early Christians,
God’s people have distinguished themselves as worship-
pers. God’s people are separate from the world because
God’s name, honour, glory, and reputation thrill them
more than anything this world can oer. Seth’s family
worshipped the promise giver and promise keeper; the
one who had promised a Saviour. Christians today wor-
ship the same faithful God; the one who has kept his
promise and sent the Lord Jesus Christ. They believe in
the promises of God and look forward with great joy to
the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and to the new heav-
ens and the new earth.
The prosperity gospel distracts people from the
God-centred truth of the gospel. It diverts their focus away
from the death of the Lord Jesus at Calvary. It distracts
from the substitutionary atonement, the crucied life,
and holiness. It obscures the great future hope of Christ’s
return and the age to come when we will be with him.
TRUE AND FALSE PROSPERITY 41
God does not save us primarily to bless us with mate-
rial things, but to change us to be like Christ. Paul writes:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed
by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). The Christian
church throughout the ages has recognized that the atone-
ment, which the Lord Jesus accomplished on the cross
of Calvary, is the central theme of the Christian message
(Isa. 53:5, John 1:29, 2 Cor. 5:21, 1 John 4:10). But this is
contrary to what we are hearing today when the central
theme is man and what God can do for him. Even singing
is dominated by ‘God-bless-me’ choruses. We need to go
back to the central message of the Bible. Those who know
the Lord and worship him as the centre of their lives have
true prosperity.
Spiritual Prosperity above Temporary
Prosperity
The consequences of embracing false prosperity are
deadly to our faith. Once we have removed God from
the centre, and replaced him with material things, other
errors quickly follow. Firstly, we forget the source of all
blessing. And, secondly, we lose the reality that, even on
this earth, spiritual blessings are innitely superior to
material ones. The Apostle Paul helps us correct these
errors: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3). These spir-
itual blessings come from God. They do not come from
bishops, reverends, pastors, or churches.
Many prosperity gospel preachers even want us to
believe that blessings come from anointing oil, falling
backward, or holy water. Some have now gone as far as
PROSPERITY?42
selling brooms and salt with which, they claim, demons
are swept away and Christians preserved from attacks.
But the Bible tells us clearly that our blessings come from
God.
But, you may ask, how do we receive these blessings?
How does God deliver his blessings to us? Again, Ephe-
sians 1:3 gives us the answer. They are received in and
through Christ alone. All the blessings from God the Fa-
ther reach us through Christ. Do not let people fool you
into believing that they have power in themselves to bless
others.
Just as Seth and his descendants paid more attention
to spiritual things than external achievements, the Apos-
tle Paul assures us that God has blessed his people with
every spiritual blessing. The blessings are called spiritual
because they are from God and invisible to man’s eyes.
They do not primarily concern our outward circumstanc-
es here in this world. They are eternal. Paul shows us that
the blessings we already have in Christ, which Christ won
for all God’s people, are of greater value than any material
thing we could possess:
Even as he chose us in him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and blameless
before him. In love he predestined us for adoption
as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the pur-
pose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace,
with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him
we have redemption through his blood, the forgive-
ness of our trespasses, according to the riches of
his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom
and insight making known to us the mystery of his
will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in
TRUE AND FALSE PROSPERITY 43
Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all
things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having
been predestined according to the purpose of him
who works all things according to the counsel of
his will, so that we who were the rst to hope in
Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him
you also, when you heard the word of truth, the
gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were
sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the
guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire pos-
session of it, to the praise of his glory. (Eph. 1:4-14)
Look at the list of a Christian’s wonderful spiritual
blessings: chosen, predestined, loved, adopted, accept-
ed, redeemed, enlightened, forgiven, and sealed by the
Holy Spirit to guarantee a divine inheritance. These are
everlasting blessings that cannot be destroyed and, there-
fore, can also provide more joy, purer delight, and rmer
contentment now than any of the temporary blessings in
which we are urged by prosperity preachers to place our
hope.
God’s people possess a joy and contentment that is be-
yond the reach of the diculty and sadness we experience.
If you are a married couple without children, let no one
look down on you. You are blessed and your marriage is
complete with or without children. If you are born again,
born of God, you have been richly blessed whether you
are living in a thatched house or in a mansion. A man may
live in material poverty his whole life and yet be better o
than a rich businessman because his treasure is in heaven
where moth and rust do not destroy (Matt. 6:19). A Chris-
PROSPERITY?44
tian woman may endure an illness for many years and yet
that suering cannot rob her of the blessings of Ephesians
1 and she can savour the promise of heaven where there
will be no more crying or pain (Rev. 21:4). You may be
persecuted, but Jesus said you are blessed because the
kingdom of heaven is yours (Matt. 5:10).
Prayer and Prosperity
We have seen that God consistently warns us not to
focus on temporary honour and blessings that only last as
long as this life. And just as rmly, God points us toward
the God-centred, eternal blessings that God has promised
and given us in Jesus Christ. How can we gauge where
we stand in this struggle? Are there warning signs that
we are abandoning the prosperity that comes from God in
exchange for this world’s inferior substitute? According
to Jesus, how we pray indicates our priorities and our
relationship with God.
The prosperity gospel has changed the way people
pray. Many prayers today are focused on earthly rather
than spiritual things – you just need to switch on your
radio or TV and you will hear the evidence. Often these
materialistic prayers are based on Bible verses which
have been taken completely out of context. If you pray
for spiritual things today, you may even nd that some
church members will start complaining. So how should
we pray? In Colossians we see that priority is given to
spiritual prosperity:
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased
to pray for you, asking that you may be lled with
the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom
TRUE AND FALSE PROSPERITY 45
and understanding, so as to walk in a manner
worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing
fruit in every good work and increasing in the
knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with
all power, according to his glorious might, for all
endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to
the Father, who has qualied you to share in the
inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered
us from the domain of darkness and transferred
us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we
have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:9-
14)
What does Paul pray for the Colossian Christians?
Paul does not pray that they may be materially wealthy;
he does not pray that they may be successful in business;
he does not pray that they may buy a better house; he does
not pray that they always be healthy; he does not pray that
they will not die. Instead, he prays that God will ll them
with the knowledge of his will through spiritual wisdom
and understanding.
He prays this in order that they may live a life worthy of
the Lord and please him in every way. And Paul shows us
what it means to live a life worthy of the Lord, which is in
contrast to what the prosperity preachers focus on. A life
worthy of the Lord is a life of bearing fruit in every good
work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strength-
ened by God’s power to endure, and joyfully giving thanks
to the Father. Is this how you pray for others and your-
self? Or when you pray are you only concentrating on
promotions, cars, and comfort? We may and should pray
for our physical needs (Luke 11:3), but such prayers must
not push out or dominate prayers for our spiritual needs
PROSPERITY?46
and the kingdom of God (Luke 11:2-4). Our prayers must
give priority to spiritual things.
Conclusion: The Great Division
Since the fall there has been a great division: those
who reject God, like Cain, and those who call on the name
of the Lord, like Seth. There is a divide between those who
store up, and live for, treasures in this life, and those who
store up treasures in heaven. The clash between these
two sides is not new; but as the prosperity gospel spreads
through our churches, we must confront it with the wis-
dom of God in the clear teaching of the Bible.
When we are bombarded with the false prosperity of
worldliness, we need to hold on to the true prosperity of
godliness. We must reject Cain’s city which exists for the
glory of man and is heading for oblivion, in order to seek
the better, heavenly, and eternal city that God has pre-
pared for his people. As part of this, God calls us to turn
away from the sin of polygamy and embrace marriage as
God has created it – one man and one woman. And while
the eeting benets of Cain’s city sometimes cause us to
envy, God draws our attention to the bigger picture; the
godlessly prosperous are destined for destruction.
True prosperity is enjoyed by those whose focus is
God. In all ages, God’s people have been dened, dis-
tinguished, and blessed by their worship of him. Their
worship is lled with the knowledge that God alone is the
source of all blessing in and through Jesus Christ. And it
is deepened by the truth that the spiritual blessings God
gives his people are secure from anything or anyone in
this world. This is why their prayers are dominated by
TRUE AND FALSE PROSPERITY 47
spiritual desires. We live in a materialistic world, but God
calls his people to something better by far.
CHAPTER 3
The Gospel Life
Kenneth Mbugua
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and
the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those
who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow
and the way is hard that leads to life, and those
who nd it are few. Beware of false prophets, who
come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are
ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their
fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or
gs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears
good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.
A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a
diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does
not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into
the re. Thus you will recognize them by their
fruits. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one
who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
(Matthew 7:13-21)
PROSPERITY?50
Back when they did not have machines to identify fake
currency, banks used to teach their tellers to get used to
the feel of real money in their hands. The idea was that
the best way to recognise a fake is to intimately know the
real thing. We intend to follow this method. Spending
time with the gospel in God’s word means that when we
encounter a fake gospel, we can see it for what it is.
We are going to look at the life of Christ, the apostles,
and also select gures in church history to see if the lives
of our forefathers in the gospel match up with the message
of the prosperity gospel and the lifestyle that its preachers
advocate. This will equip us with the knowledge we need
to sni out false gospels and wayward teachers.
The lifestyle of many preachers of the prosperity gos-
pel is dened by auence and extravagance. And they
preach that God intends for all Christians to live like they
do. As theologian and pastor Gordon Fee explains, while
this error springs from wrong interpretation of the Bible,
its manifestation is a materialistic life defended with this
repeated false armation:
God wills the nancial prosperity of every one of
his children, and therefore for a Christian to be in
poverty is to be outside of God’s intended will; it
is to be living a Satan defeated life. And usually
tucked away with this armation is a second:
Because we are God’s children (the King’s kids, as
some like to put it) we should always go rst class
- we should always have the biggest and the best,
THE GOSPEL LIFE 51
a Cadillac instead of a Volkswagen, because this
alone brings glory to God.
i
Does this central premise of the prosperity gospel
stand in the light of scripture? Does the Bible teach us
that because we are God’s children, we should always
have the best of this world? What do the examples of our
Lord and his disciples show us we should seek in this life?
Jesus Christ
The Bible teaches us that Jesus Christ was one of the
wealthiest people in his day. He lived in a big mansion on
the Mount of Olives and had a whole host of servants to do
his bidding at the snap of his ngers. As he was the Son of
God, he obviously never knew suering or pain. Everyone
loved him because God even made his enemies become
his friends. When he went to the synagogues, he focused
on material prosperity and the good life that people could
have now. The Bible also tells us that he promised all who
would follow him to expect a trouble-free life like his own.
Right?
The gospels inform us that this is the opposite of re-
ality. Christ lived a life marked with struggle and pain.
We will take some time to look at texts which describe
that life. The truth about Jesus’ life and mission in these
verses is largely self-evident. We seek to expose you to it
and allow your familiarity with that truth to equip you to
compare and contrast it with the examples and teachings
of prosperity gospel preachers.
i Gordon Fee, The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels (Re-
gent College Publishing: Vancouver, 2006), 8.
PROSPERITY?52
What kind of life did the Son of God lead on earth and
what does it tell us about the life his followers should ex-
pect for themselves? In Matthew 10:24-25 Christ assured
those who followed him that they should expect a life like
his:
A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant
above his master. It is enough for the disciple to
be like his teacher, and the servant like his master.
If they have called the master of the house Beelze-
bul, how much more will they malign those of his
household? (Matt. 10:24-25)
Using the clear principle that a servant is not above
his master, Christ shows us that if the master suered,
the servant should expect nothing less. If the master was
called a devil, the servants should expect the same and
worse. As we look at the life of the master, it will become
evident that some supposed servants are seeking to be
more than their master.
Let us start with his home background. Luke 2 gives
us a hint about the social status of Jesus’ earthly parents.
When they went to the Temple, they oered a sacrice
for the birth of the rst male of their household that was
reserved for those who could not aord a lamb.
And when the time came for their purication ac-
cording to the Law of Moses, they brought him up
to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord … to oer
a sacrice according to what is said in the Law
of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young
pigeons.” (Luke 2:22, 24)
THE GOSPEL LIFE 53
As Mary and Joseph could not aord a lamb for such
an important sacrice, it is safe to assume that there were
many things they could not aord as Jesus grew up; the
same Jesus who was born in a manger surrounded by the
smell of animals. If a modest upbringing was good enough
for the Son of God, are we not misguided to preach that,
as children of God, we should expect to live a rst class life
here on earth? A servant is not above his master.
But maybe that was just his upbringing. Perhaps when
he grew up he left his humble start far behind and started
enjoying the highlife. Did Jesus show us the archetypal
rags to riches story of small beginnings leading to mate-
rial prosperity? Luke 9 suggests otherwise. When a local
scribe volunteered to become one of Christ’s disciples, Je-
sus outlined the terms and conditions: “Foxes have holes,
and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no-
where to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). Christ did not live in
a mansion on a hill as some today would like to think. He
was content with the minimum he needed. As his apostle
later wrote, “if we have food and clothing, with these we
will be content” (1 Tim. 6:8). If poverty was enough for
the master, should the servants demand more?
Ultimately, the cross denes Christ’s life. He was born
to die. God the Father ordained his life to be one of suf-
fering. If you try to explain Christ’s life without focusing
on the suering that he came to endure on our behalf, you
end up with an ungodly ction. Isaiah’s messianic proph-
ecy captures Jesus Christ’s life for us in these words:
He was despised and rejected by men; a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one
from whom men hide their faces he was despised,
and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our
PROSPERITY?54
griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed
him stricken, smitten by God, and aicted. But he
was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed
for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement
that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are
healed. (Isa. 53:3-5)
Jesus’ mission as messiah was lled with pain and
suering: despised, rejected, man of sorrows, acquainted
with grief, not esteemed, stricken, smitten by God, aict-
ed, pierced, crushed, and wounded.
ii
The call to follow
this Lord is not a call to walk an easy road. Isaac Watts
summarised the dierence between the Christian’s path
and our selsh demands, when he wrote: “Must I be car-
ried to the skies on owery beds of ease? While others
fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas?”
iii
Our Lord who suered for us called us to be ready to
do the same. “Whoever does not bear his own cross and
come after me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). To
follow Christ is to be ready to accept pain and suering.
While Jesus showed us—and prepared us for—a sim-
ple and hard life, he also made it clear that we should not
even want to be rich. “Take care, and be on your guard
against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist
in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Jesus
Christ warned that the pursuit of wealth was not a godly
quest but a grave danger to avoid. When he taught his
disciples about wealth, he did not teach them secrets of
ii If you have been taught that this text means that Christ’s poverty
and suering has bought us a life now in which we will not suer,
please read Chapter 1 on misinterpretations of the Bible.
iii This is from the hymn Am I a Soldier of the Cross by Isaac Watts.
THE GOSPEL LIFE 55
how to attain it. Instead, he told them to let go of loving
it. Letting go of the lust for money is a must if you want to
take hold of Jesus (Luke 16:13).
Jesus lived a simple and humble life. And he taught
us to beware of the allure of getting rich. He said that
his people should expect suering and not judge their
life according to the material things that they possessed.
Now look at the life and doctrine of prosperity gospel
preachers. Are they preaching Jesus’ message? Does the
lifestyle they commend look like the life that Jesus lived
and preached?
The Apostles
If the prosperity gospel is true, then we would ex-
pect those who were the gospel’s original witnesses and
preachers to teach and manifest this message more than
anyone else. Today’s famous exponents of the prosperity
gospel live in mansions, own eets of luxurious cars, and
travel in personal jets. Those not as famous seek to attain
those heights and in the meantime make a great show of
their prosperity. But look at the lives of the apostles. You
will see a sharp contrast; a contrast that exposes so-called
modern apostles as preachers of a counterfeit gospel.
The example of the apostles is that worldly benets are
not important. This is how Paul dened the lives of the
apostles:
For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as
last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we
have become a spectacle to the world, to angels,
and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but
you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are
PROSPERITY?56
strong. You are held in honour, but we in disre-
pute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we
are poorly dressed and bueted and homeless, and
we labour, working with our own hands. When
reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure;
when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and
are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all
things. (1 Cor. 4:9-13)
Paul wrote this to Christians who thought too highly of
themselves in order to rebuke them. He drew a valuable
contrast between their conceit and the apostles’ godly
lowliness.
Suering was fundamental to Paul’s understanding of
serving God. Four times in his second letter to Timothy,
Paul taught his spiritual son to be ready to suer. Instead
of running away from suering, Paul said that we should
“share in suering for the gospel by the power of God” (2
Tim. 1:8). “Share in suering,” Paul emphasised later, not
as an exception, but “as a good soldier of Christ Jesus”
(2 Tim. 2:3). And just in case we wanted to escape the
universal nature of his message, Paul stated that “all who
desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecut-
ed” (2 Tim. 3:12).
Living a godly life means embracing suering, not
avoiding it. Could there be a clearer contrast with health
and wealth teaching? Paul showed Timothy and reminds
us (as Jesus Christ did before him) that we should expect
suering as a natural result of being a Christian. “As for
you, always be sober-minded, endure suering, do the
work of an evangelist, full your ministry” (2 Tim. 4:5).
Suering is an essential part of being a follower of Jesus
Christ.
THE GOSPEL LIFE 57
When we understand this, we do not need to be
ashamed of suering. Look at Paul’s litany of pain:
Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the
forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with
rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was ship-
wrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on
frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger
from robbers, danger from my own people, dan-
ger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in
the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false
brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a
sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without
food, in cold and exposure. (2 Cor. 11:24-27)
Do not miss the reason why Paul is recounting these
experiences. When you look at the context, you see that
Paul wrote this as evidence that he was a servant of Christ.
His scars bore testimony to his authenticity as an apostle
of his suering saviour. When prosperity preachers oer
wealth as proof of their faithfulness, think about Paul
who did the opposite. “For the sake of Christ, then,” Paul
concluded, “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hard-
ships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak,
then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). Humble Christians redi-
rect attention to their glorious God. They are content with
suering because it glories the riches of God’s grace.
Why is there so much attention given to suering in
the New Testament? None of Paul’s diculties came as a
surprise to him and God does not want them to come as
a surprise to us. If Christians understand that suering
is normal for a faithful Christian, then pain cannot shake
their faith. When Christ called Paul to himself, he wanted
PROSPERITY?58
him to know the cost at the beginning: “For I will show
him how much he must suer for the sake of my name”
(Acts 9:16). Studying the lives of the apostles helps us be
ready for trouble and know that God’s blessing is in it.
Paul was not the exception. James was executed by or-
der of Herod (Acts 12:2). Peter was imprisoned (Acts 12:3)
and church tradition suggests that later he was crucied
– a cruel death for which Christ had prepared him (John
21:18-19). The Apostles were beaten for preaching (Acts
5:40-41) and Stephen was stoned to death (Acts 7:54-58).
And Paul himself, before his conversion, distinguished
himself by his eager attacks on those who claimed Jesus
as Lord (Acts 8:3). The apostles and rst Christians suf-
fered and died for Jesus.
The Bible’s testimony of the apostles does not square
with the teachings of the prosperity gospel. These ser-
vants of Christ, of whom the world was not worthy, did
not lead rst class lives here on earth and they did not ex-
pect to. They followed Christ knowing that suering and
pain was not a possibility but a guarantee. And in doing so
they demonstrated the lineage of faith that reaches back
to Moses who “considered the reproach of Christ greater
wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to
the reward” (Heb. 11:26). Suerings in and for Christ are
greater riches than any prosperity we could ever possess
in this world.
The Persecuted Church
We have seen the grief and sorrow of our Lord and the
suering of the pioneering apostles as they built on the
foundations that Christ had established. Consider even
the example of God’s most faithful servants before Christ?
THE GOSPEL LIFE 59
Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so
that they might rise again to a better life. Others
suered mocking and ogging, and even chains
and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were
sawn in two,
they were killed with the sword. They
went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute,
aicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not
worthy—wandering about in deserts and moun-
tains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Heb.
11:35-38)
But is that all in the past? Did it take place so that fu-
ture generations could live in ease? Is luxury and comfort
the subsequent manifestation of the work and presence of
God? Church history answers those questions decisively.
The spread of the gospel and the sanctication of Chris-
tians have always been marked by suering.
In this section we will take a few examples from church
history of believers who demonstrate the presence of God
in the suering of his people for their faith. There are many
sources that can give you information about persecuted
Christians both past and present. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
is a historical compilation that we will make use of in this
section. Look also at the websites of organizations such
as Voice of the Martyrs (www.persecution.com) and In-
ternational Christian Concern (www.persecution.org) to
nd many accounts of Christians who are suering now
for Christ all over the world.
Many faithful Christians are dying for Jesus Christ;
brothers and sisters whose lives and deaths bring great
glory to God as they arm Paul’s creed: “to live is Christ,
and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). What mockery against
these saints to preach that Christians should not suer!
PROSPERITY?60
This is to preach that the apostles, the early church, and
the persecuted church through the years suered in vain.
On the contrary, these Christians are the best expressions
of the spirit of Christ. We need to learn from their lives.
Let us begin with one of the early church fathers, Poly-
carp. He was the bishop of Smyrna in the second century
AD. Here is an account of the conclusion of his trial by
the Roman authorities in which he had been charged with
being a follower of Christ:
The proconsul then urged him, saying, “Swear,
and I will release thee; reproach Christ.” Polycarp
answered, “Eighty and six years have I served
him, and he never once wronged me; how then
shall I blaspheme my King, Who hath saved me?”
iv
This great Christian submitted calmly to his execution
rather than betray Christ. The history of the Roman Em-
pire contains numerous similar accounts. For example,
seventy years later, in Rome itself, there was a woman
named Cecilia. She gave up the comforts of a respect-
able family, not only believing in Christ but passionately
bringing others to him, even if it killed her.
She converted her husband and brother, who were
beheaded; and the maximus, or ocer, who led
them to execution, becoming their convert, suf-
fered the same fate. The lady was placed naked
in a scalding bath, and having continued there a
iv John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (Peabody: Hendrickson,
2004), 14.
THE GOSPEL LIFE 61
considerable time, her head was struck o with a
sword, A.D. 222.
iv
Faithful Christians suered gruesome punishments
for Jesus in our own beloved Africa. “Saturninus, a
priest of Albitina, a town of Africa, after being tortured,
was remanded to prison, and there starved to death. His
four children, after being variously tormented, shared
the same fate with their father.”
viii
We could go on inde-
nitely with the testimonies of Christians dying for Christ
through the years and across the globe. This historical
record demands a response from us. Were these saints
wrong to suer for the gospel?
As you read this, many of your brothers and sisters are
suering persecution because of their faith in Christ. For
millions of Christians in Asia, Nigeria, Sudan, and many
Islamic states, death for the sake of faithfulness to Christ
is a real prospect. In fact, Islamic terrorism has brought
the possibility of martyrdom for Christ to any street in the
world. Think of the Christians singled out and brutally
murdered at Garissa University College in Kenya recent-
ly. It was chilling to hear of brothers and sisters gunned
down by evil men as they gathered for prayer. But as we
long for the day when such horror will be no more, let us
not dishonour these Christian martyrs by forgetting that
they have gained immeasurably more than they lost.
The author of Hebrews wrote this about such men and
women:
v Ibid., 19.
vi Ibid., 36.
PROSPERITY?62
These all died in faith, not having received the
things promised, but having seen them and greet-
ed them from afar, and having acknowledged that
they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For
people who speak thus make it clear that they are
seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking
of that land from which they had gone out, they
would have had opportunity to return. But as it
is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly
one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called
their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
(Heb. 11:13-16)
What kind of teaching prepares ordinary people to take
such a stand and meet such an end? Prosperity preaching
leaves Christians unable to make sense of the central
place of suering in the lives of those who follow Christ. It
leaves men and women unequipped and confused in the
face of poverty and pain. Only the genuine hope and glory
of the gospel of Jesus Christ enables Christians to under-
stand persecution and pain now. As a twentieth century
martyr for the gospel, Jim Elliot, famously said: “He is no
fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he
cannot lose.”
Conclusion
Think about the examples of Jesus Christ, the apos-
tles, and suering Christians through the centuries. Then
look at the example and message of the prosperity gospel
preachers. We have the genuine currency of Christ’s gos-
THE GOSPEL LIFE 63
pel and its servants before us; we can, therefore, identify
and reject the worthless counterfeit gospel of health and
wealth.
CHAPTER 4
Suering
Kenneth Mbugua
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is
wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day
by day. For this light momentary aiction is pre-
paring for us an eternal weight of glory beyond
all comparison, as we look not to the things that
are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the
things that are seen are transient, but the things
that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-
18)
We live in a world full of suering. Earthquakes, hur-
ricanes, drought, famine, and war destroy lives, homes,
communities, and nations. On a personal level, who is not
familiar with the pain of rejection, betrayal, and conict?
Daily we are vulnerable to the threat of sudden suering
– accidents can bring us loss and grief in a moment. And
we live exposed to the pain of disease that can slowly or
PROSPERITY?66
quickly take our lives and the lives of those we love. Is
there any doubt that we live in a broken world?
Ever since suering entered the world, we have been
trying to escape it. There are few quests more natural for
humans than avoiding pain and increasing pleasure. We
invent new machines and strategies all with the implicit
promise: more pleasure, less pain. We pursue better jobs,
more money, and better health. We search for better
relationships, greater churches, and more inspirational
pastors. Our pursuit of more joy and less suering is at
the root of so much of human activity. Does the Bible con-
demn this search? No, but it corrects our understanding
of suering and provides us the only road to joy, through
suering.
Prosperity preaching is popular because it taps into
this most basic of human desires. But it oers a solution
to suering that is unbiblical, misleading and, ultimately,
detrimental to those who follow it. And rather than sav-
ing people, this false solution leaves many discouraged,
disillusioned, and bitter with God and his people. The
prosperity gospel is not the solution God has given for our
suering; it is not the good news. In this chapter we will
look specically at what God teaches us about suering
and how it contradicts the alluring but fraudulent escape
of the prosperity gospel.
Understanding Suering
There are three basic questions that African herders
would ask if they found a cow trapped in a ditch: How
did the cow end up there? How can we get it out? And
how can we keep the cow from going back into the ditch?
Similarly, in order to understand the solution that God
SUFFERING 67
provides for the problem of suering, we have to under-
stand why suering exists, the only way to deal with it,
and how it can be kept from recurring.
There was a time when there was no suering, but it
was sin—our rejection of God—that brought pain into this
world. And in the future, there will be a new age in which
there will again be no suering. What bridges this divide?
Christ came to deal with our sin and all its consequences
by dying on the cross, defeating death in resurrection,
and ascending to heaven. His physical and spiritual suf-
fering on the cross for us has fully paid the penalty for our
sin, purchasing our complete redemption along with the
restoration of creation. His blood has achieved everything
necessary for the formation of a new heaven and a new
earth, eternally free from suering (Rom. 8:18-25).
If we do not understand why suering exists, what
God has done about it, and what that means for us, we
will be vulnerable to false solutions. At great cost, God
has provided an everlasting solution to our problem of
sin and its painful consequences. But this good news has
been seriously marred and distorted by preachers of the
prosperity gospel.
The Genesis of Suering
The rst chapters of the Bible tell us that God made
all things out of nothing. He was the originator, design-
er, and builder. And what he made was very good (Gen.
1:31). That original goodness included God’s creation of
mankind. Man and woman were at peace with God, each
other, and the rest of creation. Everything was good until
man decided that God was not enough.
PROSPERITY?68
In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve disobeyed God. He had
told them: “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall
not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely
die” (Gen 2:16-17). God had clearly warned Adam and
Eve that suering would be the result if they chose to turn
away from him. But, convinced by the serpent that satis-
faction could be found outside of their relationship with
God, they ignored God’s warning and plunged into sin.
They reached out for more and found that it was less.
They grabbed at wisdom and found that it was foolish-
ness. And they searched for pleasure, but discovered pain.
Suering came into the world when man sought for plea-
sure and purpose outside God. Immediately after man
and woman broke God’s commandment, their world was
shattered. They were afraid and ashamed - strange feel-
ings that they had never felt before. This was the genesis
of suering: it came into the world through the doorway
of sin.
Adam and Eve broke their communion with God and
he soon explained to them some of the consequences.
To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your
pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth
children. Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.” And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded
you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground
because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the
days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring
forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the
eld. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,
SUFFERING 69
till you return to the ground, for out of it you were
taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall re-
turn.” (Gen. 3:16-19)
Look at the dierent aspects of suering covered here.
There is intense physical pain. Relational struggles invade
the natural partnership of man and woman. The work
of life becomes a grinding toil. The land itself will share
man’s corruption, ghting man’s eorts to be productive.
And, worst of all, there is an end. With the sin of man
comes death.
What solution could there be for such a universal and
crushing curse? One of the problems of the prosperity
gospel’s solution is that it is very similar to the cause of the
problem. Adam and Eve lacked satisfaction in what they
had in God, pursuing pleasure outside of their relation-
ship with God and in addition to what he had promised.
Similarly, the prosperity gospel, instead of proclaiming
that God is more than enough, invites us to seek him in
order to attain additional material pleasures.
The source of pleasure in the prosperity gospel is not
God himself, but the things that God can get for us. But
just as Adam and Eve reached for pleasure and found
pain, the prosperity gospel’s promises of fullment result
in emptiness. Why? Because they point us away from God
for satisfaction, just as the devil pointed the rst man and
woman away from God. What they lost that day was their
relationship with God; and to be separated from him is
the denition of death. Reconciliation with God is what
Jesus calls life (John 17:3). You cannot solve the problem
of suering by repeating the sin that caused it.
When Adam and Eve felt the sting of shame that their
sin had brought into the world, what did they do about
PROSPERITY?70
it? “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew
that they were naked. And they sewed g leaves together
and made themselves loincloths” (Gen. 3:7). They tried
to cover themselves with their own solution. And this is
the aw of the prosperity preachers; they oer us only
worldly solutions. They point us to the same waterholes
and broken cisterns that the world is seeking: jobs, hous-
es, relationships, health, etc. (Jer. 2:13). We will seek the
same waterholes, they tell us, but we will drink from them
through God.
Do not be deceived. The prosperity gospel’s world-
ly satisfactions are like Adam and Eve’s g leaves that
temporarily covered their shame without dealing with it.
The material solutions of man are unable to deal with the
problems that man’s ungodliness created. To properly
deal with the problem of suering, one has to deal with
sin and alienation from God.
Even in Genesis 3 we can see God’s solution to the
problem of sin and its consequences. In the midst of the
fall of man, the gospel emerged. God showed us in Genesis
3 that sacrice, a substitute, and a saviour are what man
needs to solve his problem of sin and suering. As God
cursed the serpent, he said: “I will put enmity between
you and the woman, and between your ospring
and her
ospring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise
his heel” (Gen. 3:15). Since the early days of Christianity,
God’s people have understood this promise of Eve’s an-
cestor crushing the serpent’s head as the rst prophecy of
the messiah.
But in what way could man be saved by a messiah?
“And the
Lord God made for Adam and for his wife gar-
ments of skins and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21). It seems
that God killed an animal so that this sacriced beast
SUFFERING 71
could cover up the man and woman’s shame, the result of
their sin. Here we see the rst sign of the biblical principle
that the problem of sin is so great that it requires sacri-
cial atonement (Heb. 9:22). God would send his Son to be
born and live as a man and to die as the sacricial substi-
tute, bearing the wrath of God at our sin on the cross for
us. This is God’s solution to the problem of sin and it is
perfect. It is the only solution that will work.
God’s solution deals with our suering because it be-
gins with its cause—sin. The solution to our suering is
not found in things that we get from God, it is found in
being reconciled to God. In communion with God there is
complete joy (Ps. 16:11); this is what sin had ruined and
Christ has restored. But as we wait for our restoration
to be completed in our resurrection bodies in the age to
come, how can we understand the lingering consequences
of sin that remain in this still broken world?
God’s Promise of Restoration
God has reversed the curse. He justly cursed people
because of their rebellion (Gen. 3:16-19) and the curse
aects our bodies, relationships, vocations, and envi-
ronment. But God’s plan of restoration accomplished in
Christ is as complete as the curse. The perfect plan of re-
demption and restoration is nearly nished and our faith
in God to complete it can sustain us even when we suer
in this yet unredeemed and rebellious age.
Firstly, the coming restoration of our bodies gives
joy to dying Christians: “For as in Adam all die, so also
in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). Paul re-
vealed the nature of this restored body. “What is sown is
perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in
PROSPERITY?72
dishonour; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it
is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised
a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15:42-44). Before our bodies are
restored, Christ serves as the prototype and the guarantee
of our resurrection. Like him, in death we give up the tem-
porary in order to gain the eternal.
Secondly, in Christ we can see the rst signs of the res-
toration of our relationships with each other. Sin infects
the bond of marriage with selshness and jealousy. In the
rst family, brother even killed brother in envious rage.
And so it has been since. But in Christ we can and should
begin to replace pride with humility and serve each other
(Phil. 2:1-4). When this happens, it is a sign of things to
come. Our messiah is the Prince of Peace and his reign in
the age to come will be dened by it (Isa. 9:6-7). So as we
strive to live now in our saviour’s peace rather than follow
our contentious hearts, we hold on to the promises of God
whose coming kingdom of peace will never end.
As well as promising peace in the Old Testament, God
continually promised to restore Israel’s fortune. For ex-
ample, this was his promise through the prophet Amos:
i
Behold, the days are coming … when the plough-
man shall overtake the reaper and the treader
of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains
shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall ow
with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people
Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and
inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink
i Other examples: Ps. 14:7; Ps. 53:6; Jer. 30:3; Jer. 31:23; Jer. 33:7;
Ezek. 39:25; Amos 19:14.
SUFFERING 73
their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat
their fruit. (Amos 9:13-14)
This prophecy followed a frightening message of
judgement and gave its original hearers a real idea of how
God would restore his people. But the message is also for
God’s people throughout history. A complete day of resto-
ration is yet ahead. The struggles man has had in his work
shall one day be no more. Where he has known failure
and toil, he shall know success and pleasure. This is one
of the promises of the coming kingdom. When our best
eorts on earth seem to fail, we can remember that our
strife is temporary but our coming joyful fullment will
never end.
As part of God’s plan of redemption, the whole creation
will be restored from its current corrupt state. The world
will be restored to a beauty that will even surpass that of
its original purity. And it is God’s way that the restoration
of the creation follows from the salvation and freedom of
God’s people in Christ.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the
revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was
subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of
him who subjected it, in hope that the creation it-
self will be set free from its bondage to corruption
and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children
of God. (Rom. 8:19-21)
Why is the Bible lled with God’s promises to restore
and perfect our bodies, relationships, vocations, and en-
vironment? He knows that we need this sure hope, and
the signs we see of it now, to sustain us in the corruption
PROSPERITY?74
and sin that remains. God’s solution to our struggle with
suering is the only ultimate and everlasting one. As we
faithfully persevere through times of suering, we begin
to experience the blessings that will be ours in the age to
come. In Christ’s coming kingdom, we will thrive forev-
er in his divine blessing and glory. God’s solution is not
temporary comfort, but an eternal plan that he has been
working out since the beginning of time. God’s people
can see him continuing to unfold it and know that he will
complete it – God’s people and the world will be fully re-
stored.
The Already Not Yet
As you can see, God’s promises to his people are si-
multaneously present and future. Many prosperity gospel
preachers use some of the verses above to ‘prove’ what
Christians can have now. The error of their preaching is
not in what Christians will receive, but when they will re-
ceive it. They change God’s timeline and therefore distort
God’s plan of restoration.
When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he rebuked
them for their misunderstanding of the blessings in Christ.
“Already you have all you want! Already you have become
rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that
you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you!”
(1 Cor. 4:8) Paul contrasted their arrogant attitude with
the humility and poverty of the apostles. The Corinthian
Christians were acting as if the blessings that God has
promised for the world to come were already theirs.
If you are in Christ, then all God’s promises are yours
in him (2 Cor. 1:20). But as we live between the rst and
second comings of Jesus Christ, we still await the nal
SUFFERING 75
consummation of God’s plan and, therefore, the full bless-
ings of being in Christ. When Paul writes about the glory
that is ours in Christ, he looks to the future. He taught the
Romans that “the suerings of this present time are not
worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to
us” (Rom. 8:18). In case we miss the future orientation,
he added: “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that
is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But
if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with pa-
tience” (Rom. 8:24-25). We will be free from all suering
in Christ; it is true. But we will receive this blessing at the
end of this age and the completion of God’s plan.
There are no ultimate solutions to our suering in this
world. But there is also no contradiction between our suf-
fering now and our assurance that God will end all our
suering.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is
wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day
by day. For this light momentary aiction is pre-
paring for us an eternal weight of glory beyond
all comparison, as we look not to the things that
are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the
things that are seen are transient, but the things
that are unseen are eternal. (2 Cor. 4:16-18)
God’s people endure suering on this earth because
they hold fast to the hope that God has put in them. They
are justied, saved, and blessed now. And that assurance
enables them to rejoice through suering because they
know that God will end all their suering soon. The bless-
ings of God now assure us of the much greater blessing
that we do not have yet.
PROSPERITY?76
God’s Purpose for Suering
Therefore, the claim of the prosperity preachers that
it is never God’s will for us to suer is repeatedly contra-
dicted by the Bible. We must not allow people to be driven
to fear and doubt by suering because their preachers
have not equipped them to make sense of it. Christians
do not need to fear suering not only because it will end,
but because God is sovereign over it and uses it to bless
his children.
We will look at this more in a later chapter, but let us
now note a few reasons why suering is not only tempo-
rary, but blessed. Firstly, God increases our faith in suf-
fering. Peter, in explaining the future orientation of God’s
people, emphasized this:
According to his great mercy, he has caused us
to be born again to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an
inheritance that is imperishable, undeled, and
unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s
power are being guarded through faith for a sal-
vation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this
you rejoice, though now for a little while, if nec-
essary, you have been grieved by various trials,
so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more
precious than gold that perishes though it is tested
by re—may be found to result in praise and glory
and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pet.
1:3-7)
SUFFERING 77
Do you see how the everything-now attitude of the
prosperity gospel actually rejects the far greater wisdom
of God’s plan? As we persevere through suering, looking
to the future, it actually increases our faith in a way that
glories God enduringly.
Christians are not exempt from suering; they will
denitely experience it and should rejoice in it. Look at
what Peter went on to write:
Beloved, do not be surprised at the ery trial when
it comes upon you to test you, as though something
strange were happening to you. But rejoice inso-
far as you share Christ’s suerings, that you may
also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are
blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God
rests upon you. (1 Pet. 4:12-14)
To share in Jesus Christ’s suerings, as Paul under-
stood, is to share in his resurrection and glory (Phil. 3:10).
This is what Jesus had taught in the Sermon on the Mount
(Matt. 5:10-12) and his disciples later put it into practice.
After they had been ogged for preaching the gospel, they
left “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suer dis-
honour for the name” (Acts 5:41). Freedom from suering
now is a false message that diverts Christians from God’s
plan and his blessing. Instead of following the prosperity
gospel, we should follow God’s word which encourages
us: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of
various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith
produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full
eect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in
nothing” (James 1:2-4).
PROSPERITY?78
When prosperity preachers teach that it is never God’s
will for you to suer, they undermine all the things that
God can do in our lives through pain. He is in control of
our temporary suering in this world and he uses it to
strengthen our faith. This suering is so much a part of
his good plan for us that God tells us to rejoice in it. When
we suer for God, we show our fellowship and partner-
ship with Christ Jesus. That truly is a cause for joy and a
gospel basis of sure hope.
Conclusion
We suer in this world because of sin. Once we un-
derstand this, we must not look for solutions to suering
that avoid its root. God has a plan of redemption in which
he has dealt with the problem of sin and its painful con-
sequences forever. Jesus Christ bore the punishment we
deserved for our sins when he suered on the cross so we
do not have to eternally suer in hell.
God has reversed the curse and replaced it with res-
toration. We see signs of this restoration now, but it will
not be completed until Christ returns and ends this age to
usher in the next. Our assurance in Christ that God will
permanently remove suering gives us hope even in the
midst of pain. In fact we can even rejoice in suering be-
cause it increases our faith and strengthens our commu-
nion with Jesus Christ. Suering now is part of God’s plan
as he leads us to the completion of his work of restoration
in which our suering will come to an end. This is God’s
wisdom and it is eternal good news.
CHAPTER 5
The True Gospel
Conrad Mbewe
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full
acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
(1 Timothy 1:15)
One of the greatest wonders of the world has been the
spread of Christianity. Defying power and persecution,
the Christian faith has and continues to spread across
the globe, bringing together people of every race and cul-
ture. Many other movements have started in history and
come to nothing. Gamaliel expected the same to happen
to Christianity when he counselled the Sanhedrin (Acts
5:34-39).
But the Christian faith, once the creed of a few people
in Jerusalem and Judea, is cherished and preached from
Africa to Korea to South America. And this is happening
despite the bitter opposition that Christians have endured
from the rst century to the twenty-rst. Missionaries
PROSPERITY?80
and preachers, particularly, have often paid the ultimate
price for sharing what they know simply as the good
news. Surely, one must ask, ‘Why is this so? What is it
that fuels this movement and makes it, against the odds,
unstoppable?’
Good news is indeed the heart of it. Christians know
that we have the best, most important, and most joyful
news in the universe: “that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). Gospel is an old En-
glish word that simply means good news; as does the word
used in the New Testament - evangelion. Our message of
salvation through Jesus Christ is good news, and we do
not and cannot keep it to ourselves.
Furthermore, we dare not, both for our sake and the
benet of those who have not yet believed, lose sight of
the true gospel. It is in Jesus Christ himself that we are
reminded of what makes this news so good: his identity,
interest, and intervention.
The Identity of the Saviour
The Christian message is the best news in the universe,
rstly, because of the identity of the Saviour. Jesus Christ
said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). It is
not through Mohammed, or Buddha, or the Virgin Mary,
or some other religious leader, even within Christianity,
that we are saved. Neither is it through an African ances-
tral spirit, but through Jesus Christ alone that we can be
snatched from sin and hell and given grace and heaven
instead. But who is this Jesus who makes such a stupen-
dous claim?
THE TRUE GOSPEL 81
Firstly, he is the promised Messiah (Christ) about
whom the Old Testament prophets spoke and wrote—the
hope for the people of Israel and the world. Look at what
Psalms 2 and 45 say about the Messiah’s unique power
and authority. Meanwhile, Genesis 49:10 states that he
would be born from the tribe of Judah in the nation of
Israel. In Isaiah 7:14 we hear the mystery that he will be
born of a virgin, while Micah 5:2 gives us the exact birth-
place; Bethlehem. And in many scriptures we see that this
Messiah will be a member of David’s family (e.g. Isa. 11).
Most amazingly, Isaiah 53 tells us that he would suer
terribly, die for our sake, and rise again from the dead.
There is only one person in history who fullled all those
prophecies, written hundreds of years prior to their full-
ment. It was Jesus Christ.
The Gospel writers in the New Testament do not want
you to miss the signicance of this. As Matthew wrote a
number of times about Jesus’ time on earth, “This took
place to full what was spoken by the prophet.” Incred-
ible! Jesus himself once stood up in a synagogue, read
from the prophet Isaiah, and announced that the text was,
in fact, about him (Luke 4:16-21).
Imagine how staggering that must have been to those
who were listening. On another occasion, Jesus rebuked
his disciples for failing to see all that the Old Testament
had said about him, including the fact that he would suf-
fer, die, and be raised from the dead (Luke 24:25-27; 44-
47). It is this same Jesus that the apostle Paul is referring
to when he says: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners”. He is the person that is being proclaimed to the
world.
Do not miss the importance of those four words: came
into the world. Unlike all the false messiahs and disap-
PROSPERITY?82
pointing leaders who promise much and deliver little,
Jesus Christ is not from this world. This Jesus Christ, the
Bible teaches, is not only the ultimate man, but also God.
He is the incarnate second person of the blessed Holy
Trinity; the Son of God.
Every Gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) deliv-
ers this message and the Apostle John begins his Gospel
with these words:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God. All things were made through
him, and without him was not anything made that
was made … And the Word became esh and dwelt
among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as
of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and
truth. (John 1:1-3; 14)
At each end of Jesus’ earthly life, it was made abun-
dantly clear that he is the Son of God. Before he was born,
an angel told Mary that the one to be born from her womb
would be the Son of God (Luke 1:35). And at the end of his
life, when he breathed his last and died on the cross, the
soldier who stood by and witnessed his death confessed:
“Truly this was the Son of God” (Matt. 27:54). In case we
missed the point, God the Father twice announced from
heaven that Jesus was his Son (Matt. 3:17 and Matt. 17:5).
Why is Jesus Christ’s identity such good news? Howev-
er big your sin problem might be, Omnipotence has come
into the world to deliver you. If Jesus was a mere human
being we would despair because such a deliverer would
not be powerful enough; he would have his own sins, fail-
ures, and weaknesses to overcome before he could even
THE TRUE GOSPEL 83
attempt to rescue us from our sins. But Christ is the holy,
sinless, and all-powerful Son of God. Is anything too hard
for him? (Luke 18:27) He who created this vast universe
from nothing and upholds it with his all-powerful hand;
can he fail to deal with the chains of sin that hold us in
enslavement? No, he cannot fail. Once he hears your cry
and goes into action, the strongest chains of sin give way
faster than cobwebs do before an approaching ame.
Praise the Lord!
The Interest of the Saviour
What makes the Christian message the best news is,
secondly, the interest of the Saviour. As already cited,
Paul wrote under the Spirit’s inspiration that “Christ Je-
sus came into the world to save sinners.” This is not just
great news; it is shocking news.
Our consciences tell us that God is holy, so how could
the Son of God come into the world seeking fellowship
with sinners? This is what confused the Pharisees. They
expected Jesus (even though they thought he was just a
teacher) to shun sinners, but to their surprise he sought
them out and welcomed them. “Now the tax collectors
and sinners were all drawing near to hear him,” Luke tells
us. “And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying,
‘This man receives sinners and eats with them’” (Luke
15:1-2). Yet, Jesus did not apologise about this. Rather, he
answered by saying, “Those who are well have no need of
a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call
the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32).
Jesus’s great interest in saving sinners is also surpris-
ing because God is the one whose law we break each time
we sin. He is the oended party. When was the last time
PROSPERITY?84
you heard of an oended person going out of his way
to bless the oender? In my pre-teen years, I was often
involved in childhood pranks. I recall how, as a result,
the sight of a policeman would often send me into panic
mode. My conscience always caused me to think that the
cop was looking for me; I would quickly nd a way to get
out of sight. That is how our consciences ought to react
when we think of God’s Son coming into the world. We
know that we deserve punishment from him for all the
sins we have committed against him. Yet, amazingly, Je-
sus Christ came into the world, not to punish sinners, but
to save them from sin (John 3:17).
Let this truth sink into your being. It was not for the
righteous that Jesus came. He came for sinners. The rea-
son why God can be interested in the welfare of sinners is
because he is merciful, loving, and also gracious. Grace
is one step higher than mercy. Grace is mercy shown by
an oended party towards the person who has oended
him. For example, if I found you being beaten by a mob
and then rescued you from its wrath, you would call that
mercy. It is human sympathy that would drive me to help
you escape the clutches of that mob. However, imagine if
a few days before this unfortunate event, you had come
to my home and broken all my windows with a cricket
bat. If then I found you being beaten up by a mob, you
would expect me to join it in giving you a good-hiding.
However, if instead I rescue you and even take you to a
nearby hospital and pay your medical bill—that is more
than mercy. That is grace.
God is gracious to sinners; even the worst of sinners.
The Apostle Paul gave himself as an example of the people
Jesus Christ saves: “Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Tim. 1:15).
THE TRUE GOSPEL 85
Paul is insisting that he was the worst of sinners. Before
his conversion, Paul insulted and said foul things against
Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He made Christians suer
because of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, he
was on his way to Damascus to get even more Christians
ogged and jailed when he was converted.
That made Paul a prime example of our Saviour’s in-
terest. “But I received mercy for this reason, that in me,
as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect
patience as an example to those who were to believe in
him for eternal life” (1 Tim. 1:16). In having mercy on the
chief of sinners, God wanted to encourage other sinners
not to run away from him but to apply for clemency in a
similar way. If God can, in Christ, pardon big sinners like
Paul, he can pardon sinners like you and me.
Perhaps that is your problem. Deep down, you know
it is not about more money or a healthy body. You have
sinned against God “big time” (as we say) and you are
trying to avoid that reality. Perhaps you have murdered
a baby in your womb and your conscience screams at you
in the quietness of your soul. Maybe you have lived a sex-
ually immoral life and you know that God is fully aware
of this because he sees everything done in secret. Perhaps
you have lived your life by defrauding other people and
this comes back to haunt you, as you look unsatised at
all your ill-gotten property.
“How can God forgive this?” you ask yourself. That is
your biggest problem. Well, the good news of the Chris-
tian faith is that God is interested in you. He sent his Son
into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the
world might be saved through him (John 3:17). Believe it!
He is interested in your salvation. That is why this is such
good news. It is almost too good to be true. There is hope
PROSPERITY?86
for you in spite of all your sins. Though deserving of hell,
you too can spend eternity in heaven.
The Intervention of the Saviour
The Christian message is the best news in the universe,
nally, because of the intervention of the Saviour. “Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” If a person
must be saved, it is because he is in trouble and cannot
save himself. One who needs saving is helpless and un-
able to change his circumstances. Without a rescuer, he
is left to his fate.
When we think of rescue, we may picture a team of
commandos sent deep into enemy territory to rescue
hostages; or of a helicopter carrying lifeguards to the high
seas to pull individuals from a sinking ship. Perhaps we
think of a United Nations plane which goes into a fam-
ine-stricken region to deliver food and basic medical
supplies to starving families. In each case, the people
receiving help cannot help themselves. It is impossible. If
they are not rescued, they will perish.
Jesus Christ has initiated just such an intervention.
But the danger is one that not only murderers or thieves
are in; we all need rescuing from our sin. Right at the
beginning of history, our rst parents, Adam and Eve,
sinned against God by eating of the tree from which God
had told them not to eat (Gen. 3). This self-centred re-
bellion against God had consequences that have come to
each and every one of their descendants, including you
and me. Since then, we are all naturally sinners.
Like Adam and Eve, we have also all sinned and “the
wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Has Jesus saved you
from the consequences of your sinful nature and your
THE TRUE GOSPEL 87
sins? If not, these wages are still yours to pay. That’s why
the Bible says, “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the
detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sor-
cerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the
lake that burns with re and sulphur, which is the second
death” (Rev. 21:8). All unsaved sinners will have to spend
all eternity in this lake of re.
Hell is a permanent separation from God for those
never reconciled to God. We are born self-centred and
enslaved to degrading morals; we are spiritually dead.
Writing to those brought to life in Christ, Paul says, “And
you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you
once walked, following the course of this world … carrying
out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by
nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph.
2:1-3). It is this state of sin that makes us so desperately
need a Saviour.
We cannot save ourselves. If it was simply good health
or a fat bank account that we needed, we could have
managed without a Saviour. A teacher coaching good
principles of hygiene and economics has often done the
trick and, through such advice, people have gone from
declining health to wholesome bodies and from poverty
to riches. Do you think poverty and sickness required a
sacricial rescue mission from the Son of God? We need
the intervention of a Saviour because without it we will
have an everlasting death.
How has Jesus Christ intervened to save us from this
desperate situation? It was by his sinless life, substitu-
tionary death on the cross, and triumph over death in
resurrection. This is the pinnacle of the good news of the
Christian faith. “While we were still weak, at the right time
Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6). Jesus, the Son of
PROSPERITY?88
God, came into this world totally sinless and he obeyed
God the Father perfectly. Death had absolutely no claim
on him. But then he took upon himself our liability—our
guilt—and died our death on the cross as our substitute.
The Bible says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who
knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righ-
teousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). To show that God was
fully satised with this death on our behalf, three days
later, he raised Jesus from the dead. Thus, all those who
believe in Jesus, even though they die, will rise again and
be with God forever. Their debt has been fully paid for in
the death of Christ on the cross.
God did not even end his rescue mission there. When
Jesus rose from the dead, he went to the Father in heaven
and they sent the Holy Spirit to be his people’s comforter
and counsellor. The Holy Spirit comes into our hearts and
brings us spiritual life, giving us fellowship with God and
the power to deny ourselves, to love others, and to love
and obey God.
Therefore, the gospel of Jesus Christ is “the power of
God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16).
It changes people—not from the outside in as false teach-
ers claim—but from the inside out, tting them for eterni-
ty in God’s presence. Paul marvels at this transformation
at work in the Corinthian believers. “Do not be deceived:
neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulter-
ers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves,
nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers
will inherit the kingdom of God.” It sounds like bad news
so far, yet it is the best news: “And such were some of
you. But you were washed, you were sanctied, you were
justied in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the
Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11).
THE TRUE GOSPEL 89
This is the good news, which is worthy of full accep-
tance. It is what makes the Christian faith an unstoppable
missionary movement. We have the best news in the uni-
verse: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
God himself has come down to save us. So, it does not
matter how deeply enslaved you are to sin. If you recog-
nise your desperate situation and call upon Jesus Christ
to save you, he will do so. Your sins will be washed away
and your heart transformed so that you start living a life
that was previously impossible. Thus, you can look death
in the face and not tremble because you know that its
sting was removed in the death of Jesus your Saviour; all
death can do is to take you to be with him in heaven. So,
like a person marooned on an island who sees a helicopter
hovering near him, cry to the Lord Jesus Christ and let
him rescue you from death. He can do so today!
CHAPTER 6
Blessings of the
True Gospel
Michael Otieno Maura
Therefore, since we have been justied by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. Through him we have also obtained access
by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we
rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that,
but we rejoice in our suerings, knowing that
suering produces endurance, and endurance
produces character, and character produces hope,
and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s
love has been poured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans
5:1-5)
There are some things that should never be far from a
Christian’s mind. One of them is the blessings of the gos-
pel. What a wonderful subject. It inspires us, encourages
PROSPERITY?92
us, humbles us, and puts the many experiences of life in
perspective. Remembering the blessings that we have in
God gives us the right view of him. It thrills us to live for
God’s glory and God’s honour in this life. But in our coun-
try today, people have got the wrong concept of blessings.
For many years, I was preaching in Massai. And now
that I have come to Nairobi, people are telling me that I
am blessed simply because I have moved from a rural area
to the big city. Many Christians have this wrong concept
of blessing that focuses their hearts and minds on worldly
benets and passing pleasures. God knows our hearts and
has warned us of, and corrected, this error in Scripture.
Paul wrote to Christians living in one of the greatest
and most powerful cities of the ancient world – Rome. All
around them they would have seen wealth, power, and
status aunted and gloried. But Paul was not interested
in any of this. His focus was on the gospel. In chapter 1,
he describes the gospel as “the power of God for salvation
to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). And not only that,
“in it the righteousness of God is revealed … as it is writ-
ten, “The righteous shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17).
But in order to recognise the power and grace of the
gospel, we have to see our real situation. So in verse 18,
Paul proclaims that “the wrath of God is revealed from
heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
men.” This is relevant for us all because, in chapter 2, Paul
makes it clear that the whole world is guilty before God.
The bad news prepares us for the good news. In chap-
ter 3 from verse 21, we can see the beauty of justication
by faith; that we are not made right with God through
anything that we do. But we are made right with God only
through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
BLESSINGS OF THE TRUE GOSPEL 93
This is not a new concept. In chapter 4 there are ex-
amples of two people who were justied, made right with
God, by faith in him. Both Abraham and David were jus-
tied through faith alone. This has always been the way
God works.
When Paul began chapter 5 with the word therefore, he
did not want us to miss his point. After he had described
the faith of Abraham, Paul continued “therefore, since
we have been justied by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the way—Paul
wanted us to see—that God saves. Justication by faith
is biblical.
So let me clarify and dene what justication by faith
means. Justication by faith is an act of God’s free grace.
God, on his own initiative, forgives and pardons all our
sins and declares us righteous in his sight because of the
righteousness of Christ imputed to us. And we receive this
gift only by faith in the nished work of the Lord Jesus
Christ alone. That is justication by faith.
It is hard for people to accept that they are not in
charge. Every person wants to believe that he is the hero
of his own story. But God gives justication freely; we
cannot earn it. Remember that Luther re-discovered,
reading Romans 1:17, that the righteous live by faith. This
discovery transformed his life. The Holy Spirit illuminat-
ed his mind and all of a sudden the man who had been
sweating and agonising to earn his salvation realised that
man is justied by faith.
Are we preaching this? Are we liberated by the mes-
sage of justication by faith or do we still think that we
are justied through what we do? Are we embracing justi-
cation by faith with all our hearts and strength? We need
PROSPERITY?94
people who will go out there and let Africa know that God
justies by faith.
Blessing Number One: Peace with God
Once Paul had explained justication by faith, he told
the Romans about the benets and blessings which it
brings. This chapter is about the blessings of the gospel
of justication by faith. We can see the rst blessing in
that rst verse of chapter ve: “Therefore, since we have
been justied by faith, we
have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Remember what we saw in Romans 1:18: the whole
world is guilty. This is a problem that only God can solve.
“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). This is the power
and purpose of Christ’s death: “while we were enemies we
were reconciled to God” (Rom. 5:10). Paul was not talking
mainly about inward peace; an experience or a feeling.
This is about a broken relationship with God that he has
restored.
A sinner is God’s enemy. Without faith in Jesus Christ,
we are still at war with God. Why? God is holy and righ-
teous, but we have rejected his righteousness. God is
exalted above everything else and he dwells in holiness,
yet we have chosen to ght against his holiness with our
self-centred sin. Our self-centredness gets us nowhere be-
cause God requires nothing less than righteousness. And
none of us is righteous (Rom. 3:9-18, 23).
Therefore, we need this justication so that we may
have peace with God. We are all sinful because of our
perverted human nature. Adam’s sin was imputed to us;
we are the heirs of Adam who disobeyed God and brought
BLESSINGS OF THE TRUE GOSPEL 95
sin into the human race. And so, from birth, we are at war
with God. He is holy and requires holiness, but we fall
short of that holiness.
Any honest assessment will conclude that our nature
is corrupt. Our emotions, our understanding, our words,
and our actions all separate us from God. We cannot have
a good relationship with God by our own eorts. We are
not only sinful in Adam, but we ourselves also sin and
desire sin. And God condemns sinners because he is just.
So can you understand that peace with God is an amaz-
ing blessing? It should thrill us that a sinner—condemned,
wretched, deserving justice—can now have peace with
God. If you are justied by faith, you are reconciled; you
are at a place of peace with your maker. This is what we
should be saying every Sunday: man can have peace with
God. Christians are no longer at war with God. We are
now on God’s side.
What are the implications and consequences of this
peace with God? Firstly, we do not need to question our
relationship with our God. The punishment which should
have fallen on us, fell on our substitute on the cross of Cal-
vary. And the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ has
been imputed to us. When God looks at us, he no longer
sees us; he sees the righteousness of his Son and we are
right in his sight.
I have a daughter who is in primary school. When a bill
comes for fees, I go to the school and I give the headmas-
ter money. So when someone asks the class how many
people have paid, she will raise her hand, even though
she did not give the money. The money is mine, but she
is considered to have paid. That is what God has done
for us in Christ. So when the devil reminds us of our sin
and makes us doubt our relationship with God, we have
PROSPERITY?96
an answer. God’s righteousness has been credited to us
through the Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace with God
through Jesus.
And so the peace that Jesus Christ has bought between
us and God also brings peace into our hearts. Our con-
sciences no longer keep us from God. When we are justi-
ed and the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, our
consciences no longer accuse us. The justice of God has
been met in the Lord Jesus Christ’s death for us. Satan
can accuse us, but he cannot condemn us because we have
been justied by God himself.
Are we teaching this? I remember a young man who
came to me some years back and told me, “Pastor, I back-
slid last night” and I said: “Why?” He said to me: “I dreamt
that I was drunk, so my salvation is gone.” This is a result
of the fact that we are not grounding people in the truth
that salvation does not depend on us. Justication does
not depend on what we do; it depends on what the Lord
Jesus Christ has done and on his righteousness. There are
many people who are worried about their salvation and
they need us to go and tell them that if you are justied
by faith in Christ Jesus, you have everlasting peace with
God. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in
Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).
The Only Way to Peace with God
So that is blessing number one: “Therefore, since we
have been justied by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). Before moving
on to the next blessing, I want to emphasise that word
through.
BLESSINGS OF THE TRUE GOSPEL 97
Some people think and act as though peace with God
can be won in other ways. But Paul made it clear that
peace with God is only through the Lord Jesus Christ. He
is the only mediator between man and God. There is no
other way to have this great blessing of peace with God. It
must be through Jesus Christ.
We had a very small post oce where I lived. I was
in a village called Ugunja. If you wrote to us, you had to
write on the letter: PO Box 13, Ugunja, via Siaya. In order
to get to us, that letter had to go via Siaya. And this peace
with God is via Jesus Christ. There is no other route. It is
the Lord Jesus Christ who has lived a perfect life. And his
perfect life fullled the law on our behalf. Only the Lord
Jesus Christ has lived a perfect life without sin.
Jesus Christ is the one who atoned for our sin by his
precious blood. He is the only one who has satised God’s
moral law. He is the only man who has met God’s standard
of perfection. And therefore peace with God is through
Jesus Christ. Are we telling people this every Sunday?
Does our daily life show that we believe that peace with
God is through the Lord Jesus Christ?
You can receive an anointing on your head or on your
feet or you can swim in the pool. That cannot bring peace
with God; it will not. That is the work of paganism and it
must be thrown out. We must go and tell people: you can
have peace with God through Jesus Christ and through
Jesus Christ alone.
One of my favourite passages that highlights the suf-
ciency of Christ for everything is 1 Corinthians 1:30-31:
“And because of him [God] you are in Christ Jesus, who
became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanc-
tication and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the
one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”
PROSPERITY?98
Like the rich young man in the gospels, some people
go away sad when we preach of the eternal blessings of
the gospel. But peace with God does not come through
material possessions. Think of the men who are preach-
ing the gospel in the rural corners of this land. Those
pastors who are labouring with no shoes and no bicycles
are richly blessed. They have peace with God and they are
proclaiming this peace with God through Jesus Christ.
That is what we must stand for.
Blessing Number Two: Access to God
We see the next blessing in verse two of Romans 5:
“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into
this grace in which we stand.” Now, because we have been
justied and have peace with God, we also have access to
God. We have obtained access, which we do not deserve,
to the throne of grace before which we now stand.
We used to be rebels barred from God’s presence. Let
me give you an example. During the Kenyan elections of
1992, in the time of President Moi, many people defected
from their parties to join KANU (Moi’s party). These de-
fectors came from rural areas to the State House and they
were brought into the President’s chamber. They enjoyed
food there and met with the President. And the President
even started going on the campaign trail with them. They
used to be opposed to the President, but now they had
access, overowing access, to the State House.
In a similar way, each of us was a rebel against God.
But the Lord Jesus Christ, since we have been justied by
faith, has led us to God himself. And now we have access.
We have been ushered into the presence of God. His justi-
cation brings us security and condence before our God.
BLESSINGS OF THE TRUE GOSPEL 99
The presence of God has always been important to
God’s people. Remember that the Temple was a sign of
God’s presence with his people. But even the Temple was
divided into three: the holy of holies, the holy place, and
the outer court. In the holy of holies was the mercy seat;
only the high priest could enter that place and he did so
only once a year to make a sacrice for the people’s sins.
But the sacrice for us has been made once and for all.
And so, now we are brought by the Lord Jesus into the
very presence of the Most High God. We have access to
God.
The writer of the book of Hebrews summarised it well
in Hebrews 4:14-16:
Since then we have a great high priest who has
passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God,
let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have
a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been
tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then
with condence draw near to the throne of grace,
that we may receive mercy and nd grace to help
in time of need.
What we have in Jesus Christ is better than what the
Old Testament saints had. In the Lord Jesus Christ, you
have a high priest who gives you access to God. Therefore,
you can now go to the throne of grace with boldness. We
have gained access through Jesus Christ and so we come
with condence. This is a great blessing.
But we must not get the wrong idea about the con-
dence that we can and should have in Jesus. God is a
consuming re. We dare not mess around with God. We
PROSPERITY?100
see in the Bible the fate of those who dishonour and dis-
regard God. He is holy and set apart and he demands our
reverence. When we go to him, we do not go to argue or
demand.
This condence is our knowledge that the access Christ
has won for us, and we have received by faith, is not in
doubt. God has done it and it is sure. Imagine you have
been invited to a wedding. And if they asked you at the en-
trance why you should be allowed in, you would produce
your invitation. You are invited; you do not need to worry.
The Lord Jesus Christ has invited us and has given us his
righteousness. We do not go in condence because of our
own achievements. But we go in condence because he
has washed us with his blood and his righteousness has
been given to us. It is condence based on what the Lord
Jesus Christ has done on our behalf.
Despite the fact that we have access to God, some
churches and preachers try to put a barrier between
Christians and God. We do not need a priest to give us
access to God. But it is not only Catholic priests who set
themselves up as gatekeepers to the throne of grace. We
have many churches that have fallen to the temptation of
the personality cult. The pastor is the only one who can
pray for you. He is the only one who can bless you. If he
goes on safari in Tanzania, you need to ask him to say
a prayer for you over the phone. Christians need to be
taught that they have access to God through Christ.
In most of our cultures, we are used to having people
represent us; people who stand in between us and God.
But this is not fruit of the gospel. Every believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ has obtained access to God. And this is
not by our work, by the money we give, by our strength,
by our abilities, or by our background. It is simply because
BLESSINGS OF THE TRUE GOSPEL 101
God has declared us righteous on the merit of his son that
we have this great blessing of access to God.
Blessing Number Three: Joy from the Hope of
God’s Glory
But there are more blessings to come. Peace with God
and access to God in Christ Jesus give us joy because of the
hope they give us. Look at Romans 5:2 again: “Through
him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace
in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of
God.”
This word rejoice is also translated as boast and if we
combine those two words, we get a good idea of Paul’s
meaning. What he is talking about is an enthusiastic
condence in something beautiful.
i
When we know that
something precious—a person, a gift, a treasure—is
reliably ours, the experience of that is joy. In Jesus we
are sure of our claim on the very best thing. We rejoice
in the hope of the glory of God. Paul told the Romans,
look: Abraham was justied by faith. David was justied
by faith. And the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ
on Calvary has given us peace with God. It has given us
access. And because of this we can now rejoice in the hope
of sharing the glory of God.
But just as we have to be careful to dene blessing, the
words joy and rejoice are also misused today. This joy we
are talking about does not come as a result of what we
obtain on the outside. It is a joy that comes as a result of
us being justied by faith in Christ Jesus. Joy is not de-
i Darrell Bock, The Bible Knowledge Word Study: Acts-Ephesians
(Colorado Springs: Cook, 2006), 152.
PROSPERITY?102
ned by noise or laughter. I have seen people laughing the
whole night, claiming that to be the joy of the Lord. That
is not the joy of the Lord. The joy Paul told us about is a
delight in the certainty of eternal blessing. We are sure
that we are going to share the glory of God.
This is not a vague hope, like hoping to get a good
job or a nice house in the future. This is being sure that
one day we shall see the glory of God who has justied
us. Without any shadow of a doubt we know that he has
saved us; he has rescued us, and we are going to share his
glory. In Colossians 1:27 it says: “Christ in you, the hope
of glory.” If you have the Lord Jesus Christ in you, then
you can have the hope of glory.
And we do not hope for something which is yet to ex-
ist. God is not fooling us. His glory has been there for all
time and it sustains the world. One day it will cover the
earth and we will share in it. If you have watched a play
in a theatre, you know that there is a curtain on the stage.
Before the drama begins, the curtain is closed. But the
players are already there and the audience is waiting for
the curtain to be removed. When the curtain is removed,
you see everything that was already there. The glory of
God is there and one day those who are justied by faith
will not only see it but they will also share in it.
Have you lost interest in the glory of God? The world
tries to distract us with the desire of sin and some want
to exchange the glory of God for what they can have here
and now. But we have something more precious than
gold, silver, or anything else this world has to oer. We
have the hope of the glory of God. You cannot nd this
blessing outside of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus knows that sharing in the glory of God
is an incomparable blessing. He earnestly desires it for
BLESSINGS OF THE TRUE GOSPEL 103
us, praying for it: “Father, I desire that they also, whom
you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my
glory that you have given me because you loved me be-
fore the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Christians
have the sure hope of sharing in the glory of God. And this
hope gives them joy.
Blessing Number Four: Joy in Suering
The world promises us things that fade away and
crumble into dust. The blessings we have in the gospel
last forever. And so another blessing we have is that, even
in our suering, we can rejoice. “Not only that, but we
rejoice in our suerings, knowing that suering produces
endurance” (Rom. 5:3). We can take delight in our suer-
ings. What a strange blessing.
If you preach this in some churches, people become
gloomy. There used to be a church in Nairobi that had
a big banner: “Stop suering - by joining the Universal
Church of Christ.” The Bible does not promise this, but
it does say we can rejoice in our suerings. Should we
remove this verse from the Bible? No. We should bow
our heads and thank God. Those who have been justied,
even though facing persecution, can and do rejoice. How
can this be?
Firstly, suering is a vital means of our sanctication.
We can rejoice in suering because tribulation produces
perseverance. (There is also bad suering. If I am pun-
ished for stealing; that is not for the glory of God and it is
not Christian suering.) When we face trouble because we
trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, God uses that to strengthen
our faith. Have you been ridiculed for your faith? When
we hold on to Christ through that, God uses it to strength-
PROSPERITY?104
en our grip on him. And the next time it happens, we hold
yet more rmly to him. Suering produces perseverance
in faith.
And perseverance, Paul tells us, produces character. A
faithful Christian is a person who has gone through trou-
ble and has been trained and moulded by it. Remember
David’s experience and how it shaped his character. When
Saul asked him if he would be able to ght against Goliath,
he had a ready answer. He looked after his father’s sheep
and when a lion or a bear had attacked the sheep, he had
killed that attacker. He had experienced how God helped
him when he was threatened and it built his character.
So he could say: “The LORD who delivered me from the
paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me
from the hand of this Philistine” (1 Sam. 17:37). Suering
produces character.
We also rejoice in suering because it reveals the pow-
er of God. One of my teachers, Martin Bussey, used to give
us an example of a missionary who went to preach in a
certain place and there was no fruit for a long time. Then
one of his children became sick and eventually died. This
missionary, as a child of God, did not suer or grieve as
the world does (1 Thess. 4:13). And the people took note.
They saw the way he handled the sickness and death of
his child and they wondered why he was dierent. And
the next day people started coming. The way a Christian
handles suering reveals the power of God. The world is
able to see the power of God and the grace of God in our
lives. And it draws people to our Saviour.
Suering also prepares us for future usefulness. Can
you imagine a preacher who is not sympathetic? Some-
times preachers need to experience suering even for the
benet of others. When we experience suering, we are
BLESSINGS OF THE TRUE GOSPEL 105
more able to sympathise with, and minister to, those who
suer.
Also, the ministry of a suering Christian carries a
special power to feed our souls. I must mention the late
John Nkarithia in Maithene-Meru. He went through a lot
of suering and sickness and he gloried God in it. If you
went to see him, you thought you would encourage him.
But you were the one who would leave the place encour-
aged. In fact, before he died he even prayed for me to go
and preach the gospel. We glorify God in our suering
when we use it to teach others.
Please be ready to prepare people for death. Do not
just pray for people to be healed. Pray and prepare them
for glory. I read Romans 8:18-39 to John Nkarithia: “I
consider that our present suerings are not worth com-
paring with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom.
8:18). The time has come for us to know, as this brother
did, that we are able to rejoice in our suerings.
And the hope that sustains us and sancties us in our
suering does not disappoint. The love of God has been
poured into our hearts. We have a hope which is certain.
In fact, Paul, writing to Timothy, said, “Christ Jesus our
hope” (1 Tim. 1:1). Jesus is our hope. The hope which is in
the Lord Jesus Christ does not disappoint.
Conclusion
You see the Trinity in the blessings of the gospel. God
the Father sent God the Son to take the punishment we
deserve so that we can have peace with God and access
to him. And he has poured love and joy and hope into
our hearts by the Holy Spirit who he has given to us.
This joy of the hope of the glory of God sustains us even
PROSPERITY?106
through suering, which only brings us closer to God and
strengthens our faith.
These are some of the blessings which we have through
the gospel of justication by faith in Jesus. Do we teach
these blessings? Are we talking about these blessings? Do
we know these blessings? Are we rejoicing in these bless-
ings? Thanks to the great love of God, which has been
poured in our hearts, we are blessed with peace, security,
hope, and joy that will last forever.
APPENDIX I
Twelve Appeals to
Prosperity Preachers
John Piper
Don’t Make Heaven Harder
Jesus said, “How dicult it will be for those who have
wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” His disciples were
astonished, as many in the “prosperity” movement should
be. So Jesus went on to raise their astonishment even
higher by saying, “It is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom
of God.” They responded in disbelief: “Then who can be
saved?” Jesus says, “With man it is impossible, but not
with God. For all things are possible with God” (Mark
10:23-27).
This means that their astonishment was warranted. A
camel can’t go through the eye of a needle. This is not a
metaphor for something requiring great eort or humble
PROSPERITY?108
sacrice. It can’t be done. We know that because Jesus
said, Impossible! That was his word, not ours. “With man
it is impossible.” The point is that the heart-change re-
quired is something man can’t do for himself. God must
do it - “…but [it is] not [impossible] with God.”
We can’t make ourselves stop treasuring money above
Christ. But God can. That is good news. And that should
be part of the message that prosperity preachers herald
before they entice people to become more camel-like.
Why would a preacher want to preach a gospel that en-
courages the desire to be rich and thus conrms people in
their natural untness for the kingdom of God?
Save People from Suicide
The apostle Paul warned against the desire to be rich.
And by implication, he warned against preachers who stir
up the desire to be rich instead of helping people get rid
of it. He warned,
Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation,
into a snare, into many senseless and harmful de-
sires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.
It is through this craving that some have wan-
dered away from the faith and pierced themselves
with many pangs. (1 Tim. 6:9-10)
These are very serious words, but they don’t seem to
nd an echo in the preaching of the prosperity gospel. It
is not wrong for the poor to want measures of prosperity
so that they have what they need and can be generous and
can devote time and energy to Christ-exalting tasks other
APPENDIX I 109
than scraping to get by. It is not wrong to seek Christ for
help in this quest. He cares about our needs (Matt. 6:33).
But we all—poor and rich—are constantly in danger
of setting our aections (1 John 2:15-16) and our hope (1
Tim. 6:17) on riches rather than Christ. This “desire to be
rich” is so strong and so suicidal that Paul uses the stron-
gest language to warn us. My appeal is that prosperity
preachers would do the same.
Warn Against Weak Investments
Jesus warns against the eort to lay up treasures on
earth; that is, he tells us to be givers, not keepers. “Do
not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth
and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but
lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither
moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in
and steal” (Matt. 6:19-20).
Yes, we all keep something. Jesus assumes that. He
does not expect, except in extreme cases, that our giving
will mean we will no longer be able to give. There may be
a time when we will give our life for someone and thus no
longer be able to give any more. But ordinarily Jesus ex-
pects us to live in a way that there is an ongoing pattern of
work and earning and simple living and continual giving.
But given the built-in tendency toward greed in all of
us, Jesus feels the need to warn against “laying up trea-
sures on earth.” It looks like gain, but it leads only to loss
(“moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal”).
My appeal is that Jesus’ warning nd a strong echo in the
mouths of prosperity preachers.
PROSPERITY?110
Grow Lavish Givers
Getting rich is not what work is for. Paul said we should
not steal. The alternative was hard work with our own
hands. But the main purpose was not merely to hoard or
even to have. The purpose was “to have in order to give.”
“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labour,
doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may
have something to share with anyone in need” (Eph.
4:28). This is not a justication for being rich in order
to give more. It is a call to make more and keep less so
you can give more. There is no reason why a person who
prospers more and more in his business should increase
the lavishness of his lifestyle indenitely. Paul would say,
cap your expenditures and give the rest away.
I can’t determine your “cap.” But in all the texts we
are looking at in this chapter, there is an impulse toward
simplicity and lavish generosity, not lavish possessions.
When Jesus said, “Sell your possessions, and give to the
needy” (Luke 12:33), he seemed to imply not that the dis-
ciples were wealthy and could give from their overow. It
seems they had so few liquid assets that they had to sell
something in order to have something to give.
Why would preachers want to encourage people to
think that they should possess wealth in order to be a
lavish giver? Why not encourage them to keep their lives
more simple and be an even more lavish giver? Would
that not add to their generosity a strong testimony that
Christ, and not possessions, is their treasure?
Foster Faith in God
The reason the writer to the Hebrews tells us to be con-
tent with what we have is that the opposite implies less
APPENDIX I 111
faith in the promises of God. He says, “Keep your life free
from love of money, and be content with what you have,
for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So
we can condently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not
fear; what can man do to me?’” (Heb. 13:5-6).
On the one hand, we may trust in the Lord to be our
helper. He will provide and protect. And in that sense
there is a measure of prosperity he will give us. “Your
heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (Matt.
6:32). But, on the other hand, when it says, “Keep your
life free from love of money, and be content with what you
have” because God promises never to leave us, it must
mean that we can easily move from trusting God for our
needs to using God for our wants.
The line between “God help me,” and “God make me
rich,” is real, and the writer to the Hebrews doesn’t want
us to cross it. Preachers should help their people to re-
member and recognize this line rather than speaking as
though it weren’t there.
Eliminate Choking Hazards
Jesus warns that the word of God, the gospel, which is
meant to give us life, can be choked to death by riches. He
says it is like a seed that grows up among thorns: “They
are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are
choked by the … riches … of life, and their fruit does not
mature” (Luke 8:14).
Prosperity preachers should warn their hearers that
there is a kind of nancial prosperity that can choke them
to death. Why would we want to encourage people to
pursue the very thing that Jesus warns can make them
fruitless?
PROSPERITY?112
Preserve the Salt and Light
What is it about Christians that makes them the salt
of the earth and the light of the world? It is not wealth.
The desire for wealth and the pursuit of wealth tastes and
looks just like the world. Desiring to be rich makes us
like the world, not dierent. At the very point where we
should taste dierent, we have the same bland covetous-
ness that the world has. In that case, we don’t oer the
world anything dierent from what it already believes in.
The great tragedy of prosperity preaching is that a per-
son does not have to be spiritually awakened in order to
embrace it; one needs only to be greedy. Getting rich in
the name of Jesus is not the salt of the earth or the light
of the world. In this, the world simply sees a reection of
itself. And if they are “converted” to this, they have not
been truly converted, but only put a new name on an old
life.
The context of Jesus’ saying shows us what the salt
and light are. They are the joyful willingness to suer for
Christ. Here is what Jesus said,
Blessed are you when others revile you and per-
secute you and utter all kinds of evil against you
falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for
your reward is great in heaven, for so they per-
secuted the prophets who were before you. You
are the salt of the earth ... You are the light of the
world. (Matt. 5:11-14)
What will make the world taste the salt and see the
light of Christ in us is not that we love wealth the same
way they do. Rather, it will be the willingness and the abil-
ity of Christians to love others through suering, all the
APPENDIX I 113
while rejoicing because their reward is in heaven with Je-
sus. “Rejoice and be glad [in hardship] … You are the salt
of the earth.” The saltiness is the taste of joy in hardship.
This is unusual life that the world can taste as dierent.
Such life is inexplicable on human terms. It is super-
natural. But to attract people with promises of prosperity
is simply natural. It is not the message of Jesus. It is not
what he died to achieve.
Don’t Conceal the Cost
Missing from most prosperity preaching is the fact that
the New Testament emphasizes the necessity of suering
far more than it does the notion of material prosperity.
Jesus said, “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A
servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted
me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word,
they will also keep yours” (John 15:20). Or again he said,
“If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how
much more will they malign the members of his house-
hold” (Matt. 10:25).
Paul reminded the new believers on his missionary
journeys, “through many tribulations we must enter the
kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). And he told the believers
in Rome that their suerings were a necessary part of the
path to eternal inheritance.
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit
that we are children of God, and if children, then
heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ,
provided we suer with him in order that we may
also be gloried with him. For I consider that the
suerings of this present time are not worth com-
PROSPERITY?114
paring with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
(Rom. 8:16-18)
Peter too said that suering is the normal pathway to
God’s eternal blessing.
Beloved, do not be surprised at the ery trial when
it comes upon you to test you, as though something
strange were happening to you. But rejoice inso-
far as you share Christ’s suerings, that you may
also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are
blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God
rests upon you. (1 Pet. 4:12-14)
Suering is the normal cost of godliness. “Indeed,
all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be
persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). I am aware that these words
on suering move back and forth between a more general
suering as part of the fall (Rom. 8:18-25) and specic
suering owing to human hostilities. But when it comes
to God’s purposes in our suering there is no substantial
dierence.
Prosperity preachers should include in their messages
signicant teaching about what Jesus and the apostles
said about the necessity of suering. It must come, Paul
said (Acts 14:22), and we do young disciples a disservice
not to tell them that early. Jesus even said it before con-
version so that prospective believers would count the
cost: “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce
all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).
APPENDIX I 115
Uphold the Value of Suering
The New Testament not only makes clear that suer-
ing is necessary for followers of Christ, it is also at pains
to explain why that it is the case and what God’s purposes
in it are. These purposes are crucial for believers to know.
God has revealed them to help us understand why we suf-
fer and to bring us through like gold through re.
In Let the Nations Be Glad, in the chapter on suf-
fering, I unfold these purposes. Here I will only name
them and say to the prosperity preachers: Include the
great biblical teachings in your messages. New believ-
ers need to know why God ordains for them to suer.
1. Suering deepens faith and holiness.
2. Suering makes your cup increase.
3. Suering is the price of making others bold.
4. Suering lls up what is lacking in Christ’s aictions.
5. Suering enforces the missionary command to go.
6. The supremacy of Christ is manifest in suering.
Teach Them to Go
A fundamental change happened with the coming of
Christ into the world. Until that time, God had focused his
redemptive work on Israel with occasional works among
the nations. Paul said, “In past generations [God] allowed
all the nations to walk in their own ways” (Acts 14:16). He
called them “times of ignorance.” “The times of ignorance
God overlooked, but now he commands all people every-
where to repent” (Acts 17:30). Now the focus has shifted
from Israel to the nations. Jesus said, “The kingdom of
God will be taken away from you [Israel] and given to a
people producing its fruits [followers of the Messiah]”
PROSPERITY?116
(Matt. 21:43). A hardening has come upon Israel until the
full number of the nations comes in (Rom. 11:25).
One of the main dierences between these two eras is
that in the Old Testament, God gloried himself largely
by blessing Israel so that the nations could see and know
that the Lord is God. “May [the Lord] maintain the cause
of … his people Israel, as each day requires, that all the
peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there
is no other” (1 Kings 8:59-60). Israel was not yet sent on
a “Great Commission” to gather the nations; rather, she
was gloried so that the nations would see her greatness
and come to her.
So when Solomon built the temple of the Lord it was
spectacularly lavish with overlaid gold.
The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long,
twenty cubits wide, and twenty cubits high, and
he overlaid it with pure gold. He also overlaid an
altar of cedar. And Solomon overlaid the inside of
the house with pure gold, and he drew chains of
gold across, in front of the inner sanctuary, and
overlaid it with gold. And he overlaid the whole
house with gold, until all the house was nished.
Also the whole altar that belonged to the inner
sanctuary he overlaid with gold. (1 Kings 6:20–22)
And when he furnished it, the gold was again just as
abundant.
So Solomon made all the vessels that were in the
house of the Lord: the golden altar, the golden ta-
ble for the bread of the Presence, the lampstands
of pure gold, ve on the south side and ve on the
APPENDIX I 117
north, before the inner sanctuary; the owers, the
lamps, and the tongs, of gold; the cups, snuers,
basins, dishes for incense, and re pans, of pure
gold; and the sockets of gold, for the doors of the
innermost part of the house. (1 Kings 7:48-50)
It took Solomon seven years to build the house of the
Lord. Then he took thirteen years to build his own house
(1 Kings 6:38-7:1). It too was lavish with gold and costly
stones (1 Kings 7, 10).
Then, when all was built, the point of this opulence is
seen in 1 Kings 10 as the queen of Sheba, representing
the Gentile nations, comes to see the glory of the house
of God and of Solomon. When she saw it, “there was no
more breath in her” (1 Kings 10:5). She said, “Blessed be
the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and set you
on the throne of Israel! Because the Lord loved Israel for-
ever, he has made you king” (1 Kings 10:9).
In other words, the pattern in the Old Testament is
a come-see religion. There is a geographic center of the
people of God. There is a physical temple, an earthly king,
a political regime, an ethnic identity, an army to ght
God’s earthly battles, and a band of priests to make ani-
mal sacrices for sins.
With the coming of Christ all of this changed. There
is no geographic center for Christianity (John 4:20-24);
Jesus has replaced the temple, the priests, and the sac-
rices (John 2:19; Heb. 9:25-26); there is no Christian
political regime because Christ’s kingdom is not of this
world (John 18:36); and we do not ght earthly battles
with chariots and horses or bombs and bullets, but spir-
itual ones with the word and the Spirit (Eph. 6:12-18; 2
Cor. 10:3-5).
PROSPERITY?118
All of this supports the great change in mission. The
New Testament does not present a come-see religion, but
a go-tell religion. “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have com-
manded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the
end of the age’” (Matt. 28:18-20).
The implications of this are huge for the way we live
and the way we think about money and lifestyle. One of
the main implications is that we are “sojourners and ex-
iles” (1 Pet. 2:11) on the earth. We do not use this world
as though it were our primary home. “Our citizenship is
in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus
Christ” (Phil. 3:20).
This leads to a wartime lifestyle. That means we don’t
amass wealth to show the world how rich our God can
make us. We work hard and seek a wartime austerity for
the cause of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth.
We maximize giving to the war eort, not comforts at
home. We raise our children with a view to helping them
embrace the suering that it will cost to nish the mission.
So if a prosperity preacher asks me about all the prom-
ises of wealth for faithful people in the Old Testament, my
response is: Read your New Testament carefully and see
if you see the same emphasis. You won’t nd it. And the
reason is that things have dramatically changed.
“We brought nothing into the world, and we cannot
take anything out of the world. But if we have food and
clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Tim. 6:7-8).
Why? Because the call to Christ is a call to “share in suf-
fering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:3). The
APPENDIX I 119
emphasis of the New Testament is not riches to lure us in
to sin, but sacrice to carry us out.
One providential conrmation that God intended this
distinction between a come-see orientation in the Old
Testament and a go-tell orientation in the New Testament
is the dierence between the language of the Old Testa-
ment and the language of the New. Hebrew, the language
of the Old Testament, was shared by no other peoples
of the ancient world. It was unique to Israel. This is an
astonishing contrast with Greek, the language of the New
Testament, which was the trade language of the Roman
world. So the very languages of the Old and New Testa-
ments signal the dierence in mission. Hebrew was not
well-suited for missions to the ancient world. Greek was
ideally suited for missions to the Roman world.
Separate from the Peddlers
The apostle Paul set us an example by how vigilant he
was not to give the impression that he was in the ministry
for money. He said that ministers of the word have a right
to make a living from the ministry. But then, to show us
the danger in that, he refuses to fully use that right.
It is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not
muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” … It
was written for our sake, because the ploughman
should plough in hope and the thresher thresh in
hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spir-
itual things among you, is it too much if we reap
material things from you? If others share this
rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nev-
ertheless, we have not made use of this right, but
PROSPERITY?120
we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in
the way of the gospel of Christ. (1 Cor. 9:9-12)
In other words, he renounced a legitimate right in or-
der not to give anyone the impression that money was the
motivation of his ministry. He did not want the money of
his converts: “We never came with words of attery, as
you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness”
(1 Thess. 2:5).
He preferred to work with his hands rather than give
the impression that he was peddling the gospel:
I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. You
yourselves know that these hands ministered to
my necessities and to those who were with me. In
all things I have shown you that by working hard
in this way we must help the weak and remember
the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said,
‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ (Acts
20:33-35)
He knew that there were peddlers of God’s word who
thought “godliness is a means of gain” (1 Tim. 6:5-6). But
he refused to do anything that would put him in that cat-
egory: “We are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word,
but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the
sight of God we speak in Christ” (2 Cor. 2:17).
Too many prosperity preachers not only give the
impression that they “peddle God’s word” and make
“godliness a means of gain” but actually develop a bogus
theology to justify their extravagant displays of wealth.
Paul did just the opposite.
APPENDIX I 121
Commend Christ as Gain
My biggest concern about the eects of the prosperity
movement is that it diminishes Christ by making him
less central and less satisfying than his gifts. Christ is not
magnied most by being the giver of wealth. He is mag-
nied most by satisfying the soul of those who sacrice to
love others in the ministry of the gospel.
When we commend Christ as the one who makes us
rich, we glorify riches, and Christ becomes a means to the
end of what we really want—namely, health, wealth, and
prosperity. But when we commend Christ as the one who
satises our soul forever—even when there is no health,
wealth, and prosperity—then Christ is magnied as more
precious than all those gifts.
We see this in Philippians 1:20-21. Paul says, “It is my
eager expectation and hope that … Christ will be honoured
in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is
Christ, and to die is gain.” Honoring Christ happens when
we treasure him so much that dying is gain. Because dy-
ing means “to depart and be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23).
This is the missing note in prosperity preaching. The
New Testament aims at the glory of Christ, not the glory
of his gifts. To make that clear, it puts the entire Chris-
tian life under the banner of joyful self-denial. “If anyone
would come after me, let him deny himself and take up
his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34). “I have been cruci-
ed with Christ” (Gal. 2:20).
But even though self-denial is a hard road that leads
to life (Matt. 7:14), it is the most joyful of all roads. “The
kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a eld, which
a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and
sells all that he has and buys that eld” (Matt. 13:44).
Jesus says that nding Christ as our treasure makes all
PROSPERITY?122
other possessions joyfully dispensable. “In his joy he goes
and sells all that he has and buys that eld.”
I do not want prosperity preachers to stop calling peo-
ple to maximum joy. On the contrary, I appeal to them
to stop encouraging people to seek their joy in material
things. The joy Christ oers is so great and so durable
that it enables us to lose prosperity and still rejoice. “You
joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since
you knew that you yourselves had a better possession
and an abiding one” (Heb. 10:34). The grace to be joyful
in the loss of prosperity—that is the miracle prosperity
preachers should seek. That would be the salt of the earth
and the light of the world. That would magnify Christ as
supremely valuable.
APPENDIX II
Money
Wayne Grudem
Money is fundamentally good and provides many op-
portunities for glorifying God, but also many temptations
to sin.
People sometimes say that “money is the root of all
evil,” but the Bible does not say that. Paul says in 1 Tim-
othy 6:10, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils,
but that speaks of the love of money, not money itself.
In fact, money is fundamentally good because it is a
human invention that sets us apart from the animal king-
dom and enables us to subdue the earth by producing
from the earth goods and services that bring benet to
others. Money enables all of mankind to be productive
and enjoy the fruits of that productivity thousands of
times more extensively than we could if no human being
had money, and we just had to barter with each other.
Without money, I would have only one thing to trade
with, and that is copies of my books. I would have hun-
PROSPERITY?124
dreds of copies of my book Systematic Theology,
i
for ex-
ample, but in a world with no money I would have no idea
if one volume was worth a loaf of bread, or two shirts, or
a bicycle, or a car. And the grocer might not be interested
in reading my book, so he might not trade me a basket of
groceries for even 100 books! Soon even the merchants
who did accept my book in trade would not want another
one, or a third one, and I would end up with piles of books
and no ability to nd more people who wanted to trade
something for them. Without money, I would soon be
forced to revert to subsistence living by planting a garden
and raising cows and chickens, and maybe bartering a few
eggs from time to time. And so would you, with whatever
you could produce.
But money is the one thing that everybody is willing to
trade goods for, because it is the one thing that everybody
else is willing to trade goods for. With a system of money,
I suddenly know how much one volume of my book is
worth. It is worth $40, because that is how much thou-
sands of people have decided they are willing to pay for it.
Money also stores the value of something until I spend
it on something else. When I get the $40, that money
temporarily holds the value of my book until I can go to
the store and tell the grocer I would like to trade the $40
for some groceries. The same grocer who would not have
traded any groceries for a theology book now eagerly ac-
cepts my $40 in money, because he knows that he can
trade that money for anything in the world that he wants
and that costs $40.
i Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical
Doctrine (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1994; Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1994).
APPENDIX II 125
So money is simply a tool for our use, and we can
rightly thank God that in his wisdom he ordained that
we would invent it and use it. It is simply a “medium of
exchange,” something that makes voluntary exchanges
possible. It is a commodity . . . that is legally established
as an exchangeable equivalent of all other commodities,
such as goods and services, and is used as a measure of
their comparative values on the market.
ii
Money makes voluntary exchanges more fair, less
wasteful, and far more extensive. We need money in the
world in order for us to be good stewards of the earth and
to glorify God through using it wisely.
If money were evil in itself, then God would not have
any. But he says, “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine,
declares the LORD of hosts” (Hag. 2:8).
It all belongs to him, and he entrusts it to us so that
through it we would glorify him.
Money provides many opportunities to glorify God:
through investing and expanding our stewardship and
thus imitating God’s sovereignty and wisdom; through
meeting our own needs and thus imitating God’s inde-
pendence; through giving to others and thus imitating
God’s mercy and love; or through giving to the church and
to evangelism and thus bringing others into the kingdom.
Yet because money carries so much power and so much
value, it is a heavy responsibility, and it presents constant
temptations to sin. We can become ensnared in the love
of money (1 Tim. 6:10), and it can turn our hearts from
God. Jesus warned, “You cannot serve God and money”
ii The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Houghton Miin, 1992), 1166.
PROSPERITY?126
(Matt. 6:24), and he warned against accumulating too
much that we hoard and do not use for good:
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust destroy and where thieves
break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves trea-
sures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust de-
stroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will
be also. (Matt. 6:19-21)
But the distortions of something good must not cause
us to think that the thing itself is evil. Money is good in
itself, and provides us many opportunities for glorifying
God.
APPENDIX III
Prosperity Teachers
Our task in this book has been to address the core prin-
ciples and ideas of prosperity teaching, rather than argue
with particular preachers. But there are many inuential
people we have in mind who, in dierent ways and forms,
have articulated and spread this prosperity gospel.
We could reference, for example, Duncan Williams,
Benson Idahosa, David Oyedepo (founder of Winners
Chapel), John Praise, Kenneth & Gloria Copeland,
Kenneth Hagin, Marilyn Hickey, Morris Cerullo, John
Avanzini, Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn, Charles Capps, Joel
Osteen, and T.D. Jakes.
However, more than anything else, we encourage
readers to examine the preaching they hear in the light
of the Bible. We hope that this book has helped you to do
that.
APPENDIX IV
Further Reading:
Other Books on
Prosperity Teaching
Not enough has been written on this subject when you
consider the impact it is having on churches around the
world. We would like to challenge pastors and theologians
to tackle this false teaching in writing.
Here are a few valuable books for further reading:
Adeleye, Femi Preachers of a Dierent Gospel
(Hippo Books, 2011).
This Nigerian author seeks to examine the claims of
the prosperity gospel, exposing the ways in which it con-
tradicts the Bible. His book is a warning of the subtle ways
in which this false teaching has inltrated the church.
PROSPERITY?130
Fee, Gordon The Disease of the Health and
Wealth Gospels (Vancouver: Regent College,
2006).
With his background as a New Testament scholar,
Fee’s exegesis enables him to specically critique popular
Christian approaches to the themes of health and wealth
and prosperity. This helpful booklet points the reader to a
biblically faithful position.
Hanegraaf, Hank Christianity in Crisis: The
21
st
Century (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009).
Hanegraaf follows up on his inuential 1993 book
with a new eort to detail and expose the major errors
of contemporary Christianity, while providing scriptural
answers in each case.
Jones, David & Russell Woodbridge Health,
Wealth & Happiness (Grand Rapids: Kregel
2011).
Jones & Woodbridge go back to the Scriptures to set
forth a truly biblical understanding of wealth, poverty,
suering, and giving. They identify ve crucial areas of er-
ror related to the prosperity gospel movement. This book
challenges readers to rediscover the true gospel of Jesus.
McConnell, Dan A Dierent Gospel: Updated
Edition (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995).
With a pastor’s heart and a scholar’s eye, McConnell
delves into the foundation of “name it and claim it” the-
ology. In doing so, he demonstrates the dangers of its
unbiblical teaching.
APPENDIX IV 131
Associated Titles
Ferdinando, Keith The Battle is God’s (ACTS,
2012).
Addressing spiritual warfare in an African context,
this book deals with the issue of pain and suering.
Rees, Stephen Jesus: Suering Saviour, Sov-
ereign Lord (ACTS, 2012).
This collection of papers focuses on the servant songs
of Isaiah and Philippians chapter 2. These sermons, given
at various conferences around the world, are full of Christ.
They are excellent examples of how to handle the Word of
God correctly, so that God’s voice is truly heard. Such ex-
amples are greatly needed today, when so many twist the
Bible to try and make it say whatever they want it to say.
