The So-Called "Prosperity Gospel"

Type of Doctrine: Debated

"But godliness with contentment is great gain, for 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. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires 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 wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs."

-1 Timothy 6:6-10 ESV

Why Does It Matter?

Have you ever heard someone say, "God wants you to be healthy, wealthy, or successful?" Or, "Give money and God will bless you?" These are typically taught by someone who subscribes to the so-called "prosperity gospel". I say "so-called" because it is really no gospel at all. This article will explain the teaching of the prosperity gospel.

The importance of this issue is debated. While some argue it is a primary issue, others argue it is a secondary issue (even though the prosperity gospel teachers are seriously misguided). Some of the difficulty here is that not all of the prosperity teachers subscribe to or teach the same beliefs and practices.

What Is It?

The word "gospel" means good news. Since the teachings of the prosperity gospel are contrary to the teachings of Scripture, this is not good news. Instead, it's fake news, or perhaps, deceptive news.

What is the so-called "prosperity gospel"? Put simply, it is the message that God makes people who live by faith healthy, wealthy, successful, and happy. (It's not surprising that this message would spread easily. Ironically, these things are idols in our culture and in our own hearts.)

Put simply, the prosperity gospel is the message that God makes people who live by faith healthy, wealthy, successful, and happy.

According to Britannica, the prosperity gospel is the "teaching that faith—expressed through positive thoughts, positive declarations, and donations to the church—draws health, wealth, and happiness into believers’ lives. It is also referred to as the 'health and wealth gospel' or 'name it and claim it.'"[1]

The prosperity gospel movement is also called the "Word of Faith Movement." According to GotQuestions, "Prosperity teaching prohibits God from working on His own . . . because He cannot work until we release Him to do so. Faith . . . is not submissive trust in God [but instead it] is a formula by which we manipulate the spiritual laws that prosperity teachers believe govern the universe."[2] In other words, in their view, faith is about "what we say more than whom we trust or what truths we embrace and affirm in our hearts."[3]

John Piper has provided some helpful indicators to help us spot prosperity gospel teaching. Here are Piper's six keys to detecting the prosperity gospel:

"No robust doctrine of suffering"
"No clear call to deny yourself"
"No serious exposition"
"No wrestling with tensions"
"Exorbitant lifestyles"
"Too much self."[4]

A central tenet of the movement is the idea of seed-faith. Joe Carter explains, "The doctrine of seed-faith posits that financial giving—particularly to ministries that promote prosperity gospel preachers—can be likened to planting a seed that will eventually yield a harvest of blessings. You sow a financial 'seed' into a ministry as an act of faith and, in turn, God will multiply that seed in the form of various blessings, which could be financial prosperity, physical healing, or other forms of favor. Essentially, it represents a transactional relationship between the believer and God, facilitated through a financial gift."[5] Therefore, a financial gift is a seed that is sown into a ministry which leads to blessing in the form of more money and more miracles.

Now, we'll look at some key Scriptures.

Scripture

Here are some key relevant Scriptures (emphasis mine):

[Pro 30:7-9 ESV] 7 Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: 8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, 9 lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is the LORD?" or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.
[Mat 6:19-24 ESV] 19 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 24 "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
[Mar 10:21-23 ESV] 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. 23 And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"
[Luk 12:16-21 ESV] 16 And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' 18 And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry."' 20 But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."
[1Ti 6:3-10 ESV] 3 If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, 4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. 6 But godliness with contentment is great gain, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. 8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

A Few Reflections

The Bible gives a robust, complex view of wealth. A few people in Scripture were wealthy; some asked for neither poverty nor riches; meanwhile others did not have much money at all. Even the way Jesus responded to various people shows that he didn't think of wealth in purely black and white terms. For example, to the rich young ruler he told him to sell all of his belongings and give them to the poor (Matthew 19:16-26) while Zacchaeus gave away half and Jesus seems pleased (Luke 19:8-10). At the root of it, Jesus is concerned about our hearts. "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21). And, as he claims, wherever we focus on having treasure is where our hearts will be fixated. He even ties that to worship, claiming that it is the difference between true worship and idolatry. "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money" (Matthew 6:24).

Paul gives a similar admonition. In Paul's first letter to Timothy, he says,

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

-1 Timothy 6:17-19 ESV

He doesn't say that all wealthy people must give all of their wealth away. Instead, he says don't be proud; don't set your hope on riches (since they are uncertain); God gives things to us for our enjoyment (Yes, God cares about your enjoyment!); be rich in good works; be generous and store up lasting, eternal treasure. Notice what is missing: Paul doesn't say to give so that you can get; he makes no mention about what you receive, such as health, wealth, or worldly happiness.

In other portions of Scripture, we're told that God provides for us (Matt. 6:31-32; Phil. 4:19). Jesus soothes and calms our anxious hearts saying, "For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 'Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble'" (Matthew 6:32-34). We are also told to give to church (1 Cor. 16:2; 2 Cor. 9:7), but we're never told that God will make us wealthy as a result.

The story is similar regarding health and success. We're told that exercise can be helpful for our physical bodies (1 Tim. 4:8) and we should pray for sickness to go away (James 5:14-16), but we're never promised a life without health challenges. Many verses provide principles for success (especially see Proverbs), but success is not promised either. Furthermore, the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus himself all ran into significant challenges. At times, they appeared to be failures in the eyes of the world. Jesus even learned obedience through suffering (Hebrews 5:8).

Instead, it seems that problems are promised to refine our faith (James 1:2-4). Trials also come because we live in a fallen world with sinners, and we have a spiritual enemy (Gen. 3; 1 John 3:13). John writes, "We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one" (1 John 5:19). After Paul is almost killed by stoning, Luke reports this, "When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:21-22; emphasis mine).

On the other hand, true success is faithfulness to God regardless of what happens. Consider this attitude when facing the threat of death by fire, "If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up" (Dan. 3:17-18; emphasis mine). Did the world consider Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego successful? No; it tried to kill them. But where they successful according to God? Yes!

That story of faithfulness as success is true of many people in Scripture (e.g., Abraham, Joseph, Job, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego). The preeminent successful person in Scripture is Jesus. He is the only person who is perfect. He is the only person who is God. And, guess what, faithfulness cost him his health (i.e., his life). He wasn't rich. He didn't seem to be successful in the worldly way of defining it. So, it begs the question, was Jesus not faithful or successful according to the prosperity gospel?

Many times, it becomes evident that a passage of Scripture is not being properly understood or properly taught by prosperity teachers. Frequently, the context isn't about money. Occasionally, the interpretations get fanciful. (I once heard a preacher use a certain Bible verse reference number to argue that we needed to give that amount so we could be blessed.)

In his article titled, "Bible Verses Prosperity Preachers Wish Didn’t Exist," Conrad Mbewe has said,

Prosperity preachers prefer verses that address holistic prosperity—and torture them until they mean material prosperity. This is not faithfully handling God’s Word. Don’t get me wrong. We should praise God for Christians who have good jobs resulting in large bank accounts. We should ask God to give them wisdom to use their wealth for his glory.[6]

I've heard a few people talk about how Scripture presents the righteous rich, unrighteous rich, righteous poor, and unrighteous poor. I find that helpful, but I want to add that it also presents people in between the two extremes (e.g., such as the request for neither poverty nor riches in Prov. 30:7-9).

Here is one way to look at prosperity teaching: it is over-realized eschatology. What do I mean by that? I mean that many of the promises of the prosperity gospel are true, just not in this life. There are true in the next life. In the next life we will be perfectly healed, wealthy, and successful in God's sight and by his grace and power. But even that, as good as it is, is not the main reason we want to live in Jesus's kingdom. The main reason we want to be in the kingdom, is because of Jesus himself.

Application

We should compare what we hear taught to Scripture to see if it's really true. The so-called "prosperity gospel" falls short. Our hope is not in this life, but in God and the inheritance he's protecting for us in the next one. We give money for God's glory. We exercise, work, and live for God's glory. The universe is about him, not us and what we get. Peter writes,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 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, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

-1 Peter 1:3-5 ESV

Where Can I Learn More?

End Notes:

[1] "Prosperity Gospel," Britannica, accessed March 21, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/prosperity-gospel.

[2] "What Does the Bible Say About the Prosperity Gospel?," GotQuestions, accessed March 21, 2025, https://www.gotquestions.org/prosperity-gospel.html.

[3] Ibid.

[4] John Piper, "Six Keys to Detecting the Prosperity Gospel," episode 320, April 15, 2014, in Ask Pastor John, produced by Desiring God, podcast, accessed March 21, 2025, https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/six-keys-to-detecting-the-prosperity-gospel.

[5] Joe Carter, "9 Things You Should Know About the Prosperity Gospel," September 2, 2023, The Gospel Coalition, accessed March 21, 2025, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-prosperity-gospel/.

[6] Conrad Mbewe, "Bible Verses Prosperity Preachers Wish Didn’t Exist," August 29, 2017, The Gospel Coalition, accessed March 21, 2025, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/bible-verses-prosperity-preachers-wish-didnt-exist/.