Creator, Father, King #305

My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

A huge bank account! Flashy sports cars! Expensive jewelry! Designer clothing! Annual vacations to exotic islands! A multimillion-dollar mansion! . . . God wants to give you all of this! Your righteousness and earthly wealth go hand in hand. All you have to do is name it and claim it in faith.

Does this sound like heresy to you? It should. It’s called “the prosperity gospel”—also known as the “health and wealth” or “name it and claim it” gospel—and it’s an insidious distortion of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

You need to be on your guard against it.

What’s It Mean?

Today’s devotion is similar to yesterday’s focus on Philippians 4:13. But the prosperity gospel goes beyond the blatant perversion of one verse. It’s an entire belief system that falls under the biblical category of a “false gospel” (Galatians 1:6-9).

This message is being spewed by false teachers around the world, leading millions astray. Its proponents lead some of America’s biggest churches, filling huge arenas every weekend with tens of thousands of people hungry to hear how God—like a magic genie in a bottle—will improve their health and increase their wealth . . . if they just pray hard enough. These false teachers write bestselling books, have their own TV shows, and speak at conferences.

They grossly distort today’s verse and other passages—such as Deuteronomy 8:18; Psalm 112:3; Proverbs 13:22; and 2 Corinthians 8:9—taking them completely out of context to fit their twisted theology and false narrative. When they see Philippians 4:19 or 2 Corinthians 8:9—“Though [Christ] was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make you rich”—they zoom right past the speed limit signs of proper biblical interpretation and overlay their fleshly desires onto Scripture, rather than letting Scripture properly inform their thinking. Then they spiritually poison the masses with their worthless rhetoric.

Don’t believe their lies.

If you have trusted in Christ, God loves you and absolutely wants to bless you. But he never promises us health or material wealth. What he does promise—in today’s verse and everywhere else in Scripture—is to lavish believers with every spiritual blessing that we need in this life . . . and the life to come.

That’s true riches!

Now What?

Check out 1 Timothy 6:6-10. Prosperity gospel proponents seem to skip over this passage.

Did You Know?

The prosperity gospel movement primarily arose in America in the twentieth century.