Prosperity Gospel vs. Blesing

There is a vast difference between the prosperity gospel and the Biblical conception of blessing. The first obvious difference is that the prosperity gospel, is the gospel based on a sociological idea of salvation and it is most often used to prosper the subsidizer. Whereas the actual definition of the gospel comes from the Bible, rooting from Genesis 12:1 – 3 with God's promise to Abraham and His call to Abraham's descendants.

In Romans 10: 9 – 10 it says “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” This chapter clearly describes that salvation is found through a personal profession of faith in the name and being of Jesus Christ. The idea of the prosperity gospel is that one can buy, or do enough to get into heaven. However, from a biblical standpoint, this is impossible. If one attempted to buy his/her salvation with works or money, he/she would be dedicating that money/works to a person, or purpose on earth.

In Acts 4:12 it states that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” If one were to dedicate his/her money to a person preaching the prosperity gospel, then he/she would be dedicating that money to a name under heaven. This recipient of said money is not Jesus Christ our savior and Lord, and the dedicator would not have salvation as promised.

The Biblical conception of blessing is that when God blessed Abraham he was to go out and be a blessing. God says to Abraham “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12: 2 – 3) In Wright's book The Mission of God's People, he points out that the last phrase in verse two “is actually an imperative in Hebrew - “Be a blessing!”, though it is most often translated simply as a consequential statement from the preceding phrases, “so that you will be a blessing.””¹

Wright goes on to describe the fact that through Abraham, the call to spread God's blessing was born. God's ultimate blessing is Jesus Christ; the propitiation of our sin. "My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world" (1 John 2:1, 2)

Blessing, specifically in reference to salvation, is a gift from God that only requires faith in Him. The prosperity gospel, in reference to salvation, is a deception from a mislead, or greedy subsidizer, literally attempting to sell you what he does not own to sell; salvation. The ultimate difference between the two is that one is a gift from God, and one is a deception, ultimately from the great deceiver himself.

Wright Christopher J. The Mission of God's People, (USA, Langham Partnership International, 2010), pp. 72

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