What is the prosperity gospel?

Other Beliefs & ReligionsIn theological review

The short answer

The prosperity gospel teaches that God's will for every believer is health and financial wealth now, secured by faith, positive confession and giving, often called sowing a seed, to a ministry. It is associated with teachers in the Word of Faith tradition and with popular preachers whose published books promise that God wants you rich. Scripture answers that the love of money is a root of evil, that life does not consist in possessions, and that Christ's riches for us were given by his poverty at the cross, not as a contract for our wealth.

The fuller answer

The teaching should be stated in its teachers' own terms. In the Word of Faith tradition associated with Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland, faith is a force, words release it, and giving, especially to the teacher's ministry, is sowing a seed that God must return multiplied. Joel Osteen's published books present a warmer version of the same promise: God wants you to live in abundance, enlarged and favoured, and negative words or thoughts can block it. Summaries here are of published teaching, not of private motives. In all its forms, the system makes health and wealth the normal, guaranteed state of a believer with enough faith.

For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.

1 Timothy 6:10 (BSB)

Paul, warning about teachers who imagine godliness is a means to financial gain, says the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and that some have wandered from the faith in their eagerness for it. He does not call money itself evil, and he commends contentment with food and clothing as great gain. That is the opposite centre of gravity from a gospel measured by income. Where prosperity teaching is true to Paul, it will warn its hearers off the very desire it elsewhere promises to satisfy, and it rarely does both in the same sermon.

And He said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourselves against every form of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

Luke 12:15 (BSB)

Jesus gives the same warning as a story. A man whose barns are full plans bigger barns and a life of ease, and God calls him a fool, because his soul is required that night and his stored wealth helps him not at all. Jesus introduces the parable with the rule prosperity teaching reverses: watch out for covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. A rich fool is still a fool in this story. The question it asks any gospel is whether it would have told that man he needed more faith, or more repentance.

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 through His poverty might become rich.

2 Corinthians 8:9 (BSB)

This verse is often quoted for the other side, so its context matters. Paul is collecting money for starving believers in Jerusalem, and he tells the comfortable Corinthians that Christ, though rich, became poor for their sake, so that by his poverty they might become rich. The riches in view are the riches of grace, since Paul's conclusion is not that the Corinthians should expect a multiplied return but that they should give their money away. In context, the verse funds generosity to the poor, not donations in expectation of personal wealth. That is the test to bring to any teacher: follow where the money is told to flow.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
Prosperity gospel published teaching

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