Prosperity Gospel – 1 Corinthians 4:8-21

Her friend “was echoing the message of the so-called ‘health, wealth and prosperity gospel’—that God’s goal for us in this life is perfect health, total happiness and financial gain.”  He saw the end of the book of Job, where God restores all Job lost and more, as the standard for all believers.  But as she pointed out, it was Satan, in chapters 1 and 2, who was advocating a prosperity gospel, arguing with God that Job would curse Him if He withheld blessing from Job.  But “God asserts that Job loves him for who he is, not for what he gives.”  Paul and the apostles were other witnesses to the falsehood of the prosperity gospel.

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! 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 strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, 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.

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?  (1 Corinthians 4:8-21 ESV)

We learn here that one of the results of the immaturity and conceit of the Corinthians is that they had believed the teaching of someone in their congregation that in a spiritual sense the kingdom of God had already arrived.  This in part was their reason for thinking so highly of themselves.  They had achieved the kingdom spiritually, and apparently, in their minds, Paul was not spiritual enough to have achieved it, or so their teachers taught.

Paul admits, sarcastically, that he has not, but that he and all the other apostles are still suffering the pangs of persecution, demonstrating, nonetheless, the integrity of character Jesus modeled in his suffering.  Paul yearns for the Corinthians to recognize how foolish this perspective of theirs is and that as their spiritual father he deserves to be seen as their true guide in the gospel and imitated.  He also issues a challenge to those arrogant teachers who would delude his precious children and he promises to come with the corrective rod of apostolic power if they don’t correct this themselves.

The “prosperity” gospel is no gospel at all.  It sounds like gospel, good news, but it is a grievous error that plays on the immaturity of believers.  The kingdom’s power is being displayed in this current age, but it is not fully come either spiritually or physically.  That awaits the return of Jesus.