I was listening to a podcast on Issues Etc. earlier this week and I was struck by a profound thought. The title of the podcast was “The Vocation of Minister.” I’d normally link directly to it but the site appears to be down as I’m writing this, nothing will load.

The guest speaker was talking about how the word minister means “servant,” but most churches today prefer to look to ministers as leaders or CEO’s, and ministers are all too happy to accept this role. The proper role of a minister is that of a servant, and his chief task is to “administer” what God has given, His gifts.

The guest speaker then said this:

“We approach [the vocation of the minister] as a social issue, we look at what the people want. Let’s look at the word ministry. There’s an old saying… ‘The customer is always right.’ The customer knows what he wants and if you’re going to serve the customer, you better give him what he wants or you’re not going to do business with him. That’s precisely wrong when it comes to the church, because the customer is always wrong. And God is always right.

In other words, we must approach the vocation of the minister theologically (not socially). A minister of God must often preach God’s Law and His Gospel to people who don’t want any part of it. Often people don’t realize the depth of their sinfulness (including me), and they must hear God’s Law. Other times the Law has done its work and people have been cut to the heart, then they need to hear the Gospel. The customer (not a good term but I’m using it simply to make a point) is always wrong. He doesn’t want what he really needs. I am so often guilty of this. I often want authenticity, community, and whatever – but what I really need is the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. These other things are secondary to this primary need.

It is too easy to lose sight of Christ as the focal point of our churches when we operate with the assumption that the folks in the pews are right. That’s how we get mega-churches that acquiesce to, rather than transform, culture. Give the people what they want and you will grow numerically, but that’s not how ministry progress ought to be measured.

I am preparing a post on Steve Munsey, but found that I first needed to explain some of the heresies that he teaches, namely positive confession and the prosperity gospel. One of my favorite tunes is a song called “Wedding Dress” by Derek Webb. There’s a line in the song that asks,

And should I read between the lines,
To look for blessings in disguise
To make me handsome, rich and wise?
Is that really what you want?

That’s a valid question. Does God want me to be healthy and wealthy, as the prosperity gospel teaches? Most Christian leaders condemn the “prosperity gospel,” yet observers say it is enjoying new popularity in this economically tenuous time, when many people are not prospering. What’s come to be known as the prosperity gospel began as a staple of fire-and-brimstone preaching in early 20th-century revival meetings. It surged in popularity with television preachers in the 1980s, until scandals revealed that some preachers used money donated for ministry to support their own lavish lifestyles.

Now observers say the prosperity gospel is spreading among churches large and small, denominational and independent, as well as through the ministries of televangelists such as Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Paula White, Steve Munsey, Paul Couch and Kenneth Copeland. These pastors, critics say, encourage their followers to “sow a seed” of faith by spending money – often in the form of a donation to their ministries – in order to reap prosperity in the future. Please note that I recognize that many people have been blessed through these ministries, but I must point out their participation and support of this misleading and dangerous doctrine.

Many Christian leaders have long condemned the prosperity gospel as aberrant theology, but most did so quietly. No more. In the past year, African-American pastors met at a national conference to discuss a problem they see spreading in their denominations. Critics have even questioned the ministries of such nationally prominent megapastors as T.D. Jakes – whose Potter’s House does extensive outreach to the poor — and Joel Osteen — pastor of Lakewood Church, the largest megachurch in the country — saying their brand of divinely assisted self-improvement is just a vamped-up version of the prosperity gospel.

Listen to these quotes from and about Jim Bakker, after his release from 5 years in prison for defrauding Heritage USA investors:

“I’d always quoted 3 John 2, saying, ‘Above all things God wants you to prosper.’ I loved that Scripture. It looks great on a TV screen when you’re raising funds, and I interpreted it as God wants you to be rich. But when I got to the words of John, I said, ‘Now this don’t make sense.’ So I took the word prosper apart in the Greek and found out it’s made up of two words-the first word means good or well and the second road. It’s a progressive word, so it’s like a journey. So, here’s John saying, basically, ‘Beloved, I want you to have a good journey through life as your soul has a good journey to heaven.’ It was a greeting! Building theology on that is like building the church on ‘Have a nice day.’ …

I began to look up all the Scriptures used in prosperity teaching, such as ‘Give and it shall be given unto you.’ When I put that Scripture back into its context, I found Christ was teaching on forgiveness, not on money. He was teaching us that by the same measure that we forgive, we will be forgiven. . . .

I had gotten my sermons from other people. The Bible warns about the shepherds who get their messages from each other. I think today the reason we have another gospel and another Jesus being preached is because men have gotten their sermons from each other and from motivational teaching. A lot of what’s being taught today is simply motivational teaching with a few Scriptures put to it” (Source: The Re-education of Jim Bakker, ChristianityToday.com, Dec. 7, 1998).

“Bakker . . . says he has had a change of heart about the prosperity gospel. . . .

The same man who once told his PTL coworkers that ‘God wants you to be rich,’ now says he made a tragic mistake. . . .

‘For years, I helped propagate an impostor, not a true gospel, but another gospel,’ Bakker has said in his 1996 book, ‘I Was Wrong.’ …

‘The prosperity message did not line up with the tenor of the Scripture,’ he said. ‘My heart was crushed to think that I led so many people astray’” (Source: The prosperity gospel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, USA, Nov. 18, 2003).

But won’t God show us more signs and wonders and great prosperity in these last days?

People keep talking about a great end times revival, when Scripture seems to suggest mass persecution and deception in His name – the “counterfeit bride” of 2 Corinthians 4:4 and Revelation 17:5, the great whore/harlot. The end times will be full of signs and wonders, where people will chase after divine healing, prosperity and health – but will miss the whole point of the gospel. In Luke 13, when Jesus was going from town to town on His way to Jerusalem, “someone asked Him, ‘Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?’ He said to them, ‘Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. . . .’ He will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’” (Luke 13:23-27). In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” We cannot chase after signs, wonders, healings and miracles and some sort of end times revival. We must seek Christ alone and doing His will, even if His will does not ask us to operate in the realm of the supernatural. This is not to say that He won’t ask us to heal and do miraculous things, but as always, we must seek Him first and allow Him to give us direction in these matters. We mustn’t try to compete with the emerging church, new wine, and G12/cell church movements, which are heretical.

Then what is the “true” gospel?

The gospel is so simple, yet it is so common for people to leave out essential elements (or to add things like physical healing or prosperity). We must understand that eternal life is a free gift (Romans 6:23). It is not earned or deserved (Ephesians 2:8-9). No one can earn their way into heaven, because we are all sinful (Romans 3:23). Because of our sinfulness, we cannot save ourselves, we are not perfect (Matthew 5:48). However, in spite of our sin, God is merciful and does not want to punish us (1 John 4:8; Jeremiah 31:3). But the Bible also tells us that God is just, and as such He must punish sin (Exodus 34:7; Ezekiel 18:4). This creates a problem! God loves us and doesn’t want to punish us, but at the same time He is just and must punish sin. God solves this problem for us in the person and work of Jesus Christ, who came to earth and was fully God and fully man (John 1:1, 14)! What exactly did He do on earth? He died on the cross in order to pay the penalty for our sins and He rose from the grave to purchase a place for us in Heaven (Isaiah 53:6; 1 Corinthians 15:1-6). Jesus Christ bore our sin in His body on the cross and now offers us eternal life (Heaven) as a free gift. This gift is received by faith (Acts 16:31), which itself is a gift from God (Romans 12:3; 1 Corinthians 12:3; Ephesians 2:8-9; Hebrews 12:2).

In light of all this, Paul says in Galatians 1:9 – “If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” The true Gospel of scripture is not a gospel of earthly prosperity nor of physical healing. It is a gospel of eternal salvation.

Thanks for reading this three-part series on positive confession and the prosperity gospel. I hope it shed some light on this dangerous heresy. Please read all three posts before trying to argue based on one of them, thank you

“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”
        ~St. Augustine

“What God’s Word really means when it says that man is justified and saved by faith alone is nothing else than this: Man is not saved by his own acts, but solely by the doing and dying of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the whole world. Over against this teaching modern theologians assert that in the salvation of man two kinds of activity must be noted: in the first place, there is something that God must do. His part is the most difficult, for He must accomplish the task of redeeming men. But in the second place something is required that man must do. For it will not do to admit persons to heaven, after they have been redeemed, without further parley (talk). Man must do something really great – he has to believe. This teaching overthrows the Gospel completely.” – C.F.W. Walther

It seems that Christophobia is rampant these days. Nothing causes such a stir as two simple words: “Jesus Christ.” Have you ever noticed that if a chaplain closes a prayer “in Jesus’ name,” it makes headlines, but if a religious leader prays to Allah, Benevolent Spirit, Jehovah, etc. no one bats an eye? Why is it that when people hit their thumb with a hammer they yell “JESUS CHRIST!” They don’t yell “BUDDHA” or “ALLAH!” It just doesn’t happen very often. It makes one wonder….

The folks who seem to fear the most when the politically incorrect name of Jesus is invoked are Christians. That’s the ironic part. I know lots of Christians who almost cringe at the mention of Jesus’ name in so-called “secular” realms.

And we seem to excuse this behavior. We seem to empathize when people hide their affiliation with Christ for job security, or to maintain a “normal” social image. Aside from DC Talk, no one wants to be labeled a “Jesus freak.”

[Jesus said,] “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:26).

I sometimes wonder if those who fear the name of Jesus really understand the profoundness of the Gospel. I wonder if they really know the depths of His love.

Sometimes they are unable to know the depths of His love because they do not know the depths of their sin. If your sin is small, then your Savior will also be small. But when we recognize how depraved we really are, we can only exclaim with St. Paul,

“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

“Everyone” includes you and me. Everyone includes your coworkers, the media, your students, your teachers, your boss, your family, your friends, and your neighbors. How can we pray for the Gospel to be spread when we are ashamed of it? Political correctness is part of our (fallen) culture. We are called to remain “aliens and strangers in the world” (1 Peter 2:11), to be in the world but not of it (John 17:13-18). At times this will involve breaking cultural taboos. Even if it costs us our jobs or our very lives.

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35).

But take heart, we have a great and loving God. Be thankful.

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.” (1 Timothy 1:7-14).

I’m currently reading a book entitled The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals by Gene Edward Veith, Jr. It’s been a very enlightening book that talks about what constitutes genuine spirituality. I was struck by this quote:

By “spirituality,” I do not mean any kind of content-free, theologically-vacuous quest for transcendent experiences for their own sake. Rather, “spirituality” has to do precisely with the content, what fills abstract theology, mundane institutions, and the everyday life of the Christian with their real substance.

The quest for this kind of spirituality is, I think, genuine and important. Many people today, in our shallow, mass-produced, materialistic culture, yearn for depth, for richness, for transcendence. Many do not even find spiritual substance in their churches, many of which have adopted the slick superficialities and manipulative commercialism of American pop culture, mutating into what can only be described as pop-Christianity. Interestingly, many casualties of pop-Christianity are drifting into older faiths that do seem to offer a measure of spiritual substance. A huge exodus is taking place from Protestantism into the Roman Catholic Church and, perhaps even more significantly, into Eastern Orthodoxy (p. 14).

In the past I’ve written that for most folks in our society, it is cool to search for God, but it’s not so cool to find Him, but the meaningless fad “spirituality” that our culture seems obsessed with seems to run deeper than just our culture. This culture has also permeated the church. I myself have even spoken with an Eastern Orthodox priest and my wife and I attended a young adult ministry of the Roman Catholic Church. Why? Because we have been yearning for substance, not the fluff that consumes our culture and most Protestant churches.

Much of American Protestantism has become little more than another false religion on the smorgasbord of faith groups, because it has drifted into moralism, speculation, and/or mysticism – all which are us striving towards God. But the reality of true Christian spirituality is that all human effort to reach God is futile. Christianity is all about what God does, not what we do.

Fluffy teaching may show me how to be positive, it may even help me become a better person. The Law is good at making us feel guilty about our sins and eager to try harder next time. The problem is, we always fail. We can never be good enough. That’s why we also need to hear the Gospel: Jesus Christ was credited with our sins and we are credited with His righteousness. What gets us into heaven isn’t how good we are, it’s how perfect Jesus is. Teaching with real substance uses the Law to show me my sin, but then shows me my Savior through the Gospel.

To purchase this book, follow the link below:

“I ask you what you think of the faithful minister of Christ, who honestly exposes sin and pricks your conscience. Mind how you answer that question. Too many, nowadays, like only those ministers who prophesy smooth things and let their sins alone, who flatter their pride and amuse their intellectual taste, but who never sound an alarm, and never tell them of a wrath to come.”
         J.C. Ryle, Holiness

I’m tired of people using the cliche that Christianity isn’t about do’s and don’ts, it’s about a relationship. This is true, but it’s somewhat of a false dichotomy. It often masks antinomianism (belief that we no longer have any obligation to God’s Law because of Christ). All relationships are guarded and preserved by rules. Try telling your wife after you’ve had an affair, “Come on, I thought our marriage was about the relationship, not all these do’s and don’ts.”

So sure, it is about the relationship with Jesus. But all relationships have boundaries for protection. Keeping those boundaries doesn’t make the relationship go well, but the relationship certainly will not go well if you do not keep them.

“The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”
        ~Tim Keller
 
 

While going through the assigned reading for my missions class, I came across some profound thoughts by one of the authors that I wanted to share.

The following is an excerpt from Cities and Salt: Counter-Cultures for the Common Good by Tim Keller, which can be found in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement by Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne.

The Kingdom Both Rich and Sharp. Keller describes a polarity of ideas about the kingdom:

• On the one hand, the gospel can be reduced to an individualistic message that helps people get to heaven – a “get out of jail free” card with no transformation.
• Against this, another idea of the kingdom has become very popular, in which Jesus’ death doesn’t so much assuage God’s wrath for sin as it absorbs the world’s evil and violence. Jesus’ life is exemplary, showing the way of non-violence and service. Jesus now, according to this version of the kingdom, calls us to work for peace and justice in the world. Basically, the gospel is reduced to a call to “repent of living for yourself and join Jesus’ kingdom program.” This may be, as one author put it, “all call and no grace.” Keller says that this can amount to just one more legalism.

According to Keller, both of these are extremes to avoid. We need to see that the gospel is sharp; that is, dealing with atonement for sin and justification by grace. But the gospel is also rich; that is, it equips us to pursue justice and cultural renewal.

This may be a faulty observation, but it seems that many of the mainline traditional denominations (who happen to be very modernist) have very elaborate doctrinal statements and often fall into the first category, while many of the more liberal and newer church movements (who happen to be very postmodern) fall into the second. Coincidence? I think not. What do you think?