Objection: The Health and Wealth Gospel Is Unbiblical Because It’s All About YOU

I’ll start by saying that what Jesus did on the cross WAS all about you!  It certainly wasn’t about Him!  He wasn’t in lack of anything and He wasn’t sick, either, nor was He a lost sinner.  So everything Jesus did in his atonement WAS all about YOU!  He loves you that much!

The objector is probably upset about the way that some modern preaching makes little mention of repentance, hell, taking up your cross, mortifying the flesh and being absolutely sold out to the lordship of Jesus, preferring to focus exclusively on “happy,” “positive” topics.  I’m not a fan of Christian books that could be mistaken for worldly self-help guides either – you know, the ones that have more clever quotes from famous people than quotes from God’s Word.  Jesus is our Lord, not our Self-Help Guru.  I’m sure that I would be a much richer author if I wrote books with titles like “Have a Great Life!” or “The 7 Steps to Effortless Overnight Success” or “How to Feel Good Every Day” or “213 Positive Affirmations That Will Make All Your Dreams Come True Without Having to Pray in Tongues or Submit to God’s Will.”  There is a danger that if you feast on the shallower books that you might think that every problem in your life can be confessed away instantly with the right affirmations.  If that’s possible, that is a greater revelation than the Apostle Paul ever had.  He was never a “success in life” by modern standards given all that he went through!  One gets the impression that his constant persecutions and trials for the sake of the gospel could have been avoided if he had just made the right daily confessions of favor over himself.  But the Bible is clear that some people will hate your guts for identifying with Jesus.  In fact, if no one is persecuting you, it doesn’t mean that you’re better than the rest of us at confessing divine favor; it means that you are not really trying to live godly in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:12)!  (In other words, you’re a Christian coward who avoids anything that could cause confrontation.)  Jesus said, “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26).

If you want a good rule of thumb with Christian literature, ask yourself whether an unbeliever would be OK with all the advice in the book.  If so, the author missed it somewhere because he wasn’t pointing people to Jesus.  People won’t usually persecute you for preaching positive thinking, but they WILL persecute you for presenting the gospel as the ONLY way to heaven and the ONLY way to be forgiven of SIN.

I fully believe that God wants me to be in health and prosper, but I have inconvenienced myself a LOT by going where the sinners are to reach them with this news that is too good to keep to myself.  Many times, all I got for my effort was cursing, threats of illegal arrest, pleadings to leave town, and so on, but I kept at it anyway because it’s not all about me.  It’s an unfair generalization to say that anyone who teaches healing and prosperity is a self-centered narcissist who teaches that the gospel is only valuable for what YOU can get out of it.  I don’t’ teach that, and neither do plenty of other people who believe that Jesus already purchased your healing.  To live is Christ – when it comes down to it, it should all be about JESUS.