He did not come to enrich himself out of His people but humbled himself to such a low place that He allowed His own creation to minister to His daily needs. He came to demonstrate God’s holy love through the sacrifice of a laid down life.
God is faithful to sustain what He has birthed. We as the Lord’s servants are commissioned by GOD to pursue the souls and the hearts of people and to point them to Christ. We are not greedy hirelings or wolves that pursue people’s wallets or bank accounts.
1 Thess. 2:3 For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile:
4 But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, who tests our hearts.
5 For neither at any time used we flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness; God is witness:
6 Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ.
7 But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children:
8 So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because you were dear unto us.
9 For you remember, brethren, our labor and travail: for laboring night and day, because we would not be a burden unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.
10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and just and unblameable was our behavior among you that believe:
11 As you know how we exhorted and encouraged and charged every one of you, as a father does his children,
12 That you would walk worthy of God, who has called you unto His kingdom and glory.
Jesus never taught that faith is a way to get rich.
In fact He taught almost the exact opposite.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” – Matthew 6:19-20
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” – Mark 10:25″You cannot serve both God and money.” – Matthew 6:24
“Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” – Luke 12:15
His life itself was the argument – born without a house, owned no property, died with nothing but the clothes on His back, and told His disciples to do the same.
So why does the prosperity message – “God wants you rich, give to get, your seed offering unlocks a hundredfold return” – fill so many churches?
It didn’t start with Jesus. It started much later, for very human reasons:
1. A misreading of the Old Covenant blended with American capitalism.
In the Old Testament, material blessing was often presented as a sign of God’s favor for Israel – land, herds, harvests. Prosperity teachers lift those promises out of that national, agricultural covenant and apply them directly to individual bank accounts today.
They combine it with a few New Testament verses taken out of context – like Malachi 3:10 “bring the whole tithe… see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven” (which was about grain for the temple storehouse), or 3 John 1:2 “I pray that you may prosper in all things” (a personal greeting, not a doctrine), or Philippians 4:19 “God will meet all your needs” – needs, not greed.
Mainstream theology in Catholic, Orthodox, and most Protestant traditions has always read those verses as being about spiritual provision, contentment, and generosity – not guaranteed financial increase.
2. It works as a business model.
A message that says “Give $100 and God owes you $1,000” is powerfully motivating. It creates a cycle: the preacher promises a return, the congregation gives, the preacher gets visibly rich, and that visible richness becomes proof that the teaching works.
It preys on real desperation. For people in poverty – and in places like Namibia, South Africa, Nigeria, the US, Brazil where this theology has exploded – the idea that a single offering could break poverty, sickness, or unemployment is incredibly attractive.
3. It flips the responsibility.
In Jesus’ teaching, if you are poor, you are blessed and cared for: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” – Luke 6:20.
In prosperity teaching, if you are poor or sick, it’s your fault – you lacked faith, you didn’t give enough, you have hidden sin. That is theologically much easier to preach than “take up your cross and follow me” because it never has to confront sin, sacrifice, or suffering. It offers control: if you do the right spiritual technique, you can control God.
The early church fathers called this exact error “simony” and “avarice” – using godliness as a means to financial gain. Paul warned Timothy about it directly:
What Jesus did promise was prosperity, but not as we define it – prosperity of soul. Forgiveness, peace with God, freedom from greed itself, a community that shares, and a treasure that inflation and thieves can’t touch.
If you are trying to discern a teacher, the historic Christian test has always been simple: does the gospel make the preacher rich and the congregation poorer, or does it make the preacher a servant and the congregation freer?
Exactly. That’s the consistent pattern from Genesis to Revelation – God identifies Himself as the defender of the poor, and Jesus brings it to its sharpest point.
He doesn’t condemn people for having money. Abraham, Job, Joseph of Arimathea were wealthy.
What He condemns relentlessly is when money owns the person, and when wealth is built on ignoring the poor.
About those who claims that they are blessed with the blessing of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ declared to me years ago “Abraham is NOT the pattern of My gospel” as laid out in Philippians 2.
Look at the pattern:
1. He rebukes the rich who use religion to cover greed:
The Pharisees were the prosperity preachers of His day. Luke says it plainly:
“The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.” – Luke 16:14
Right after that, Jesus tells them the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The rich man isn’t in torment because he was rich – he’s in torment because Lazarus lay starving at his gate every day and he did nothing. Luke 16:19-31.
Same with the money changers. He didn’t overturn tables in the temple because they were doing business – He did it because they were doing business in the place meant for the nations to pray, exploiting poor pilgrims who had to buy temple-approved sacrifices at inflated prices. Matthew 21:12-13
2. He exposes the heart test of wealth:
• The Rich Young Ruler – Mark 10:17-27: A good, moral, religious man. Jesus loved him. And Jesus says, “One thing you lack. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”The man walks away sad because he had great wealth.
God said to me that: “You test your heart if something has become an idol in your heart, by the way that you respond- when God tells you to give it away.”
The disciples are shocked. Jesus doesn’t run after him and lower the price. He lets him go. It’s when the Spirit of the Lord has stripped you of self, and freed your heart from the pride, lust and greed which is the driving force of this fallen world and conquered your heart with the beauty of His love, love towards God which naturally results in love towards your neighbor, that you will begin to experience true joy and freedom which is the celebration of His love.
• The Rich Fool – Luke 12:16-21: A farmer has a bumper crop and says, “I will store up my grain, build bigger barns, and live easy.”
God calls him a fool that very night, “This very night your life will be demanded from you.
Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”
Conclusion: “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves, but is not rich toward God.”
3. He defines true judgment by how we treat the poor:
This is the most striking one.
In Matthew 25:31-46, His description of the final judgment, the question is not “How much did you give in offering to get a breakthrough?” The question is:
“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in… whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
James, the brother of Jesus, says it even more bluntly to the church:
“Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom… But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you?” – James 2:5-6
“Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes… The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you.” – James 5:1-4
That’s why the prosperity message feels so wrong to you – because it reverses the entire flow of Scripture. In the Bible, wealth flows downward – from those who have to those who don’t, as an act of worship. In the false prosperity gospel, wealth is supposed to flow upward – from the desperate poor to the anointed rich man on the stage, in exchange for a blessing.
Jesus said it would be like this:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom… Many will say… ‘Did we not prophesy in your name and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.'” – Matthew 7:21-23
1 Timothy 6:3-10 is one long warning, and verse 6 is the center of it:
“But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” – 1 Timothy 6:6-8
In context, it’s devastating.
Who is Paul writing to?
He’s writing to Timothy in Ephesus. In Ephesus there were traveling preachers who had discovered that Christianity was profitable. Paul calls them in verse 5:
“men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.”
In Greek that phrase is porismos – a business, a source of profit. Literally: they think godliness IS a business.
That is word-for-word what the false prosperity preacher says today: Come to God to get gain.
Then Paul flips it with a wordplay.
He takes their slogan – “godliness is great gain” – and adds one word that kills it:
“Godliness with contentment is great gain.”
The word for contentment is autarkeia. It doesn’t mean just scraping by. It was a Stoic word meaning self-sufficient, independent of circumstances, needing nothing outside. Paul is saying: The real treasure isn’t godliness PLUS money. It’s godliness PLUS needing nothing else.
Then he gives two reasons why:
1. “We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.” v7
You came with clenched fists and nothing in them, you will leave with open hands and nothing in them. So what was ever really yours? Only what you did with it while you were here.
Remember the story of the Samaritan; in Job he said the same thing when he lost everything:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.” Job 1:21. Jesus says the same about the rich fool’s barns.
2. “But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” v8
Food and clothing. Not house and car and abundance. Diastrophe – food and covering. Daily bread.
Paul who wrote this lived it. He had known plenty and known hunger, and he learned the secret of being content in any situation. Philippians 4:11-12. At the end of his life he owned nothing but a cloak, some books, and chains in a Roman prison – and he calls himself more than a conqueror.
And then immediately after that beautiful statement on contentment, he warns what happens when you chase the opposite:
Notice – Paul does not say money is evil. He says the love of it – philargyria – the love, the longing, the craving for it, is a root from which every kind of evil grows. That’s why Jesus and Paul never promised enrichment. They promised enough. Manna for today. Daily bread. And with it, the one thing money can never buy – a heart at rest.
A content person is already rich because nothing can threaten him and no lust for gain can entrap or enslave him because He has discovered that the Presence and intimate relationship and fellowship with Almighty God is what make a man’s life “Heaven on earth”
It’s when you’ve been entirely stripped of self and emptied of the lustful desires of the flesh, which corrupts every unmortified man, that you will discover God in Person as the Ultimate Gift.
Zacchaeus is the living proof that Jesus didn’t come to make rich men richer – He came to make rich men free.
Luke 19:1-10. Jericho, the richest tax city in Israel. Zacchaeus is chief among the tax collectors. That means he is not just rich – he is rich off his own people. A collaborator with Rome. He has climbed the pyramid you talked about. In Jewish eyes, he is the worst of the worst – a traitor, a thief, Laodicean before Laodicea.
And he is small. The text is careful to tell us he was short in stature. He has spent his life trying to make himself big with money because he feels small.
He hears Jesus is coming and he runs – a rich, important man, running like a child – and climbs a sycamore tree. Undignified. Desperate to see.
Jesus stops under his tree. He doesn’t look up at the religious leaders. He looks up at the sinner in the tree and says:
Not “sow a seed and I will come.” Not “prove your repentance first.” I MUST stay.The crowd mutters – “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” v7. The same crowd that loves a rich preacher hates a rich tax collector being saved for free.
“Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” – Luke 19:8
Notice the direction:
The prosperity gospel says: Give to the man of God to GET more.
Zacchaeus says: Because I have GOT the Man, I GIVE more.
He doesn’t sow to get saved. He gives because he IS saved. He doesn’t give 10% to get 100-fold. He gives 50% away and pays 400% restitution – that is bankruptcy by prosperity standards. By Laodicean accounting, he just cursed himself.
By heaven’s accounting, he just became rich.
And Jesus says:
“Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” – Luke 19:9-10
Jesus didn’t tell him “Now I will make you richer.” He told him “Now you are found.”
At Pentecost, Peter said “Silver and gold I do not have.”
Zacchaeus says, “Silver and gold I had, and it was killing me – take it.”
That is the difference between being blessed and being saved.
The Laodicean church says: Come to Jesus and you will gain the world.
Zacchaeus shows: Come to Jesus and you will gladly give the world away to gain Him.
That is what godliness with contentment looks like – great gain.