Does Proverbs Preach a Prosperity Gospel?

Proverbs 3:4 gives the reward for covenant loyalty, and that is acceptance and a good rapport with God and people. Again, wisdom is about right relationship with God and others. Verse 6 gives the promise of the Lord to make our paths straight. He will give divine direction and divine protection to our daily lives on the right path. Verse 8 gives the reward for fearing the Lord and not being wise in our own eyes, and that is health. A well-ordered life leads to health (by contrast, sexual sin can lead to disease according to Prov 5). The picture of all of these verses is that wisdom reverses the curse of sin, death, and sickness. Wisdom is a return to paradise. Leviticus 26:16 taught that breaking the covenant would lead to disease. Proverbs shows that faithfulness to the covenant will lead to the blessing of health.

Finally, Proverbs 3:10 gives the reward for generosity to the Lord, and that reward is full barns and vats that overflow with new wine. God will bestow wealth on those who are generous. Again, this is covenant language. Deuteronomy 7:12-15 says that covenant faithfulness will lead to God blessing the fruit of the ground and taking away disease. If Israel obeys God, things will go well. The rain will fall, and the crops will grow (Deut 11:14; 28:8; Mal 3:10). When Israel disobeys, the reverse will happen (Deut 28:51). So it seems clear that obedience will lead to God giving us more. This shouldn’t surprise us. Good stewards can be trusted with more.

My ( Jon’s) parents paid for me to go to the University of Kentucky my freshman year. But if I had partied every night, shown up late to classes, and flunked the first semester, do you think they would have continued to pay for my college? No! But since I went to class, finished assignments on time, and made good grades, they were happy to continue to pay my tuition. A good steward will be trusted with more, and a bad steward will lose what he’s been given.

So obey God by doing the odd verses and in return you will get the rewards of the even verses. But this raises an important question: Is this really true? What about instances where things don’t work this way?

Proverbs 3:11-12

Are these verses teaching a prosperity gospel? Are they teaching that we should trust and obey the Lord and in return he will give us health, wealth, and happiness? The answer is, “Yes, of course!” But there’s a problem. This doesn’t always work out immediately in a fallen world. Sometimes you can believe and obey, and things go bad for you. You get cancer instead of health. Despite your great generosity to the work of the Lord, you get laid off. Sometimes we suffer now and receive the rewards only in the next life. So it’s not your best life now; it’s your best life later and forever.

The proverbs are generally true now, but they are always ultimately true.^[7]In the new creation we will experience every spiritual and physical blessing that has been promised to us. Proverbs 3:11-12 helps us understand this interplay. Solomon tells his son to accept Yahweh’s discipline and not reject it. Don’t get mad at Yahweh when he allows discipline in your life because he does so for your good. In order to be truly wise, one must have correction and discipline. That is key to the book because left without discipline we will go down the wrong path to destruction. That’s our sin nature.

The Lord certainly disciplines his children by holding their sin accountable to rid it from their lives; but he also might allow suffering into his children’s lives, not as a punishment for sin but rather to produce maturity in their lives. While a parent disciplines a child for breaking rules, discipline is also what we do to our bodies when we excercise. You put your body under hardship so you can get in better shape for later. We voluntarily let hard things into our lives to prep us for something much better later. For example, when our older daughter, Maddy, began learning to read, it frustrated her a great deal. She got very upset that she couldn’t read right away. She wanted to quit and play with her toys. But as she labored through the hardship she became a great reader and began to enjoy reading. God often operates in this way. He will allow hardship in our lives to produce something in us. In Deuteronomy 8 he tells the children of Israel that he let them endure lean times so that when they had plenty they wouldn’t forget him.

Why does he do this? Because he loves us just like parents who discipline their child out of love. He loves you enough to allow hardship at times to prepare you for something greater later. He loves us and wants to make us like Jesus, so that means discipline (cf. Heb 12—he allows suffering to produce holiness). So yes, God will reward us, but he doesn’t always give us what we want when we want it. Instead, he gives us exactly what we need when we need it. He will conform you to the image of his covenant-keeping Son so that you are the kind of person who can rightly experience the covenant blessings. Sometimes you will suffer now and not receive an immediate reward because the Lord is molding you for a greater glory later.

The problem with smiley prosperity preachers on TV is that they assume godly people will never suffer in this life. That’s unbiblical (see 2 Tim 3:12). Godliness through Jesus Christ is no guarantee that things will always go well for you in this life (see Job). After all, our righteous King suffered in this life. But even if things go badly for you now, they will go well for you ultimately in the next age and be far better than any good life here.

Finally, the last problem with the prosperity gospel is that it bypasses Jesus. The question must be asked, Who keeps the covenant?

The false gospel of the prosperity preachers misunderstands that none of us are faithful covenant-keeping sons. None of us have been perfectly obedient to the Lord. None of us have perfectly trusted God instead of ourselves. None of us have perfectly turned from evil or been completely generous as we should be. This covenant relationship between the Father and the Son is not kept by God’s firstborn son Israel, nor is it kept by David, Solomon, or Solomon’s sons. Jesus is the Son who finally keeps it. Luke 2:52 shows that he is the Son of Solomon who grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and people (cf. Prov 3:4) (Goldsworthy, Tree of Life, 57–58). He is the King with the covenant on his heart (3:3; cf. 20:28). So he is the one who gets the blessing, not us.

The good news is that he represents us before the Father in this covenant relationship. He lived up to our obligations for us, and then he took the curses of covenant breaking in our place. He experienced sickness, sorrows, enemies, and a premature death for us (see Isa 52:13–53:12). He offers full pardon to all covenant-breakers who believe in him. His righteous record of keeping the covenant is credited to the account of all who are united to him by faith, and as a result they will experience the blessings of covenant faithfulness by his merits not their own! And if you are joined to him by faith, God will do the work by the power of the Spirit to conform you into the image of his covenant-keeping Son—sometimes through discipline.

As sons of the Father in Christ Jesus, this is how we are to live—this is now how we can live. Your Christianity has never been about keeping the rules in order for God to save you. Christianity is about how God saves you through his Son and then molds you into his image so you can live out the life God meant for you to live. As we live out this covenant by the power of Jesus’s Spirit—obeying the law, trusting in the Lord, looking away from ourselves, and being generous to those in need—we recognize that the rewards will work out now or later. This is about faith, not effort. Faith is the key to obedience. Radical confidence in our rewarding God will be the means by which you keep his commands. You will give because you trust him to continually provide. You will forgive because you trust him to be a good and fair judge. That’s how God’s Son lives. That is how we live in him.

The problem with the prosperity gospel is not that it wants us to be physically blessed. God has promised that we will be. The problems with this false gospel are (1) it misunderstands life in a fallen world where the righteous suffer, (2) it bypasses Jesus who is the only one who has fulfilled these obligations, and (3) it doesn’t promise enough prosperity. The true gospel says that the faithful Son had his life cut short in the short run, but he was raised to an indestructible life to inherit the cosmos. That’s a prosperity worth having, and it’s available in Christ.