It is common enough to find preachers in purportedly Christian churches who would say that God wants us to be rich, happy, and healthy, to be free of disease and disability, and to have an abundant and prosperous life. And they will quote various passages of the Bible in support of their claims. A corollary to this view of God's will for our lives is that sickness or poverty is due to a lack of faith. If you are struggling with sickness, it is because your faith is too weak or is absent. If you are poor, then you just need to have faith to name the wealth that God supposedly wants for you and claim such riches for your life.
Is this view correct? Much has already been written about why this thinking is wrong and antithetical to the true gospel that the Bible teaches, and it is not my intention to rehearse here all the reasons that have been given. What I would like to do is look in some depth at two particular examples from scripture that can be added to what others have said about why this view is wrong.
The Death of James and the Suffering of Disciples Show That God's Sovereign Will for the Lives of Saints Is Not Always Health and Prosperity
When the apostle Paul indicated to elders of the Ephesian church that he did not fail to teach the whole counsel of God, he clearly thought that the whole counsel of God should be taught. The significance of this view of Paul is that all of scripture is consistent. Proving something from one passage of the Bible means that no other part of the Bible will contradict it. If someone is going to say that some particular passage of God's Word teaches that God wants you to be healthy, happy, and financially prosperous, then the only way that this can legitimately be done is if the interpretation of that particular passage does not contradict what God clearly says elsewhere in scripture. This is why the approach of the Bereans was commendable, for they took what the apostle Paul said and diligently searched the scriptures to see if what Paul was teaching about God agreed with what God had already said in Old Testament scripture.
This is what I would like to do here. I would like to show that a particular passage in the book of Acts is simply inconsistent with the claim that God's sovereign will for our lives is necessarily and always that we would have lives of health and abundant wealth. I refer here to God's sovereign will specifically in contrast to other aspects of his will, includung his preceptive will. His preceptive will is his will against evil actions, and it includes his will that people not murder others or steal, for example. Despite his desire against such evil actions, his sovereign will encompasses the evil intentions of others and not only permits them but uses them for his wise and good ends, such as when he used the betrayal of Judas for the fulfillment of his mission to save sinners, or when he meant for good what the brothers of Joseph meant for evil.
The passage that I would like us to consider comes from chapter 12 in the book of Acts. That chapter has the stories of the disciples James and Peter, stories that can show something of who God is and what he wants for our lives. In Acts chapter 12, it says
It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword.
Here we have one of the original twelve disciples being murdered, and other believers also being put in jail. If you are dead, you are not wealthy, and your body is not healthy. So it apparently was not God's sovereign will that one of his own disciples be wealthy and healthy and live a prosperous life. And if that was not his desire for James, we should not think that it is always his will for his children to live their "best" lives now. In allowing the death of James, God gives us one piece of evidence that the prosperity gospel is false. However much faith you do or do not have, it might not be God's sovereign will for your life that you live a prosperous life with tremendous wealth and health. It might be God's sovereign will that you would lose your life for the sake of Christ.
Against this, someone might claim that God had to let evildoers exercise their free will, and so he had to let James be killed even though he wanted James to live. Then, this person might say that this is not the case when it comes to natural sickness and death, which God can stop and does stop for those who have enough faith. So, the thinking goes, the fact that God let James die is not really a sufficient objection to the view that it is God's will for us to have lives of health and wealth.
In response to this objection, I would start by saying that restraining people from exercising their will in the physical world is not a denial of free will, just as stopping a little girl from hitting her brother by grabbing the girl's arm does not remove her free will. It only stops the girl from carrying out that will in the external world. But that point aside, the very same chapter shows us that God was quite capable of saving James without removing the free will of those involved. In that chapter, Acts 12, we find an extraordinary occasion in which God saved Peter from death through miraculous intervention. Verses 6-11 have the following:
The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.
Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”
Notice how miraculous this escape was. Peter was not just chained, but was between two guards. His chains fall off, and the two guards do nothing. Peter walks out, and the sentries standing guard at the entrance do nothing. Peter keeps walking, and the first and the second guards do nothing. He still keeps walking, not even realizing that what was happening was real. He thought it was a vision. Only later, after the angel disappears and he is far enough from the prison, does he actually realize that it was real. If this violated the free will of guards, then it means that violating the free will of others was not an impediment to miraculously saving James from death. If it did not violate anyone's free will (and I don't think that it did), then it just shows that God was perfectly capable of saving James miraculously from the death that James experienced without violating anyone's free will.
So the point remains. God was able to stop the death of James, and chose to permit James' death when he could have stopped it. Although the murder of James was against God's preceptive will, God's sovereign will was that James would die. The miraculous rescue of Peter showed that God was perfectly capable of doing something similar for James, but he did not. Why? Because it can be God's sovereign will for the life of one of his children that the child not be wealthy, not be healthy, but rather be chained and murdered.
On top of this, God had other means in which he could have saved James, but he did not use them, which again shows that his sovereign will for his child was not necessarily for his child's physical health and well being. Later in chapter 12 of Acts, Herod goes down to Caeserea and speaks before a crowd, and people in the crowd shout, 'This is the voice of a god, not of a man'. Because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down. So God is quite capable of having one of his angels strike someone down and kill him, and he could have done this to Herod before James was killed.
Imagine being one of the early disciples, and your beloved James gets killed, and then later God strikes down the man responsible for his death. Wouldn't you be tempted to say, 'If only you had acted earlier and killed Herod sooner, James would not have died. Why didn't you strike down the wicked ruler Herod before he was able to murder our beloved brother?'. You would be correct in pointing out that God could have stopped the murder of James by striking Herod down earlier, so why didn't he?
Before addressing that question of 'why', consider that the case of James is representative of many saints throughout history whose death God ordained purposefully. We can think of the martyrs of church history, but someone might implausibly say that martyrs lacked faith to be saved. Fortunately, we can look to martyrs in the Bible, especially those in the hall of faith in Hebrews 11 who were commended for their faith even though they were brutally killed. They certainly did not lack sufficient faith to be saved if they made it into a famous Biblical passage whose main purpose was to extol saints for their faith. We can also think of the saints in Revelation 6, who cried out to the Lord after they were slain for the word of God and their witness. They are told to wait longer, until the full number of saints to be killed as they were is fulfilled.
Given that there are so many examples of people who had sufficient faith and yet were killed, the problem of why God permitted the death of James and others should lead us to want a much bigger answer than one that is only peculiar to James' situation. Of course, God might have had special reasons in the case of James, such as the fact that the willingness of original disciples to die for their testimony provided good evidence that they were not deceivers. But we still need a bigger answer. Why did God not strike down Herod when Herod intended to kill James? Why did he not stop the deaths of other saints in the Bible, and thousands of others in church history? The example of James and these others shows that God's sovereign will for his children is not always that they all be healthy and wealthy and live prosperous lives now. But that does not answer for us the question why he does permit it.
To have a start at answering this, it bears noting that he ultimately does intend for his children to have lives of perfect health, phenomenal wealth, and untold glory in the age to come when Christ returns to the earth and the saints receive glorified, immortal, perfect bodies. Before that time of perfection comes, the fact that we live in a world cursed because of sin means that the lives of the saints have a peculiar opportunity to glorify Christ through suffering, death, and poverty in this earthly life that they will not have in glory.
We see something similar to this in the case of Jesus and Lazarus, where the death and resurrection of Lazarus presented a special opportunity for Jesus to be glorified. If you had asked why God had not acted earlier to kill Herod so that James' life would have been spared, something similar was said by Martha to Jesus after her brother Lazarus died.
If you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask. (Gospel of John 11:21-22)
Then later, Mary comes to him, and she says:
If you had been here, my brother would not have died. (Gospel of John 11:32)
Both Mary and Martha knew that Jesus could have saved Lazarus, but he did not do so. It seems that the same question might have been on both of their minds. Why did not he not save Lazarus? Jesus gives us the answer. Prior to his coming to where Martha and Mary lived, Jesus told his disciples that Lazarus was dead, but he also said:
This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory, so that God's Son may be glorified through it. (Gospel of John 11:4)
So the reason that Jesus let this sickness go to death was that he would be glorified, which shows that it can be possible that sickness and death actually glorify God. Someone might respond that the fact that Lazarus was raised from the dead just shows that God does want his children to have a prosperous life. But Lazarus eventually died again, just as the mortality rate even among believers is 100%.
The case of Lazarus was special in that Jesus was still on earth, but even in our time between his first and second coming, sickness and death provide a special opportunity to glorify him in ways that we will not have in heaven. He permits this sickness and death not only for his own glory, but also for the ultimate joy and happiness of those whose lives he lets be afflicted by suffering and death. Sickness can be a means by which the world sees that the believer really does treasure and love Christ for who he is rather than for what he gives the believer, and so it can be a means by which unbelievers are brought to know the joy of the Lord, and that joy would also increase the joy of the believer who was sick. Sickness can push an unbeliever towards recognizing that he needs God. Death can impress upon the unbeliever who still lives that his sins do indeed deserve divine punishment, and thus it can be used to bring the unbeliever to saving faith in Christ. Sickness can draw the believer closer to Christ so that he knows God on a deeper level that he would not have experienced without the sickness.
In that regard, think of the attitude of the apostle Paul. When the apostle Paul prayed that his thorn in the flesh would be taken from Him, the response was that the grace of Christ was sufficient for him, for the power of Christ was made perfect in weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9) Paul's response was to say:
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9-10)
Paul valued sickness or trouble as a means that he might know Christ more, which Paul recognized as the very purpose of his existence and the means by which he would in the end have the most fulfilled, joyous existence possible. Taken together, the words of Christ to Paul and the words of Christ about Lazarus teach one thing: God can intend our suffering for his own glory and for our joy. Sickness and death are not necessarily the result of lack of faith; they can be purposely instituted by God as a means for his glorification. It is thus presumptuous for us to say that particular cases of sickness or death are because the affected person or others lacked adequate faith for healing. We simply don't know that, and it is pastorally unhelpful to make that accusation, especially when the ones so accused are actually rich in faith.
Moreover, the acceptance that one's own disease or sickness is God's sovereign will often requires much more faith than saying that such disease or sickness is not his will, for one is then forced to reckon with very challenging unanswered questions of why God would bring about the particular disease and suffering that the believer is experiencing. Trusting his goodness and his love in the darkness of those unanswered questions is a far more difficult challenge to faith than if one merely believed that the unfortunate circumstance of the sickness was something that he did not want but that was outside his control.
How the Lives and Deaths of Peter and James Show that Suffering Is Not Necessarily Due to Lack of Faith
Let's consider a different objection to the death of James as proof that it is not always God's will that his children be healthy and wealthy and live a prosperous life now. It might be argued that the reason James was killed and Peter was not killed was that James lacked faith and Peter did not lack faith. We have already seen that this explanation does not work for those believers in the hall of faith in Hebrews 11 who were commended for their faith and yet died gruesome deaths for their witness. But let's put that aside for the moment and entertain the idea that what separated the death of James from the miraculous salvation of Peter was a difference in faith: God let James die because of his lack of faith, but he rewarded Peter because he had strong faith. Or maybe, since Acts 12 tells us that people were praying for Peter, the faith of those praying for Peter was so strong that God responded to their prayers, but the lack of such faith in the case of James meant that he was killed.
This contention is dubious on multiple levels. First, if you say that the reason that James was killed and Peter was not killed was because people were praying for Peter but were not praying for James, or that they were praying for both Peter and James, but they had more faith when praying for Peter, both ideas are implausible. It is implausible to think that members in the Jerusalem church prayed for Peter's release but did not pray for James' release. As for having more faith when praying for Peter than when praying for James, it should be kept in mind that people were praying for Peter after James was killed. It does not make sense that believers in Jerusalem who were praying for Peter would have had more confidence that God would save Peter from being killed right after God refused to answer their prayers for the salvation of one of the most prominent members of the twelve disciples, a disciple who was murdered despite their prayers. If anything, one would expect that the death of James would have made those praying for Peter have even less faith or confidence that God would save Peter.
Second, this appeal to Peter's supposedly stronger faith does not even succeed in explaining Peter's own life. Yes, Peter was saved from death at the hands of Herod, and James was not, but Peter still ended up being murdered later on. He was crucified upside down. If Peter had faith sufficient to save him from a heavily guarded prison, that same faith would have been enough to save him from being crucified. Of course one could say that Peter had less faith later on, and so his diminished faith would have resulted in him not being saved, but that also is implausible, both because it views Peter later in life having less faith in God than he had at the time of his miraculous escape, and because it somehow supposes that he would have less faith after witnessing a miraculous escape from being heavily guarded in prison than what faith he had before the escape.
To this one might respond that the reason that Peter lacked faith that he would be saved from crucifixion was that the Lord told him that he was going to killed. If God tells you that you are going to be killed, of course you would lack faith that you would be saved. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says to Peter,
I tell you the truth, when you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go. (Gospel of John 21:18)
Right after this, the author of the Gospel of John then comments in verse 19:
Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.
Far from this passage showing that Peter lacked faith, what it shows is exactly the point that I am wanting to make here: It can be God's will for the life of his child that the child suffer and die, and God's providence intends this suffering and death so that God would be glorified through it. That is, the death of Peter shows that it is wrong to simply assume that God wants you to be rich and healthy and live a materially prosperous life. The same point can be made from the death of James. The purpose of our lives, and our deaths, is the glory of God, and he sometimes intends sickness and death, not because his child lacked faith, but because he intends to glorify himself through it.
So what was the purpose of James's death? It was to glorify Christ. If you are considering becoming a Christian, do not deceive yourself by thinking that you can be a Christian when your primary desire is to be healthy and wealthy. Jesus indicated that if someone will not deny himself and take up his cross, which was an instrument of death, and follow him, that person could not be his disciple. If you think that you already are a Christian, but what you love most about God is that you think that he will make you rich and healthy in this life, you don't love God, and you are deceived and need to be born again.
You must love God for who He is. He must be your greatest love, more so than all the health and wealth you might have in this life. And you will not love him that way unless you realize how deeply sinful you are and how horrendous your sins are before a holy God, such that the only hope that you have to be saved from the wrath of God is that he himself makes a way for you to be saved apart from supposedly "good" things you've done, "good" things which are in fact not good at all in his sight. That way of salvation was purchased by the suffering and death of Christ for sinners, and it is offered freely to all who would believe in him for the forgiveness of their sins. The person whose sins have been forgiven through that faith loves Christ himself more than all the health and wealth he might have in this life, and he accepts that suffering and even death might happen, not because of a lack of faith, but as the means by which that believer's life would most fully glorify God.
Endnotes:
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