"Stop asking the question, "Am I pleasing God?" Ask the question, "Is Christ at His Father's right hand pleasing to God?" Is it? Yes, well as He is, so are we in this world! Is Christ under God's unclouded favor at the Father's right hand? So are you in this world! Because as He is, so are we in this world. - Joseph Prince
Remember now; Prince is trying to prop up his false gospel. He is trying to sell the notion that we are always under the favor of God. That nothing ever changes our status of being perpetually blessed. He will stop at nothing to convince people of his point. He already used as an example of unlimited favor, a man who was sold into slavery and thrown in prison for 13 years for a crime he did not commit. Now he is going for the kill. If all you did was read the second half of 1John 4:17, then maybe you can get confused but as soon as I see it is a partial verse I start wondering what he is leaving out. Here is the entire context:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannotlove God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. - 1John 4: 7-21 (ESV)
I will give you three guesses what this passage is about and the first two don't count. It is certainly not God promising that no matter what we do here on earth, we are always in the position of Christ, sitting at the right hand of the Father. No. This passage is about love. This passage is about the greatest love ever displayed, when God sent His only Son to die for our sins on an old wooden cross. This passage is about the Gospel. The true Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even when you isolate verse 17, we see why Prince left the first half of the verse out:
By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. - 1John 4: 17 (ESV)
First, he left it out because the usage of the word love indicates this verse is not what he claims it to be. Additionally, the first half of the verse destroys the notion that this is a temporal issue at all. It is so we can have confidence on the day of judgment. From the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary:
"because, &c.--The ground of our "confidence" is, "because even as He (Christ) is, we also are in this world" (and He will not, in that day, condemn those who are like Himself), that is, we are righteous as He is righteous, especially in respect to that which is the sum of righteousness, love (1Jo 3:14). Christ IS righteous, and love itself, in heaven: so are we, His members, who are still "in this world." Our oneness with Him even now in His exalted position above (Eph 2:6), so that all that belongs to Him of righteousness, &c., belongs to us also by perfect imputation and progressive impartation, is the ground of our love being perfected so that we can have confidence in the day of judgment. We are in, not of, this world."
Yet what does Prince try to do? He takes half a verse, rips it violently out of context, and creates whole doctrine out of it. Hey you do not have to worry about yourself! Don't ask God if you are pleasing Him because you know Jesus is always pleasing to Him and the Bible says as He is, so are we in this world! Except that is NOT what these verses mean. What's the big deal? First of all, how harmful is it to teach people to not concern themselves with sin and being pleasing to the Father? The main premise still needs to be addressed. Does being a Christian mean that we have unlimited favor from God during this temporal life? Is that what Jesus went to the cross for? Whatever happened to working out your salvation with fear and trembling? Whatever happened to picking up your cross and dying to self? Has Pastor Prince ever read the Book of Job? Can he mangle that story like he did the story of Joseph? Was Peter experiencing the permanent favor of God when he was crucified upside down? Or Paul when he was beheaded? How about the Christians being exterminated in Iraq as we speak? That is how you know you have been sold a false Gospel beloved. If it cannot be preached outside of our shores than it is false, period. There are not different gospels for different countries. There are not different gospels for different socio-economic classes. There is only the true Gospel of Jesus Christ and the false gospels peddled by snake oil salesmen like Joseph Prince.
Do not take that reference lightly. Snake oil was a fake healing remedy sold by quack physicians in the old west. So a snake oil salesman is someone selling something that promises the world but delivers nothing. That is what the greasy grace gospel is. It tastes so good going down but it will kill you in the end. Prince gave two testimonies he claimed to have received as a result of this teaching. The first lady he claims wrote on her diagnosis sheet; "Does Jesus have lumps on His breast? No. Well as He is, so am I in this world." Of course the breast lump disappeared the very next day. The second was a letter from someone suffering from a debilitating knee pain condition. She allegedly wrote Pastor Prince claiming she was healed by simply saying, "Jesus, you don't have any knee pain, therefore neither do I!" Are we starting to see the damage that can be caused here? You cannot speak healing into existence. Are we really so foolish to think that if we commit adultery here on earth that it does not matter to God because Jesus is at the right hand? That somehow because God is pleased with the sinless life His Son led that He automatically is pleased with us as well, no matter how sinful we might be? Are we really that foolish? Do not buy what Joseph Prince is selling beloved. It sounds great and scratches our ears. It promises the world but in the end; it is just snake oil.
Reverend Anthony Wade - September 12, 2014
