Have You Opened a Favor Account?

What is this page about?

Christians have always given something to get something from God. A person lights a candle and asks for healing. A person gives a coin for a paper from the church that promises a spiritual good. A person makes a promise to God before a journey.

This is not new. And it does not belong to one kind of church.

There is a teaching today that God will make you rich and healthy if you believe and give. People call it “prosperity teaching”. This page does not simply say, “Prosperity teaching makes deals with God, so it is wrong.” If that were the whole argument, it would also be against a lot of old, simple, honest Christian habits.

The real question is smaller. In the old way, there were many small deals, and each one ended. What changed, so that now there is one account that you carry with you? Everything you do fills it. And you can take from it when you want something.

Both sides agree that prayer, giving and obedience are important. God commands them. The difference is small. Do these things show a favor that God has already given? Or do they build a favor that God has not given yet?

Why the deal itself is not the problem

Here are three older ways in which Christians gave and received. They are outside the person: a thing that is done, in a place, at a time. None of them ever became an account.

1. The sacraments. The old Christian teaching is this: God gives through them what he has already promised. They are his tools. They are not handles that the believer pulls to make something happen.

for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast.

Ephesians 2:8–9 · World English Bible

In simple words: God saved you by his grace, through faith. This did not come from you. It is God’s gift. It does not come from the things you do. So nobody can boast.

2. Merit and indulgences in the Middle Ages. Sometimes this was very mechanical: a coin for an exact spiritual good. But even then, the Church kept the “treasury”. The Church gave from it, one deal at a time. The believer never carried the account himself.

3. Promises and special prayers. A person prays for nine days for one need. A person promises a gift if God answers. This is truly a deal. But each deal closes when it is done. Nothing passes on to the next request. A market where you buy one thing at a time never becomes a bank.

What was needed to build a bank?

One thing had to move. The moment where everything begins had to move inside the believer.

The Reformation did this in part. Later, the revival preachers did it more. They preached that each person must make a “decision”. So a person’s turning to Christ became something inside him. It was personal, and it had a date.

This move is not yet the mistake. The old Puritans lived in exactly this place, and they never built an account. But when the starting power is inside the believer, an account becomes possible for the first time.

The real question: does it show, or does it make?

The old Puritans had a question. The account idea says that it answers the same question. How do I know that I am right with God?

The Puritan answer was this. My good works are only evidence. If I believe and live a holy life, this shows that God chose me. The works do not make my place with God. They show it.

be more diligent to make your calling and election sure.

2 Peter 1:10 · World English Bible

In simple words: Work harder to be sure that God has called you and chosen you.

To “make sure” is to become certain of a calling that is already there. It does not mean to pay for one.

Prosperity teaching takes the same acts: prayer, giving, work in the church. But it reads them as things that make the blessing. The decision opens the account. Each act is a deposit. The amount grows until God owes the blessing.

And the same words quietly get a new meaning.

The words are the same. The machine under them is different.

Paul’s own argument goes against the new reading:

Now to him who works, the reward is not counted as grace, but as something owed.

Romans 4:4 · World English Bible

In simple words: When a person works, his pay is not a gift. It is something that he is owed.

So think of a system where God owes a blessing because of what a person did. That system no longer runs on grace. It does not matter how many words about faith are around it.

An honest objection

Here is what someone may say:

“The Bible tells us to grow in grace, to give freely, and to pray always. It says that these things bring blessing. If I pray more and I am more blessed, then surely my prayer made the blessing?”

Here is one answer. Growth is real, and God commands it. Nobody is arguing against prayer or giving. The question is not whether God commands these things. The question is what they are.

“Make your calling sure” means: become certain of your calling. It does not mean: build one from nothing. A tree that gets water still grows because it is alive. The water did not make the life.

And think about this. If prayer made blessing as a deposit makes an account grow, then a person who prays two times as much would be owed two times as much. That is a wage. It is not a gift.

Where the account got its name

In the 1900s, a movement in America called “Word of Faith” gave this idea its full set of words. Three teachers were important. All three have died.

• E. W. Kenyon taught “revelation knowledge”. He taught that a believer can speak with authority over the things that happen to him.
• Kenneth Hagin taught “positive confession” and “levels” of faith. “Positive confession” means: say aloud what you want, and believe that you have it.
• Oral Roberts taught “seed-faith” giving. You give money as a seed, and you expect a harvest.

There was also an older American habit. Many Americans believed that what you think inside you causes what happens in your life. This began with “mind-power” teaching in the 1800s. It went on to a very popular book of 1952, The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale. This habit was the soil in which the account idea grew.

One more short note. The account is inside the believer. Only he can check it. Nobody outside can question it. In this one way, it has the same shape as an old teaching called Gnosticism, which spoke of secret knowledge inside a person. But only the shape is the same. The Gnostics thought that the material world was bad. Prosperity teaching wants much more of the material world.

Gift, single deal, or account?

Here are six things that a person might say. This page made them up. Which is each one?

Look at your own last month

Think of one thing that you did not long ago: a gift, or a prayer. Ask two questions.

1. When you did it, what did you mainly expect? Nothing exact, because it seemed right? Or something in return?
2. If nothing good followed, what would you think? “That is fine”? Or “Something is wrong with my faith or with my giving”?

If you expected a return, and you would doubt when it did not come, you lean towards the account idea. This is only a mirror. It is not a judgment on how you stand before God. Most people are somewhere in the middle.

Check it yourself

1. Read Ephesians 2:1-10. Five minutes. Find what is a gift, and what the good works are for.
2. Read Romans 4:1-8. Five minutes. Paul explains the difference between a wage and a gift.
3. Read 2 Peter 1:3-11. Five minutes. See what God has already given (verse 3) before Peter tells us to work hard (verse 10).
4. Listen to the words. The next time you hear “seed”, “harvest”, “levels of faith” or “sow”, ask: does this show a gift, or does it build an account?
5. Read the full dossier. It gives the sources for the history on this page.