In his 2007 best-seller Destined to Reign, Joseph Prince drew a clear line between the gospel of grace and the unholy concoction of grace and law that has been preached since the time of the Galatians. As I said in my review of that book, Destined to Reign should be regarded as the definitive introduction to the subject of grace. It’s brilliant.

In his recent book entitled Unmerited Favor, Joseph Prince builds on that grace foundation by unpackaging the consequences of living self-dependent or Jesus-dependent lives. (You can download a free sample chapter here.) Prince’s basic idea is that if trust Jesus for salvation, we ought to trust him for everything else too. What stops the unmerited favor of God in our lives? According to Prince, the greatest obstacle is our own self-reliance:

“There are some believers who may not articulate it, but in their hearts they believe that without Jesus they can still succeed. By believing and acting on this, they fall from the high place of God’s grace (his unmerited favor) back into the law, back into trying to merit and deserve success by their own efforts.” (p.24)

This is both astonishing and obviously true.

Why is it that we trust Jesus for our salvation, we may even trust him for our healing, but we don’t trust him for our success? We work like part-time believers. We tell ourselves we’re doing it in his name and for his glory, but our work ethic is 100% old covenant thinking. Deep down we believe that success will only come if we make sacrifices or sow thousands of hours. Sure, we thank Jesus for the cross, but his work actually has no bearing on our work. We strive and struggle just like everyone else, ignoring the supernatural advantages that are ours in Christ.

Jesus didn’t just die to set us free from the curse of the law. He also died that we might inherit the blessings of Abraham. As Prince says,

“In Christ, you are an heir of the world – its goods, its endowments, its riches, its advantages and its pleasures. This is the promise that God made to Abraham and his seed. Don’t apologize for it. It is your inheritance in Christ!” (p.230)

Now right there some of you might switch off thinking that Prince is preaching a “health and wealth” gospel. He isn’t. Sure, he does have a fair bit to say about prosperity, but that is not his main message. (Lest you be distracted, I have posted elsewhere my summary of Joseph Prince’s teachings on prosperity and success.) What he is preaching in Unmerited Favor is complete and total dependence on Jesus for everything.

We Christians – and especially pastors – tend to get so caught up doing the Lord’s work that we lose focus and burn out. We know we shouldn’t, yet we do it anyway. According to Prince, we do this out of ignorance:

“Many good, well-meaning and sincere believers today are defeated by their lack of knowledge of the new covenant and all the benefits that Jesus has purchased for them at the cross… It is the lack of knowledge of what Jesus has accomplished at the cross that has robbed many believers of enjoying these good gifts and benefits.” (p.95)

I know from personal experience what it is to preach Mary while acting like Martha. Probably every pastor does. Just look at our schedules! If this is you, if you are busy to the point of distraction, then you definitely need to read Unmerited Favor. In it Prince gives the most compelling reason I have read for being more like Mary than Martha.

Jesus said, “one thing is needful” and that is to sit at his feet and behold him. For many of us – and particularly pastors – sometimes the hardest thing to do is to sit down. That looks too much like resting and how can we rest when there’s work to be done? So we sit for just a minute, then jump right back up into old covenant mentality and human performance.

A couple of years ago God spoke very clearly to me. He told me that he wanted me to “do nothing.” It was the hardest word I have ever received. Tell me to part the Red Sea and I’ll give it a go. Tell me to walk on the water and I’ll do it or drown trying. But tell me to do nothing at all except rest, and I mean long-term rest, living in that rest, remaining in that rest – well that’s ve-ry hard indeed! It does not come naturally.

But I am learning that when we make him our priority, when we have no agenda other than Jesus alone, the whole world changes around you. Problems bow down. Inspiration comes. You find yourself doing the right thing at the right time and, yes, you have restful increase instead of stressful increase (because it’s based on his merit, not yours).

If I were to sum up Unmerited Favor in two words, they would be stop trying, as in, stop trying to succeed in your own strength, stop trying to earn God’s favor, stop trying to make it happen, stop striving, stop struggling, and trust him for everything. No seriously, you really, actually need to stop because for as long as you continue to trust in your self-effort, you’re operating outside of grace and cursing your work. The sooner you stop, the better everything will be.

Or if I were to sum up Unmerited Favor in just one word, it would be receive. You can’t receive while you’re trying to make it happen. Grace doesn’t share the stage with human effort. If you want to enjoy the unmerited favor of God in your life, stop trying and just receive.

Prince is certainly not calling us to live idle, passive lives. Our performance stills matters. But effective performance is grounded on the revelation that we have been made righteous by faith. Right living follows right believing. I had hoped that he would say more about how we work under grace, but perhaps that’s for the next book.

You can read Unmerited Favor without first having read Destined to Reign, but I recommend you read both in the order they were written. If Destined to Reign is all about what Jesus had set you free from, then Unmerited Favor is what he has set you free into. In Destined to Reign Prince comes across as an authoritative preacher of the gospel. In Unmerited Favor he is more the tender pastor. Both books are outstanding.

Related posts:

- “Destined to Reign” by Joseph Prince

- Top 12 blessings in the New Covenant

- Two religions: works and blood

Contrary to what the devil would have you believe, the words “prosperity” and “success” are actually found in the Bible, so any preacher who aims to teach the full counsel of scripture must surely talk about them. The only difference with Joseph Prince is that he is not ashamed to do so. Even if you have only a passing awareness of his ministry, you will know this. Afterall, the subtitle of his first book, Destined to Reign, is “The Secret to Effortless Success, Wholeness and Victorious Living,” while the first chapter of his second book, Unmerited Favor, is labeled “The Definition of Success.” And if we are to return to a Biblical view of such things, a good definition is a good place to start.

The world defines success in terms of what you have done and what you have accumulated. But the Bible defines success in terms of Jesus. As CS Lewis said,

“He who has God and everything else has nothing more than he who has God alone.”

Imagine a prisoner with no hope of freedom and who spends his days waiting to die. Then, inexplicably, a great and loving king befriends him. The king frees the prisoner, pays his debt and adopts him into the royal family. Let me ask you this: Will the prisoner now become healthier than he was when he was in prison? Will he have better prospects? Will he be blessed and in a better position to bless others? Of course he will. But if we or the prisoner become preoccupied with the change in his circumstances, we will miss the greatest change of all, which is that the king now calls him “friend.”

It saddens me to see some people bickering over the blessings. They miss the astounding thing, which is that a Great King calls us his “friends” (Jn 15:15). If you have Jesus and nothing else, you have something of infinitely greater value than the entire universe. Anything extra is just loose change. And yet God, in his awesome generosity, promises to take care of all those little extras that we need:

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Mt 6:33)

When we look for Jesus, everything else gets taken care of. And we’re not just talking about our basic needs, for he is the God of “more than enough”. In Unmerited Favor, Prince reflects on the story of Joseph, a prisoner in a foreign land. Joseph had nothing, but the Lord was with him, therefore he was successful and it was only a question of time when his earthly circumstances reflected that spiritual reality.

Joseph Prince has been preaching on true success for years and I don’t have the space here to give you anything more than a taste. But what I do have is a list of 12 quotes taken from Unmerited Favor. I present these quotes simply to get believers thinking about a subject that has been considered taboo for too long:

1.    “Success is not what you have, but rather who you have.” (p.3)

2.    “God has no problem with you having money, but He does not want money to have you!” (p.27)

3.    “There is no such thing as a ‘prosperity gospel.’ There is only one gospel and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.” (p.29)

4.    “When the little boy brought his five loaves and two fishes to Jesus, did He gobble them up and say, ‘I am giving you a lesson in poverty?’ Of course not!… Jesus did not feed the multitudes with just enough food. He blessed them with more than enough food. He is the God of more than enough and that is His style. Likewise, Jesus wants to bless you with more than enough, so that you can be a blessing to others.” (p.238)

5.    “The Lord blessed Abraham so that he could be a blessing to others… You cannot be a blessing to those around you – your loved ones, local church, community and the poor – if you are not blessed by the Lord first.” (p.231)

6.    “Religion is blinding. Religion will tell you that ‘God’ wants you sick to teaching you character and patience. Religion will tell you that ‘God’ wants you poor, so that you will learn humility. It sounds noble, doesn’t it? But these are LIES from the pit of hell! Let me tell you this: It is the devil who wants you sick and poor, but the God I know paid a heavy price to redeem you from the curse of sickness and poverty!” (p.30)

7.    “The more occupied you are with Jesus, the more money follows after you! Now why is that? It is simply because when you seek first the kingdom of God, and put Jesus, His righteousness (not your righteousness), His joy and His peace as your first priority, God’s Word promises you that ALL the material things that you need will be added to you.” (pp.233-4)

8.    “Don’t love money and use people. Use money to love people.” (p.234)

9.    “The secret to walking in the blessing of Abraham in your life is to stop trying to deserve it.” (p.240)

10.    “The irony is that if you were to examine the lives of those believers who fight against the teaching that God blesses His children with more than enough, you would see that they have no problems with doing their best to secure a nice home and give their children the best education money can buy… You see, they have no problem with accumulating wealth for themselves and living well, but they have a problem when we tell them that financial success is from God. They would rather believe in their self-efforts and say that their success is ‘self-made,’ than give God the credit.” (p.232)

11.    “There are no ‘money problems,’ only ‘idea problems.’” (p.308)

12.    “Don’t be afraid to use the word ‘prosperous.’ It’s God’s promise in the Bible.” (p.207)

I don’t know about you, but I read these quotes and think “sounds reasonable to me.” Yet I know that others will react strenuously against this merely because it’s politically incorrect for Christians to even discuss these things, or because they think we’re better off poor and sick (even while they’re working hard to save money and stay healthy). What do you think?

Related posts:

- Top 20 Joseph Prince quotes

- Does God give bad gifts?

- Come “buy” your salvation (Rev 3:18)