Counterfeit Gospels in 21st Century North America

It wasn’t until this year that I realized that, for a long time, I had bought into a counterfeit gospel promoted by many churches in North America. Sadly, many modern Christians have also bought into it, and this has played a huge role in distorting their relationship with God and their understanding of the true gospel message.

What is this counterfeit gospel?

The most popular and well-known churches in North America tend to have preachers who are involved in the teaching of the prosperity gospel and the therapeutic gospel. Because of how influential these megachurches are, their false teachings have inevitably trickled down to local churches in Toronto. I have seen it for myself and have been part of churches that have been shaped by these erroneous teachings.

So, what are these teachings? The prosperity gospel claims that if we follow Jesus, we will become healthy, wealthy, thriving in our relationships, and prosperous in all areas of our life. While the prosperity gospel is easy to spot and more widespread in the US, the therapeutic gospel is another counterfeit gospel that influences many churches in Canada.

For the therapeutic gospel church, “The church exists to make you feel loved, significant, validated, entertained and charged. The logic of this therapeutic gospel is a Jesus-for-Me who meets individual desires and assuages psychic aches”. These churches primarily advertise Jesus as the "meeter-of-your-needs" rather than Jesus the Saviour from your sins (David Powlison).

So, how do we recognize these churches?

#1: The counterfeit gospel church is human-centric rather than God-centric

Who doesn’t want free coffee, food, new friends, a free concert, and an uplifting message? Many modern churches want people to leave feeling good about themselves so that they keep coming back, and going to church has become a stress-relieving activity for many. Churches invest so much money, time, and energy to make the church experience enjoyable and fun because they assume that only preaching the gospel is not enough, that it won’t attract people, and that it will leave them bored. Leaders treat the church like a business, trying to figure out tactical ways to market the church and keep their congregation entertained. The problem with this is that many people start coming to church for the wrong reasons. They come to church primarily for the ATMOSPHERE and EXPERIENCE, rather than for GOD. I used to serve at a church that was fixated on creating a captivating church experience. One thing I noticed was the number of non-Christians who came week after week, yet left unchanged. I heard directly from them that they kept returning because they loved the loud music, found the messages “motivational”, and loved the excitement. While many people may think that it's good that non-Christians routinely come to church, the problem arises when the church fails to preach the true gospel message. And that is often the case with too many churches in North America. As a result, churchgoers remain comfortably in their sinful way of life and have no sense of urgency to put off their former way of living (Ephesians 4:22-24). Unfortunately, many people leave such churches without hearing the true gospel, and a false gospel cannot save the lost.

For many, the church has just become a rock concert and TED talk that people look forward to going to with their friends. Afraid of driving people away, very rarely will pastors in these churches preach from the parts in the Bible that are considered “offensive” or controversial. Especially in liberal cities such as Toronto, too many churches have become obsessed with people-pleasing and being politically-correct. They may be politically correct in the eyes of man, but not correct in the eyes of God. And when church leaders value political correctness, they are breeding congregants who, like them, fear man more than God.

As North American society becomes increasingly secular, we need leaders who will stand firm in Biblical truths, rather than cower away from it. We need pastors who will preach the truth in a world full of lies. We need pastors who are not afraid of offending people because they just want their congregations to know the hard truth. Hiding the truth from people is unloving. And when pastors try to please people, they are essentially saying to their congregation, “I care more about my church’s reputation than your spiritual well-being”. The superficial experience of church has become of greater importance to many people than the biblical soundness of its teachings and doctrines. If you strip away the eye-candy of the church and replace it with expository preaching, I’m sure that many people will walk away because it is no longer the thrilling experience they’re looking for.

#2: The lack of expository preaching

"Expository preaching grounds the message in the text so that all the sermon’s points are the points in the text, and it majors in the texts’ major ideas. It aligns the interpretation of the text with the doctrinal truths of the rest of the Bible (being sensitive to systematic theology). And it always situates the passage within the Bible’s narrative, showing how Christ is the final fulfillment of the text’s theme" – Tim Keller

The sermons in counterfeit gospel churches are essentially motivational speeches sprinkled with a few Bible verses, masked under the label of “Christianity”. Preachers cherry-pick verses throughout the Bible to support their points. This method is dangerous if their fundamental message is erroneous. The church is situated in a society whose values and morals are constantly changing and becoming more anti-Christ. In fear of provoking the secular world, preachers may be tempted to compromise the truths found in Scripture. Expository preaching lessens the potential of manipulating the text in a way that fits the preacher's own agenda. More importantly, expository preaching maintains the divine Scripture as the ultimate authority over the sermon, rather than personal opinions, biases, and feelings (which have in some way been shaped by this corrupted society).

#3: The counterfeit gospel misleads people in the way they see themselves and God

3a. Downplaying our sinfulness

I had a friend tell me last week, “people should not leave the church feeling good about themselves. They should leave feeling convicted about their sinfulness”. I completely agree. The true message of the gospel reveals our sinfulness and total depravity, while magnifying God’s holiness and goodness. We are not supposed to leave the church feeling good or confident about ourselves. Instead, we leave the church with conviction about our sinfulness, genuine repentance, and in greater awe of God’s holiness and graciousness. God calls his followers to be holy and this involves striving to hate sin as much as He does while also striving loving holiness as much as He does. When churches fail to address sin, repentance, the holiness of God, and the reality of hell, people fail to understand the seriousness of sin. They fail to comprehend how offensive sin is to God and how much He hates it. The reality is, that every sin we commit, no matter how small, is cosmic treason against a perfectly holy and righteous God (R.C. Sproul). When the church fails to teach and challenge people to turn away from their sins, they are implicitly telling people that God is tolerant of sin and that sin is not a big deal to Him. The unawareness about the severity of sin leads Christians to be tolerant (and often accepting) of the sinful values in our society. However, we are no longer the salt and light when we start conforming to the world and its patterns of sinful living (Romans 12:2). Moreover, when we compromise Biblical truths and support the sinful values of this secular society, we are proclaiming a rebellion against God's perfect laws written in Scripture.

3b. A lofty view of ourselves

Many modern churches no longer teach us how to be satisfied and content with just Jesus. A relationship with Jesus should be enough. It is enough. But some Christians think that when they follow Jesus, they’ve bought into a package deal. In exchange for reading the Bible and praying, they get Jesus plus financial success, relational success, good health, and happiness. Prayers turn into a long list of wants, and Christians start to treat God like Santa Claus.

When pastors only preach feel-good messages about God’s blessings and provision, we overlook our sinfulness and think that we’re “good people” who deserve God’s blessings. False teachings, such as the prosperity gospel, are human-centric and breed a heart of entitlement, greed, and idolatry. God becomes a means to the things we want to obtain and it cultivates the mindset of "What can God do for me?". As John Piper puts it, "That's elevating the gifts above the giver". But the truth is: God owes us nothing, and we owe Him everything.

Only when we understand our sinfulness, will we realize that not only did we not deserve Jesus’ death on the cross, but we don’t even deserve the smallest good thing we have in our lives. It is purely by His grace that we have received any good thing.

“There is no one righteous, not even one;

there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” Romans 3:11-12

Was it not for God's mercy and graciousness, do you know what we actually deserve? God’s wrath.

“All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.” Ephesians 2:3

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23

#4: The Work of the Holy Spirit

The modern-day church does not need to worry about how it presents itself or to try so hard to attract and please people. Why? Because regeneration is not a result of human works. It’s solely the work of the Holy Spirit. In our fallen nature, we are naturally in enmity with God. There is no point in creating a seeker-sensitive church when no one seeks after God in the first place (Romans 3:11). If the Holy Spirit is not working to regenerate that person, no music, feel-good sermon, or charisma of the pastor, will convince them to turn to God. If the early churches in the New Testament were able to convert Jews and Gentiles without any technology or freebies, believe me, the material things that modern churches value contribute NOTHING to the salvation of souls. It is through God’s grace and the work of the Holy Spirit alone.

Final Exhortations

One website puts it this way:

“In a compromised church, there is no sorrow over sin (Psalm 51:3–4), no pursuit of holiness (Hebrews 12:14), no denial of self, or taking up a cross (Luke 9:23), and no church discipline. Replacing true spirituality are the dynamic personalities of the leaders and the magnetic appeal of the church’s reputation.” Link to article here

I recommend that you all read Galatians 1:3-10. Here, Paul writes to the churches in Galatia because they needed correction for preaching a distorted version of the gospel. Interestingly, right after rebuking them for turning to a different gospel from the one originally taught, he mentions the sin of people-pleasing. This can help us understand why there are so many false gospels in Christian churches. The answer lies in the fact that the true gospel is deeply offensive to our human nature (Enduring Word Commentary). THAT is why some preachers distort it in a way that makes it attractive to the fallen nature of man.

Very soon, our society will have become so anti-Christ that people won’t care how politically-correct or entertaining the church is. They will hate the truth so much that it doesn’t matter if you make the church look appealing. If people want to have these experiences, they will just go elsewhere in the world to experience it. But, the one thing that the world does not offer is the TRUTH– and that is what churches should be dedicated to preaching. We don’t need a gospel that gives us the false hope that our lives will be perfect and comfortable– because that’s not how it works. As Christians, we are to expect suffering and persecution for our faith (2 Tim 3:12). Jesus has already warned us about how narrow and difficult the path to eternal life is, so churches should not be deceiving us with a wide, easy, and comfortable road.

"...there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies" 2 Peter 2:1

We do not need to be naïve about the sinfulness of this world. What we do need are church leaders who will train and prepare us for persecution, to teach us how to stand firm in the faith amidst scrutiny by the world, to be uncompromising in Biblical teachings and values, and to preach what we NEED to hear, not what we WANT to hear, so that we can persevere in our spiritual battles and stand firm to the end.

“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” Matthew 24:9-13

p.s. here is a link to a doc I made compiling some great resources related to this post :) https://docs.google.com/document/d/15EsWIkTQPSbGprtxKt5mDrbYoZfAS8X23JAmk7ltbxQ/edit?usp=sharing

Also, check out this sermon from Matt Chandler about moralistic therapeutic deism!