David Diga Hernandez - False Gospels Exposed

«If anyone preaches to you another gospel, let him be accursed». Those harsh words were written by Paul the Apostle in defense of the one true gospel. I want to expose three false gospels. If you care about the true gospel and you want nothing but the truth, write it in the Comments section right now. These three words, I want truth. Let that be your public declaration of your love for truth. But before we can expose the fake, we have to look at the real. This is the gospel simply defined. «The Good News that, because of His mercy and through the death and resurrection of His perfect Son, Jesus, God redeems sinners who otherwise have no hope of salvation. Sinners receive God’s free gift of salvation by grace through faith».

Now, even though the gospel is very simple, and even though the gospel is very clear in the scripture, sometimes people will pervert it or twist it either intentionally or unintentionally. One of the perversions of the gospel is called, number one, the prosperity gospel. And «this is a message that promises and prioritizes health, wealth, and happiness while disdaining sacrifice and hardship».

Now to be clear, prosperity is biblical, but prosperity is not the central message of the gospel. The Lord does bless His children. God does bless those who follow Him. God does increase our resources if we’re good stewards and if we demonstrate generosity and if we walk in His will. Yes, we understand the blessings of God. We understand that good things come from God. We understand that there are seasons of favor and abundance. But we also understand that this is not central to the gospel. The promise of the gospel is not health, wealth, and happiness. And in fact, people who believe the prosperity gospel are often surprised by tragedy. They’re caught off guard by hardship. They feel entitled to only perfectly ideal circumstances.

1 Corinthians 3:12–15 says, «Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials, gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames». For the most part, the cost of following Christ is much higher than most would want to believe. Matthew 16:24 says, «Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me».

John 12:25 says, «Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity». John 16:33, «I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world». John 15:18, «If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first».

James 1:2, «Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy». Not if troubles come your way, when troubles come your way. The prosperity gospel ultimately is a rejection of the cross. It’s to say to God, «Lord, I wanna be just surrendered enough to be blessed by you, but never surrendered enough to be challenged by you». The prosperity gospel says it’s all about your dreams, it’s all about your finances, it’s all about your goals, it’s all about you becoming a success here on the earth. Now, again, let me balance this out. I do believe in biblical prosperity, I do believe that God does bless His children. But to take those blessings and make them the center of the gospel message, to take increase and make it the center of the gospel message, or the primary attraction of the gospel message, that’s just a perversion of the gospel.

Nowhere in the scripture do we see a promise that every believer will live a perfectly ideal life and accomplish all of their dreams and become a success by worldly standards. That’s not the promise of the gospel. The promise of the gospel is salvation through Christ Jesus to those who put their faith in His finished work on that cross. And to put health, wealth, and happiness at the center is to pervert the gospel and fall into the trap of the prosperity gospel. Number two, the sin-permitting gospel. «This is a message that disdains the confrontation of sin and offers forgiveness without repentance while insisting on positivity». Jude 1:3-4 address this directly.

«Dear friends, I have been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people. I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ». Now, when I talk about extreme grace, some people will respond with the cliche, «Well, of course God’s grace is extreme, his grace is abundant». And we understand that, but wordplay aside, it is not true that you can go on sinning without consequences. It is not true that you can just regret your sin without repenting of it. It is not true that God will accept sinful living as His standard. And to preach any other gospel, to teach people that they can go on living in their sin without ever experiencing consequence, that is a perversion of the worst kind.

The Bible says in Hebrews 12:14, «Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord». Nobody wants to hear the message of holiness anymore. Nobody wants to hear that our sins still has consequences. Nobody wants to hear that God does judge wrongdoing. Get this, not only are you responsible for the decisions that you make, but there are consequences to the decisions that you make. Now, I’m gonna balance this out in just a moment by addressing the third, which is the works-based gospel, but let me make this absolutely clear. To teach that you can come to Christ and go on sinning just the way you did before and everything will still be okay is deception, and it’s leading many people to hell.

Why does that lead people to hell? It leads them to hell because it’s to not understand what true salvation is. When someone is truly born again, they receive a transformed nature, they become a new creation in Christ Jesus. And as they become a new creation, new desires are formed. So it’s not that we have to do good works so that we can be saved, but rather, when we truly are saved, a desire for good works is born. The Holy Spirit begins to change the desires of the one who truly has repented from sin and put their faith in Christ Jesus. Once you turn to Him in faith, and you truly receive that gift of salvation, that’s not just a dismissal of the punishment for your sin, but it’s also the desire to live holy. It’s that desire to live right. It’s that desire to please God. It’s this new nature which says, «God, you’ve done a work in me, you’ve saved me, you’ve had mercy on me.

You’ve shown me grace and favor that I did not deserve. And because of that, I wanna live as a living sacrifice. I wanna offer my life as something wholly unto you as a thank you for having saved me, as a thank you for having transformed me». So those who are truly saved have a desire to walk in holiness. It’s not that holiness is what produces salvation necessarily, rather, salvation produces holiness. And if you don’t teach the truth, if you teach that you can go on sinning, then you’re gonna have a lot of people who believe that they’ve been saved, but are not saved. You’re gonna have a lot of people who think that they’re true believers, but are not actual believers. They wear Christianity as a costume. They accept the moral standard as a good idea. They may even take on some of the Christian culture while never really experiencing the true transformation of the heart, and that is very, very dangerous.

So that’s number two, the sin-permitting gospel. So, so far we have number one, the prosperity gospel, which emphasizes health, wealth, and happiness and disdains and rejects the cross. Number two, we have the sin-permitting gospel. This is a gospel that teaches that you can have forgiveness without repentance, and it fails to take into account the fact that when someone is truly born again, that they receive new desires that are of and consistent with their new nature.

Number three, the gospel of works. «This is a message that declares salvation through discipline rather than salvation through faith while inspiring fear and depression in its adherence». Religion says, «You must do in order to become». The gospel says, «By faith you can become in order that you might do». Jesus said, «It is finished». He didn’t say, «You can take it from here». Ephesians 2:8-10 says this, «God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this, it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago». In January of 2017, I wrote an article about what I called the salvation tree. I want you to picture a tree.

Now, the way many people picture salvation, if they were visualizing it as a tree, would be to have the roots represent good works. And this is how many of us have been conditioned to think. We think that first the roots of good works have to go down deep and produce life for salvation, and then the fruits are salvation and oneness with God and so forth. But that is to misunderstand what salvation is. Salvation is a miracle work of God, and so we have to reverse that. The roots of salvation don’t represent good works. The roots of salvation represent faith. Good works are not the roots of salvation. Good works are the fruit of salvation. You don’t do good works to be saved. Good works are produced as a result of salvation, which is a result of putting your faith in Christ Jesus, believing, and by the miracle hand of God, receiving this new nature.

Now, it’s interesting that often, people mention the sin-permitting gospel, the gospel I just mentioned a few moments ago. They will reference the sin-permitting gospel as this destructive force that causes many to be led astray, and that is true. It is true that the sin-permitting gospel is leading many to hell. But I would dare say that the more commonly believed false gospel is the gospel of works. How do you know you’re believing the gospel of works? You know you believe a works-based gospel if you live in the constant fear of losing your salvation. And of course, either extreme is bad, you don’t want the sin-permitting gospel, and you don’t want the works-based gospel. But I would say the works-based gospel is more commonly believed than all three of the false gospels, or the other two false gospels, I should say, that I mentioned.

So then we have to realize that if we believe that we’re saved by our works, then that’s spiritual pride. We believe we actually have the ability to produce that salvation. We believe that we actually have the ability to keep that salvation. No, we are saved when we put our faith in Christ Jesus. And as a result of putting our faith in Him, we’re given a new nature, and that new nature ultimately produces works. You may see your relationship with Gods as the same as climbing a ladder, that every good deed gets you closer, and every bad deed gets you knocked down a few pegs. But in reality, the Holy Spirit abides with you, working with you against your sin nature, perfecting you day by day that you might ultimately come to reflect the image of Jesus.

So the gospel of works tells you that your salvation comes by your works. It produces spiritual pride, or it produces spiritual devastation. Either you become super prideful and you say, «Look at what I’ve earned,» or you become ultimately devastated and hopeless and say, «I could never earn it». But when we have a clear understanding of the gospel, when we realize that it’s by believing that we’re saved, by putting our faith in Christ Jesus that we’re saved, then we see the transformation of the nature, and then holiness follows that salvation experience. So number one, the prosperity gospel. Number two, the sin-permitting gospel. Number three, the gospel of works.

Now, I wanna leave you with this extra thought, if you will, a bonus point, if you will. Even though we now have the measurements, biblically speaking, and a gauge, if you will, and we can understand what the true gospel is, and we kind of have an idea of what the false gospels represent, I wanna caution you to not become a heresy hunter. And what I mean by that is, sometimes we can accuse fellow brothers and sisters in Christ of believing or preaching a false gospel simply because we’re not really listening to what they’re saying. I’ll give you an example of how this works. So Galatians 1:8 says, «But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed». Okay, so let a curse fall on anyone who preaches another gospel. But sometimes, we can perceive what other Christians believe, not about the gospel, but about side doctrines as they’re preaching of the gospel. What do I mean by this? Well, let me give you some examples.

So okay, we talked about the prosperity gospel. Just because someone believes in the blessing of God doesn’t mean they believe the prosperity gospel. Just because someone believes that if you sow financially, you reap financially, that doesn’t mean they believe the prosperity gospel. Now, if they preach that as the center of the gospel, if they preach that as the primary purpose of the gospel, if they preach that as the means to be saved and to demonstrate your salvation, then that’s the prosperity gospel. Take for example, the sin-permitting gospel. How often do we accuse people who emphasize grace of preaching the sin-permitting gospel? So when a preacher talks about the love of God or the grace of God, we can often be quick to judge them and say, «Ah, there it is, the sin-permitting gospel»! But listen carefully. Are they really saying that you can go on sinning with no consequence, or are they simply talking about a biblical truth, namely the grace of God?

So listen very carefully before you go accusing people of preaching a false gospel. Or a works-based gospel. Often, people who preach holiness are accused of preaching legalism. Now, it very well may be that someone actually is preaching legalism, but before you go accusing them of that, make sure they’re not just emphasizing for the moment holiness. Make sure they’re not just in that moment teaching on holiness. I find it interesting that if I teach on blessing, people say, «Well, that’s not the gospel». I say, «Well, I agree». If I teach on the fact that God gives us grace, some people will say, «Well, that’s not in the entire gospel. You have to talk about judgment too». Yes, that’s true, but right now I’m teaching on grace. Or if I talk about holiness, they say, «Well, that’s the works-based gospel». Well, it’s not the works-based gospel, we’re talking about holiness.

So make sure we’re not just listening for buzzwords and making a caricature or an exaggerated opinion of what the person is actually saying. Rather, let’s listen to what’s being said, listen to the core message without jumping to conclusions. And I believe that as we continue to walk in truth, not in pride or fear or paranoia, but if we continue to walk in truth soberly and really examine what people are actually saying and not just listen for the things that sound similar to these false gospels, I think then we can walk free of deception while also maintaining biblical unity with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. And I wanna pray now that the Holy Spirit would help to keep your eyes open, to help keep you free from deception.