Why does this teaching matter?
MacArthur cuts through the modern prosperity gospel's promise of self-fulfillment and restoration of 'your best life now.' The true gospel calls us to die — to self, to sin, to worldly ambition. Jesus never promised ease, wealth, or personal actualization. He promised a cross. This statement exposes the fundamental inversion that prosperity preachers make: turning the gospel from a call to surrender into a promise of gain.
What did John MacArthur teach?
"The true gospel is a call to self-denial. It is not a call to self-fulfillment."
Speaker: John MacArthur
Source: Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
What does Scripture confirm?
Luke 9:23-24
"Then He said to them all, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.'"
— NKJV
Jesus makes the cost unmistakably clear: self-DENIAL, not self-fulfillment. Taking up a cross is an execution march, not a path to personal prosperity. The one who clings to his life loses it; the one who surrenders gains eternal life.
Matthew 16:24-25
"Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.'"
— NKJV
This is not optional for 'serious Christians' — it's the entry requirement for ALL who would follow Christ. The prosperity gospel inverts this, promising that following Jesus means gaining your life, not losing it.
Galatians 2:20
"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
— NKJV
Paul's testimony is of death to self — 'crucified with Christ.' The old self-seeking, self-fulfilling person is dead. Christ now lives through the believer. This is the opposite of the self-centered gospel of modern prosperity teachers.
Philippians 3:7-8
"But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ."
— NKJV
Paul counted ALL things as loss — his credentials, his achievements, his status — for the sake of knowing Christ. This is the opposite of the prosperity gospel that promises you'll GAIN all these things if you follow Jesus.