Is tithing for today? Have you ever wondered how it works now that we are under grace? Do we still have a legalistic requirement to give a tenth?
People go back and forth arguing about the issue of tithing. On the one side you hear people proclaiming that we should give 10% of our gross income. Someone else says you should give 10% of your net. Another guy comes along and says you don't have any requirement at all. What is it? Does the Bible give us a clue? I think that there is real clarity on this issue in the Bible. Without any question the Bible can be taken out of context and often twisted to make it say whatever we like. However the goal of this site is to look at relevant cultural issues through the lens of scripture and see if a God focus brings us greater understanding. So we will let God be God and submit to his clarity.
To begin with lets consider the issue of the ten commandments. Paul tells us in Galatians that the ten commandments are a school master to bring us to Christ. What he is saying is that the ten commandments were there to show us that we needed a Savior because we were insufficient to accomplish the task ourselves. Because of the ten commandments and our inability to keep them it becomes apparent that we need help of some sort to achieve communion with God. That help comes from the Holy Spirit and it manifest itself in the fruit of the spirit. One of the results of the Spirits work in our hearts will be a desire to know God better. So how can we know God better? Lets start with the ten commandments. Well how can we follow the ten commandments without being a legalist? First of all I would define legalism as any act done for the sake of making myself more spiritual in comparison to others. Legalism always carries with it the idea of comparison, i.e. how can I become more spiritual than someone else or how can I achieve the same perceived level of spirituality I observe in someone else. This is a very horizontal man-focused type of achievement. God's law is God centered it shows us what is pleasing to God. If we pursue the following of God's law in full awareness of our falleness and unworthiness with the idea of perhaps coming to know God better in this pursuit then we avoid the monster of legalism. So in this way the ten commandments truly teach us how to bend our will to bring it into subjection to the desire of God and the things that please Him. It really is a schoolmaster.
So what does all of this have to do with tithing. Tithing in the old testament was always a starting point. There were multiple opportunities for people to give more than a tithe. Some argue that this was also the de-facto tax levied on the Israelites to pay for their infrastructure. That may have been the case but tithing continued even when the Jews were under rulership in which they were taxed. Jesus lived in such a time and His words are instructive here. Matthew 23:23 and Luke 11:42 record Christ's words on tithing. He tells the Scribes and the Pharisees here that they tithe down to the very herbs they grow in their garden but they neglect justice, the love of God, mercy and faithfulness. He goes on to say that they should tithe without neglecting these other issues. In Christ eyes tithing was not just acceptable but something that should be practiced as a normal matter of pursuing God. Why? You see tithing gives us an objective standard much like God's law that we can easily follow. It gives us a standard of 10% that we can take off of the top. As a starting point it is often just enough to cause us to have to adjust our standard of living down. It means we have to give up some things. You see when we tithe out of a desire to know God better we end up giving up some things for the sake of pursuing that relationship. It means that there are a few less things to get in the way of our pursuit of God. Tithing puts us in a place where we are trusting that God knows better than us what we need. It is in a sense abandoning ourselves to the hand of God in the area of our finances. When we do it with the express goal of knowing God better it becomes a pure joy to us to take part in building God's kingdom. We know that investment will last more than anything else we could buy. There literally becomes no better thing we could do with the money God entrust to us. On top of all that the people in the old testament tithed and they had not yet seen the full magnificence and glory of God's grace given at the cross. How could any of us on this side of the cross knowing the full weight of what has already been done give less then those who never knew. Giving a tenth is a requirement for us just like God's law for the sake of our hearts being brought into subjection to God so that we might know Him better. Who would not want that?
To begin with lets consider the issue of the ten commandments. Paul tells us in Galatians that the ten commandments are a school master to bring us to Christ. What he is saying is that the ten commandments were there to show us that we needed a Savior because we were insufficient to accomplish the task ourselves. Because of the ten commandments and our inability to keep them it becomes apparent that we need help of some sort to achieve communion with God. That help comes from the Holy Spirit and it manifest itself in the fruit of the spirit. One of the results of the Spirits work in our hearts will be a desire to know God better. So how can we know God better? Lets start with the ten commandments. Well how can we follow the ten commandments without being a legalist? First of all I would define legalism as any act done for the sake of making myself more spiritual in comparison to others. Legalism always carries with it the idea of comparison, i.e. how can I become more spiritual than someone else or how can I achieve the same perceived level of spirituality I observe in someone else. This is a very horizontal man-focused type of achievement. God's law is God centered it shows us what is pleasing to God. If we pursue the following of God's law in full awareness of our falleness and unworthiness with the idea of perhaps coming to know God better in this pursuit then we avoid the monster of legalism. So in this way the ten commandments truly teach us how to bend our will to bring it into subjection to the desire of God and the things that please Him. It really is a schoolmaster.
So what does all of this have to do with tithing. Tithing in the old testament was always a starting point. There were multiple opportunities for people to give more than a tithe. Some argue that this was also the de-facto tax levied on the Israelites to pay for their infrastructure. That may have been the case but tithing continued even when the Jews were under rulership in which they were taxed. Jesus lived in such a time and His words are instructive here. Matthew 23:23 and Luke 11:42 record Christ's words on tithing. He tells the Scribes and the Pharisees here that they tithe down to the very herbs they grow in their garden but they neglect justice, the love of God, mercy and faithfulness. He goes on to say that they should tithe without neglecting these other issues. In Christ eyes tithing was not just acceptable but something that should be practiced as a normal matter of pursuing God. Why? You see tithing gives us an objective standard much like God's law that we can easily follow. It gives us a standard of 10% that we can take off of the top. As a starting point it is often just enough to cause us to have to adjust our standard of living down. It means we have to give up some things. You see when we tithe out of a desire to know God better we end up giving up some things for the sake of pursuing that relationship. It means that there are a few less things to get in the way of our pursuit of God. Tithing puts us in a place where we are trusting that God knows better than us what we need. It is in a sense abandoning ourselves to the hand of God in the area of our finances. When we do it with the express goal of knowing God better it becomes a pure joy to us to take part in building God's kingdom. We know that investment will last more than anything else we could buy. There literally becomes no better thing we could do with the money God entrust to us. On top of all that the people in the old testament tithed and they had not yet seen the full magnificence and glory of God's grace given at the cross. How could any of us on this side of the cross knowing the full weight of what has already been done give less then those who never knew. Giving a tenth is a requirement for us just like God's law for the sake of our hearts being brought into subjection to God so that we might know Him better. Who would not want that?
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