Should Christians tithe?

Question 11003.

Ask about Christian tithing in most evangelical churches and you will get a confident answer: ten per cent, off the top, and the Bible says so. Ask for the New Testament chapter and verse that requires it of the Church, and the room usually goes quiet.

I want to handle this carefully, because I am not arguing for smaller giving. I think the New Testament asks something considerably more searching than a percentage. But it will not do to defend generosity with an argument that does not survive contact with the text.

What the tithe actually was

The Hebrew word is maaser, a tenth. Under the Mosaic covenant Israel did not pay one tithe but a series of them. There was the tithe supporting the Levites, who received no land inheritance (Numbers 18:21). There was a second tithe consumed at the festivals. There was a third-year tithe for the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 14:28-29). Taken together the annual obligation exceeded twenty per cent.

It was also agricultural and national. The tithe came from the produce of the land and the herds of a theocratic people living in a particular territory under a particular covenant. It functioned rather like taxation in a state where the temple was also the treasury.

So when Christian tithing is presented as ‘ten per cent, as Scripture requires’, we should notice that the Scripture in view is a covenant arrangement made with Israel, and that a straight ten per cent is not even an accurate summary of it.

Why the Mosaic tithe does not bind the Church

The Mosaic Law came as a covenantal package to one nation at Sinai, and it ends as a package. Paul writes that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Romans 10:4), that the era of the Law as guardian has finished (Galatians 3:23-26), and Hebrews states that the first covenant is obsolete and passing away.

This is not a device for avoiding an inconvenient command. It is the consistent New Testament position, and I hold it across the board rather than selectively, as I have set out when asking whether Christians are still under the Mosaic Law.

Notice too what the apostles do when they discuss money at length. In two entire chapters on giving (2 Corinthians 8 and 9), Paul had every opportunity to name the tithe and did not. Neither did the Jerusalem council when it decided what to require of Gentile believers. The silence is not accidental.

What about Abraham and Malachi?

Two texts do most of the heavy lifting in defences of Christian tithing. The first is Abraham giving a tenth to Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18-20), which is offered as proof that the tithe predates the Law and therefore outlives it. But Abraham’s tenth was from the spoils of a single battle, not his income, it was a one-off event never repeated in his life, and Hebrews cites it to establish the greatness of Melchizedek’s priesthood rather than to set a rate for us.

The second is Malachi 3:8-10, with its charge of robbing God and its promise of opened windows of heaven. Read the paragraph and you find the LORD addressing the priests of Israel, under the Mosaic covenant, who were withholding what that covenant required. Applying its threat to a believer in a New Covenant congregation is a category error, and using it to imply that God will withhold blessing from under-givers is closer to intimidation than to teaching.

Jesus does mention tithing, telling the Pharisees they should have attended to justice and mercy and faithfulness without neglecting the smaller matters (Matthew 23:23). He is speaking to men living under the Law before the cross, and His point is that meticulous tithing had become a substitute for righteousness.

What the New Testament asks instead

The apostolic pattern is proportionate, planned, willing and cheerful. Paul tells the Corinthians to set something aside on the first day of every week, each one ‘as he may prosper’ (1 Corinthians 16:2). That is proportion without a fixed rate, and it is deliberate rather than impulsive.

Then comes the heart of it: each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7). The word is hilaros, from which we get hilarious, and it describes gladness rather than grim duty. Compulsion is precisely what Paul excludes, which ought to give pause to anyone preaching a mandatory percentage.

And the standard the New Testament actually holds up is uncomfortable. The Macedonians gave beyond their means out of extreme poverty. The widow gave two small coins and was commended above the wealthy. Zacchaeus gave half. Nobody in the New Testament is praised for hitting ten per cent.

How Christian tithing became a rule

It is worth asking how a covenant arrangement for agricultural Israel turned into a fixed expectation in Baptist and independent churches. The medieval church collected tithes as an enforceable levy, backed by law in England for centuries, and the habit of thinking about church income as a tax on the faithful long outlived the legislation.

The modern version arrived through nineteenth and twentieth century revivalism, where Christian tithing offered church treasurers something wonderfully predictable. A congregation that gives as each has decided in his heart is harder to budget for than one that has been told the figure. I understand the appeal, having chaired more than one meeting where the roof needed doing.

But convenience is a poor reason to reissue a law God has not reissued, and the cost has been considerable. Christian tithing preached as obligation has taught a generation to think of God as a landlord collecting rent, and it has bred a quiet cynicism in people who noticed that the argument rested on Malachi and a single verse about Abraham.

I would rather teach the harder thing. Everything you have belongs to God, the proportion is between you and Him, and the standard is glad-hearted generosity rather than compliance. That will not make budgeting easier. It will make disciples.

Is Christian tithing still useful as a guide?

I think it is, as a benchmark rather than a rule. Ten per cent is a memorable, achievable starting figure for a Christian who has never given systematically, and there is nothing wrong with adopting it as a personal discipline provided you know what you are doing and why.

The danger of Christian tithing as an obligation is twofold. For the poor it becomes a burden that Scripture never laid on them, and I have known families in genuine hardship give money they needed for food because they were told God would punish them otherwise. For the comfortable it becomes a ceiling, a bill settled, after which the remaining ninety per cent is felt to be entirely their own. Both outcomes are worse than the problem the rule was meant to solve.

The New Testament assumes everything is God’s already and that we are stewards of the lot. That is a far higher standard than a tenth, and it cannot be discharged by a standing order.

Where the money should go

Give first to the local church where you are fed and known. Paul is clear that those who preach the gospel should get their living by the gospel, and that the elder who labours in preaching and teaching is worthy of his wages (1 Timothy 5:17-18). A congregation that will not support its own ministry is not being spiritual, it is being carried by someone else.

Beyond that, the New Testament shows money moving towards the poor, towards missionaries, and towards believers in crisis. Paul’s great collection was famine relief for Jerusalem saints, carried across the Mediterranean by churches with little to spare.

Give thoughtfully rather than reactively. A settled plan, reviewed each year, will do more good than a series of emotional responses to appeals, and it will keep you giving when the appeals are less moving. I have written further about the shape of Christian giving and its motives.

So, now what?

If you give nothing systematically, start. Pick a proportion you can sustain, set it up this week, and let it be the floor rather than the ceiling. If ten per cent is a helpful figure to aim at, use it, provided you use it as a servant and not a master.

If you have been giving ten per cent for years without ever asking whether the remaining ninety is also God’s, that is the question worth sitting with. Christian tithing can quietly become the cheapest way to keep God at arm’s length from your finances.

And if you have been taught that failing at Christian tithing will cost you God’s blessing, let that go. Your standing before God rests on the finished work of Jesus and not on your bank statement. Give because you are loved, not so that you will be.

Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

2 Corinthians 9:7, ESV