TITHING 106: GUILE

GUILE

The Christian man will always find himself having to ensure that his practice of faith has not degenerated to mere form and ritual, which many rightly define as religion. What makes what we do as Christians different from what other religious people do in their faith is that our actions are birth from truth – such truth that is founded in the word of God, the bible, and that is etched in our hearts. In other words the Christian man must be a sincere person – he may not be perfect but he must be true to his God and to his neighbor. This is what the Psalmist meant when he wrote these eternal words in Psalm 32: 1-2,

1 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.   2 Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

There are four characteristics of the Christian man enumerated in the above scripture: 1. His transgression (sin) is forgiven; 2. His sin is covered; 3. Iniquity is not imputed on him; 4. There is no guile in his spirit. Note that the first three items are what God gives to the Christian man when he comes to faith in Christ Jesus. It is what follows his justification before a holy God. This was the scripture Paul quoted when he was speaking of the faith of Abraham that justified him in Romans 4:1-4. This is the same faith we possess when we come to Christ as believers and the blessings in it all are the three items listed above. The last item, the issue of no guile in the justified man, is shown to us as an inherent characteristic of a true Christian. The Christian man has no guile: he is not deceptive, dishonest, fraudulent, duplicitous, cunning or artful deceptive (these are some dictionary synonyms to the word “guile”). The Christian man is true because the grace of God given to him through Christ came with truth (John 1:17), so there is no reason to be deceptive. Also, the worship of God that his faith consist of demands that he be true always (John 4:23-24) – and if he is faithful in the practice of his faith he would have learnt the art of truth and not to be “artfully deceptive”.

Truth is what religion is devoid of. The forms, rituals, ceremonies and procedures that religious practices consist of do not require truth in the inward part; anyone can practice any religious observance as long as he get the procedures right. This were the issues God had with the nation of Israel in the Old Testament when he gave them the many rituals in the Mosaic Laws (Isaiah 1:11-18). That is why the Law was never intended to last forever. The purpose of the Law was to point men to the sinfulness of sin, man’s inability to keep it and the coming of Christ who would fulfill the Law for all who will believe in Him. Therefore when the Law was given through Moses, the guile in man was meant to be revealed. However, grace and truth came with Jesus Christ to cleanse man from sin and guile. Today, one aspect of the Law remains with us in a perverted form and that is the ritual of tithing, and understandably guile cannot be separated from the practice of tithing. Tithing, like many other aspects of the Law, is a purely religious activity and it does not require truth in the inward man to practice it. What it requires is to faithfully carry out a religious activity every week or every month as the case maybe. Anyone can give a tenth of their income to a religious house; they do not need to be Christians to do this. They only need to believe the lie that says that by tithing we merit God’s blessings.

The first aspect of guile or dishonesty about the practice of tithing comes from its definition. What does the true biblical tithe consist of? The word tithe means tenth. However, it is a religious term used to denote the levy or tax God imposed on the nation of Israel in the Mosaic Law. This tax was meant to be given to the civil and religious leaders of the nation of Israel to ensure the proper running of the religious and civil life of the nation. The tithe from scriptures consisted only of agricultural products (Leviticus 27:30-33) and was never money. Thus when anyone teaches a concept of a monetary tithe today, he or she is teaching a deceptive gospel because the tithe of the bible was not money. With time, the practice of tithing became unnecessary in Israel for two reasons. One of them was the coming of a new dispensation in which Christ’s death and resurrection had rendered the Mosaic Law obsolete and unnecessary (Romans 10:4; Hebrew 8:13). The second reason was that the providential dealings of God with the nation of Israel makes tithing totally unnecessary today because there is no more temple in Jerusalem for the Israelites to take a tithe to; and the civil life of the nation of Israel is totally changed now. Instead of tithes, people pay their government a tax and civil life is sustained this way. When we realize that those who the original concept of tithing started with have ceased to practice it, we understand why what Christians tithe today is not the true biblical tithe and why modern day tithing is a deceptive practice borne from a heart of guile.

The religious man is full of guile. Religion requires that one puts on a façade of piety, fulfill certain rituals and please those who are observing what is being done. Those that require being pleased many times include religious leaders, family members, friends, religious associates and sometimes oneself. The practice of religion has a way of dousing an inner craving to fulfill religious obligations and many times it gives a false impression that we have given God His requirements, so we can move on to do our own thing while we believe that God will bless our efforts as we have fulfilled our obligations to Him. When God instituted the New Testament, He wanted this sort of thing to stop. He wanted our practice of faith in Him to come from the state of our heart and not in fulfilling obligations. And that is why Paul contented with the religious people of his day who insisted that physical circumcision shall be a sign of conversion. Paul resisted these people because he wanted to show them that the new dispensation does not require an outward observance or ritual to be acceptable with God. Now God wanted people to do things from the sincerity of their hearts. With this standard, every aspect of the Mosaic Law went with the old dispensation (Colossians 2:16) and the practice of tithing went with them.

A man may still give a tenth of his income to support Christian works today; just as he may give any other proportion of his income also. But it would be wrong for anyone giving a tenth of his income to claim that he is tithing because it is abundantly clear from scriptures that the biblical tithe was never money. The litmus test of whether our giving is ritualistic and religious or whether it is borne from a heart of truth is if we obey this command of scripture:

7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give;  not grudgingly, or of necessity:  for God loveth a cheerful giver – 2 Corinthians 9:7

Again we return to the state of the Christian’s heart but this time when he is giving. Two things must govern what the Christian gives: first, we must give as we purpose in our hearts. The word “purpose” here denotes freedom, free will, making one’s decision without any external interference, etc. This is the only way such giving can be done without grudging – because no one would grudge what he willingly does. Giving as one purpose in one’s heart also is the exact opposite of giving out of necessity. Necessity in this case denotes giving out of force, according to Law, or out of an imposition. Giving out of necessity is what tithing according to the law denotes. When a man is told that to enjoy God’s blessing he must tithe his income, that man is being placed under a burden to give – he is giving out of necessity. The next thing we see about giving according to 2 Corinthians 9:7 is that this giving must be cheerful. No one will give cheerfully as long as he is giving grudgingly or out of necessity, and as long as tithing is taught as a type of giving we are encouraging giving in church that will not be  cheerful.

The biggest tragedy with the practice of tithing is the fact that an un-regenerated individual might consider himself a Christian because he tithes. So because he observes a religious activity he cannot see himself as one in need of salvation. This is the problem with religion. It is obvious from this that anything a non Christian can do is not Christian – and this must include the practice of tithing. A non Christian however cannot have the influence of the Spirit of God on his heart that will lead him to give as only God can lead a Christian. This is why the only kind of giving that should be acceptable in the Christian church is free will giving because this is the only type of giving that the Spirit of Jesus can inspire  a Christian to do.

God has ordained that the Christian faith shall be one borne from a heart condition. This is why for one to be a Christian such a person must be born-again – a state that is best described in the bible as the circumcision of the heart (Philippians 3:3). Then the Christian life is to be lived out by faith (Romans 1:17b) – still a heart condition that indicates implicit trust in God through Christ Jesus. The Christian man worships God in spirit and in truth – again a heart condition of devotion and reverence of a sovereign God for all that He has done for us through Christ. Then the Christian man practices his faith through love (Galatians 5:6b) – still a heart of submission to the singular law Christ left for us to observe: love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. It is in the process of loving God and men that a Christian man must give but this giving is again a reflection of his heart condition which prompts purposeful giving, not of necessity but cheerfully (2 Corinthians 9:7). This giving is borne from a heart devoid of guile or the hypocrisy that adorns the observance of the law; rather, there is a freedom to give as one wills. This is the reason that a giving of a tithe in the Christian church is not congruent with the spirit of the New Testament church. Tithing is of the law, whose observance too many times follows ritualistic procedures that the man full of guile can observe without qualms. However, purposeful or free will giving retains the freedom that should be present in the New Testament church.