THE TROUBLE WITH TITHING
The primary duty of Christian people is to
spread the fragrance of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to help men comprehend
gospel truths so that they might be saved from eternal damnation. Satan knows
this very well and thus seeks to frustrate these efforts. One leading means of
doing this is to ensure that the gospel that is preached is an incomplete one.
This gospel occupies a middle line between falsehood and truth, thus making it
difficult for undiscerning folks to realize its true nature. The greatest harm
this sort of gospel does is that it does not bring people to saving knowledge
of Christ Jesus. God has ordained that men will be saved as they listen to the
preached word on Christ and His crucifixion (Romans 1:16a; 10:8,9). When this
word is perverted, what it produces are weak Christians at best and false
brethren at worst. This is the reason
why along with preaching the gospel to the unsaved, the Christian church must
continually check the truth in the messages it preaches to ensure that it is
not being mixed with untruth and in the process loose its saving power. The
Spirit of Jesus is the one who takes the word preached and turns it into faith
in the heart of the listener, thereby leading to his redemption in Christ. When
this message is perverted there are no conversions in the church. What we might
call conversions that follow some evangelistic preaching is found eventually to
lack true depth. This is the trouble with the gospel that has tithing at its
foundation. That gospel is the prosperity gospel.
Tithing and
the Prosperity Gospel
Much has been written on the prosperity
message and this essay shall not be doing a thorough academic work on it.
Rather, I shall be showing how the doctrine of tithing is at the root of the
prosperity gospel and how it helps fund it. The statement below by David Prior
in his book BEDROCK helps us with
something close to a definition for the prosperity teaching:
There is a
growing welter of teaching in certain circles who reject (the doctrine of shame
and suffering in the gospel). Success, health, happiness, prosperity are all
seen as expected rights for the children of God’s kingdom. This
prosperity-teaching gains numerous adherents precisely because it panders to
our lower nature. It represents what we want to hear, not what we need to hear.
It appeals to two kinds of Christian in particular – to those who enjoy a
fairly affluent standard of living and need to rationalize or justify it; and
it has understandable attraction for those who have been deprived of life’s
good things and feel they deserve a better deal. When we realize that most
Christians are included within these two groupings, we can appreciate the
popularity of such teaching… Its most serious aspect, however, is the way it
undercuts the very foundation of the Gospel of God’s grace. At no stage do we
deserve anything from God; everything we have is a gift of his love, completely
undeserved. From beginning to end, from our justification to our glorification,
we depend on the grace of God who, out of his great love and mercy, constantly
loads us with daily benefits.
The gospel
of prosperity teaches that Christ has secured both a physical and spiritual
redemption for all who believe. The physical redemption will include redemption
from poverty and sickness. The spiritual redemption will include redemption
from sin, with eternal life for all who believe. A close examination of this
gospel reveals that most individuals who preach this dual nature of the gospel
spend greater time emphasizing the physical redemption at the expense of the
spiritual. The argument is that the needs of most people are physical; and when
these are met, the spiritual follows. The means to meeting these physical means
is the blessing – God’s blessing. The story is that God is ready to bless
anyone who believes as long as they obey biblical commands. What then is this
command?
10 Bring ye all the tithes into the
storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith,
saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour
you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to
receive it.
Tithing is
taught as the means to obtaining God’s blessings of health and wealth. If you tithe all shall be well with you and
if you do not tithe all shall be tight for you, the prosperity preacher bellows.
Like David Prior stated earlier, when we realize that the majority of Christian
folks are either rich or very poor we understand why this sort of message
affects a lot of Christian folks. In one hand, we have a number of Christians
who are trying to make a financial breakthrough and who see tithing as their
means of doing this. On the other hand, we see a number of Christians who are
financially secured; tithing becomes for them a means of consolidating this
position.
The trouble
with all these is that the gospel that Jesus Christ passed unto His disciples
does not make these kinds of promises. There is nowhere in the whole of New
Testament where health and wealth is promised as required rights for Christian
believers. There is nowhere in the New Testament where tithing is seen as a means
of obtaining these rights or blessings. There is nowhere in the New Testament
where a Christian is seen to be tithing or doing any other thing, outside
prayers and simple faith in God, to secure blessings. The reason why the gospel
of prosperity and the practice of tithing thrive so much in our times is
because very few people truly understand the gospel of Jesus Christ and the
grace of God that came with it; and even among those who understand it, very
few people preach it.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ
The gospel
of Jesus Christ was foreshadowed in the Old Testament and became a reality in
the New (Colossians 2:17). The God of all creation made a good world but sin
crept into it through our first parents. At that time God had spoken of man’s
redemption from the reign of Satan when he said the seed of the woman would
bruise the serpent’s head. In the opening chapters of the New Testament, the
gospel is preached in a summary form:
20 But while he thought on these
things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying,
Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for
that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. 21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call
his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins – Matthew
1:20-21
The gospel of Jesus Christ is God’s redeeming works in
Jesus Christ to save men from their sins. This was what God was doing when he
killed a lamb, shedding blood (Hebrew 9:22), to cloth Adam and Eve when they
sinned. This was what God was doing in instituting the various Levithical
offerings and sacrifices under the Laws of Moses. And this was what God was
doing when He put His only begotten Son on a Roman Cross and placed the sins of
the whole world on Him.
6 For when we were yet without
strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die:
yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. 8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much
more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath
through him. 10 For if, when we were
enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being
reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. 11 And
not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by
whom we have now received the atonement. 12 Wherefore,
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: 13 (For
until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is
no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned
from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of
Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. 15 But not as the offence, so also is the free
gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the
grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ,
hath abounded unto many. 16 And not
as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the
judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many
offences unto justification. 17 For
if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which
receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life
by one, Jesus Christ.) 18 Therefore as by the
offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so
by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto
justification of life. – Romans 5
The death of Jesus Christ has secured our justification
before God. We were men and women condemned as sinners before an absolutely
holy God. In the cross of Jesus Christ we are justified. We are declared “not
guilty”; our sins have been covered; we are declared righteous. We are the very
righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Halleluyah!!!
The death of Jesus Christ has also secured our eternal
home in God. We are children of God – pilgrim on this earth, that have no
eternal home here. We have been saved from hell; and secured to heaven. This is
no means fit; it is the blessing of the cross that cannot be lost because it
was secured on the merit of Jesus Christ and not on our own merit (John 6:39).
The death of Jesus Christ is working out our
sanctification. When a man places faith in the Son of God, he receives the Holy
Spirit. The Spirit of God comes into us to be our instructor, our guide, our
purifier and our sanctifier. Because He is absolutely holy, he begins to teach
us and work into us the very nature of God and His holiness. So that Christ’s
work on the cross begins to manifest in us in two dimensions. First he secures
our salvation; then He continually works out our salvation in us. The whole
process of our sanctification is what calls the believer to submit to the cross
of God that is given to us through Jesus Christ.
If the Son of God Himself learnt obedience by the things
He suffered (Hebrew 5:8), none of us shall be immune to suffering. Christ
Himself gave us a picture of what it means to endure the cross – it is not what
any man wills to do (Matthew 26:39). It comes through the sovereign dictates of
God in heaven. This leads us ultimately to the concept of the Sovereignty of
God. God is sovereign and He is working out everything in this world to bring
His good purposes to pass. It is in the context of the sovereign works of God
in the lives of all believers that we submit to whatever cross God might bring
our way, knowing that there is a God who work out everything for our good
(Romans 8:28; Hebrew 12:16). God utilizes a host of things to bring about the
Christian’s sanctification; any of those things can be trial that has to do
with our health or wealth. This is where the so called gospel that teaches that
faith in God secures health and wealth comes into conflict with gospel of Jesus
Christ.
Tithing as an Anti-thesis to the Gospel
For us to
understand how tithing is an anti-thesis to the gospel of Christ we must go
back to why Paul and the leading apostles of his time resisted the Jews from
imposing circumcision on gentiles. Like tithing, circumcision was carried out
by the Jewish patriarchs and was also found in the Laws Moses gave to Israel.
Nonetheless, the apostles of the Lamb insisted that the gentiles shall not be
burdened with this practice.
1 And certain men which came down from Judaea
taught the brethren, and said,
Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved …
5 But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed,
saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses. 6 And
the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this
matter. 7 And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose
up, and said unto them, Men and
brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the
Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and
believe. 8 And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them
witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; 9 And put no difference between us
and them, purifying their hearts by faith. 10 Now therefore
why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither
our fathers nor we were able to bear? 11 But we believe that through
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they…
13 And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: …
19 Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among
the Gentiles are turned to God: 20 But that we write unto them, that
they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from
things strangled, and from
blood…28 For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you
no greater burden than these necessary things; 29 That ye abstain
from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and
from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do
well. Fare ye well… - Acts 15
The
trouble with circumcision was not the act itself but what it was meant to
achieve. The position of the false brethren in the scriptures above was that
circumcision was a means to salvation and right standing before God, which the
apostles disagreed with. Peter, in his statement, shows us the pertinent things
in regards to our salvation. He says that God knows the heart – so the
Christian’s faith is heart thing and not one of external rituals. It would
require repentance towards God, which only God can acknowledge and forgive.
What follows is God purifying the heart and filling the saints with the Holy
Ghost. Paul, in his numerous epistles, will explain this as the whole process
that follows our being justified by faith. In Galatians 3, where he was
still discussing circumcision, he showed us that the way into the Christian
walk was by faith and the path through it was all by faith – a faith that works
by love.
6 Even as Abraham believed
God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. 7 Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the
same are the children of Abraham. 8 And
the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith,
preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all
nations be blessed. 9 So then they
which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham… 1 Stand
fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage. 2 Behold,
I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you
nothing. 3 For I testify again to
every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole
law. 4 Christ is become of no effect
unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from
grace. 5 For we through the Spirit
wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. 6 For
in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor
uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. (Galatians 3 and 5)
The thesis
that the gospel presented to the sinner is this: believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and you shall be saved (Acts16:31). This thesis also includes the fact
that the Christian believer has right standing with God and enjoys the very
righteousness of God, all by faith (2 Corinthians5:21; Romans 3:22). This
thesis states that the Christian believer has peace with God (Romans 5:1) and
can enjoy this peace practically (John 16:33). And finally, in response to all
that God has done for the Christian, the gospel calls us present all of our
lives to God as a living sacrifice, in holiness and righteousness (Romans
12:1-2).
Circumcision,
and by extension tithing, nullifies the entire thesis stated above. Tithing and
circumcision are major bedrocks of the laws of Moses. The mark of being a Jew
was circumcision – which was a physical mark wrought on the foreskin of a man.
The gospel transcended this mere physical manifestation by seeing to it that
our circumcision was now that wrought in the heart. And anyone who goes further
to prove his spiritual circumcision by carrying out a physical one was calling
God a liar and not walking by faith. This act of circumcision was rendering the
gospel useless. The same thing goes with tithing. Tithing was the means of
sustaining the Levithical priesthood who were the holders of the law. With the
death and burial of Christ, the law has been abrogated and changed. The
Levithical priesthood is no longer in force. Therefore to tithe today is to try
to restore what God Himself had abrogated. It is to begin to walk by sight and
not by faith; it is to return to the law for justification and right standing;
it is to fall from the grace of the cross and to render Christ’s work there
useless – for Christ shall profit he that tithes nothing (Galatians 5:1-4).
This is the grave situation the church has found herself and this is the reason
the whole practice of tithing must be addressed. If people are tithing to be
acceptable to God and to enjoy some form of right standing, they have fallen
from His grace and are under his curse and wrath.
Conclusion
The gospel
of Jesus Christ invites the sinner to a liberty of the spirit. This is the
liberty that the practice of circumcision and tithing denies the Christian. The
gospel invites us all to know God for ourselves. Learn to hear Him in His word
and learn to obey Him. The liberty of the spirit is what will permit us to do
only as we are “led by God’s Holy Spirit” and not because we are following
church laws or the Laws of Moses. The liberty of the spirit is what will permit
Paul to circumcise Timothy, while at the same time instructing the Galatian
churches not to allow themselves to be circumcised by anyone. The liberty of
the spirit is what true gospel living call us into and this is what tithing
denies people. A man may enjoy the liberty of the spirit and be led to give a
tenth of his income to support a certain Christian work; but as long as it is
peculiar to Him alone, and he does not impose it on anyone, he is not doing
anything wrong.
It is the
liberty of the spirit that makes sinners listen to the gospel and consider it
content. It is this liberty that makes him bow his heart in repentance and
faith to receive the Savior. It is this perfect liberty that he enjoys as he
comes into communion with the risen Lord and serves Him in the fullness of the
spirit. This liberty should never be denied any child of God and this liberty
is what is being denied God’s people when they are called to tithe. God calls
us to stand fast in the liberty that Christ has made us free when we became
born-again; we should never be entangled with the yoke of bondage – especially the
bondage of tithing.
