Romans 8:32 - He that
spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with
him also freely give us all things?
2 Peter 1:2 - Grace and
peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our
Lord, 3 According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness,
through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
Evangelism remains a cardinal aspect of the Christian’s way
of life. The call on us to “go ye…” by Jesus Christ cannot be over-emphasized
especially in times like this when it seems the world itself is reeling from
the weight of the sins of men. There is no other time in the history of the
world that men need to hear the message of the saving works of Jesus Christ
than now. But it seems to me that the world is tired of the gospel. An average
non-Christian has heard these words “give your life to Christ…” so many times
that it is making little sense to them day by day and thus there is a need to
trust God for more creative ways of passing across the message of the cross to
a world desperately in need of hearing it. As we endeavor to do this as
Christians, we must also update ourselves about certain realities in the world
today and the need for us as Christians to up
our game, quit religion and avail ourselves as vessels to God to be used as
his mouth piece to witness Jesus to a world in dire need of the salvation
message.
One reality that we Christian seem not to notice about the
mindset of a non Christian is the fact that many of such people cannot afford to be Christians. I use the word
“afford” to drive home the fact that the Christianity that many espouse today
cost too much financially and people cannot just afford to pay for it; and the
best way of doing this is just to keep away from the gospel entirely. There is
a certain false teaching in the heart and life of the Christian church today
that says that for one to be a good Christian such an individual must pay
a tithe of his income to a Christian clergy or to the church he worships in. And
for this reason, many hard working and sensible individuals who, at one time or
the other had considered the Christian message have been put off and relapsed
into a world of sin. There is no scripture in the whole of the bible that says
for one to be a Christian or for one to be a good Christian or for one to get
to heaven, such an individual must pay a tithe of his weekly or monthly income
to a clergy or church. To claim such is to put a sword through the heart of the
gospel Jesus called the church to propagate around the world. The eternal
gospel that God called us to tell the world is that Jesus Christ died a painful
death on a Roman Cross to purchase
salvation for the world. In doing this, Jesus paid for all that needs to be paid for. Anyone that believes the
gospel of Jesus is not required to pay anything more both to be a
Christian or to remain a Christian. Man’s salvation is fully paid for by the
atoning work of Jesus on the cross of Calvary. Salvation is God’s free gift to
human beings and any man can partake of this salvation by only believing in
Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
This sort of conditional and false gospel tried
to creep into the body of Christ in the early days of the apostles too.
Christianity having been borne from a Jewish tradition was in danger of being
influenced by Judaism, when some individuals began to say people could not be
saved except they were circumcised first (Acts 15:1). This heresy was quickly
dispelled by the apostles of Jesus when they showed the implication of Jesus’s
dying on our faith: “But we believe that through the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.” (Acts 15:11). The grace
of God in the cross of Jesus is the fact that God gives salvation freely to men and no one needs to work to
earn it, talk less of paying for it. Grace is a favour that is not merited
neither can it be paid for. The doctrine that teaches that Christians must pay
tithe to their local churches is a false doctrine that is the result of a wrong
interpretation of the tithe God demanded from the Children of Israel in the Old
Testament as a kind of taxation to support the religious and civil life of those
people. The tithe of the Old Testament is ten percent of the agricultural
produce from God’s holy land. A land that God gave to the children of Israel
and He instituted the tithe from any produce off that Land to be a paid to a
tribe, the levites, who had no inheritance on the land. This tithe was expected
to paid once, following the harvest, and was to be given to the levithes, who
in turn paid a tithe of what they received to the priests for their own upkeep.
The tithe was never money, even though money existed in Old Testament times. That
system of tithing is however, today, defunct and obsolete, because the church of
Jesus Christ is not physical Israel and there are no levities to pay tithes to
today.
Jesus has paid all that needs to be paid and God is not
demanding anything from anyone save for simple faith in what Jesus has done on
the cross for sinful humanity. What did Jesus do? God created a good world. A
world devoid of sin, sickness, poverty and every sort of ill. He created man
and put man in the world he created but man sinned and lost his relationship
with God. In spite of this set back, God put in motion another plan to redeem
man. When Jesus was to be born, the reason for his coming was stated: He was to
come and save man from his sins (Matthew 1:21). Jesus did this by living a
sinless life on earth by fulfilling the righteous requirements of the laws God
had given Moses. In the laws of Moses, men could pay for their sins by killing
a lamb. However, Jesus, who had lived the law perfectly, became a sinless lamb,
whom God set forth as a propitiation for our sin. Like in the days of Moses,
God put the sins of the whole world on Jesus and He died as the sacrificial Lamb
of God for the sins of all men. Jesus paid for our sins by his death on a Roman
Cross. This is what Jesus did.
But the story did not end there, Jesus would however, rise up
from the dead after three days in the grave, having purchased eternal salvation for all who will believe in Him. This
is the crux of the gospel message and this is what satan has been attacking
from all times. When a man, having heard the gospel message, is convicted of
his sins and repents before God, such a man is forgiven by God and is made a
new creation in Christ. Such an individual is saved and has begun a glorious
journey in God that started in grace and will most certainly end in grace. Such
an individual need not pay a penny to be saved, to remain saved or to be saved
into God’s glorious kingdom.
To conclude this essay, I wish to offer a proper and balanced
perspective on the whole matter of money in the Christian church. While God
does not demand we pay tithes or offering to be members of the Church His Son
purchased with His blood, God demands our love. The truth is that a genuinely
born-again individual will have God’s love shed abroad in his heart. He will
see life from a new perspective: he would love God and he would love human
beings. It is this love God has placed in the heart of such a converted fellow
that leads him to give because love always gives. This giving is not by compulsion
(2Corinthians 9:7) as is falsely depicted by the doctrine of tithing, but free
will. What this free will giving shall be is not a matter for any church or
pastor to determine for any of God’s saints: an individual may be so blessed by
God that he determines in his heart to give 10% of his income to support the
church were he is being discipled. That is just fine; but what he gives is not
a tithe but a tenth of his income.
Despite the position I have taken in this essay I still
encourage giving to the church because of the great need for the propagation of
the gospel in these last days. There is the need for more money in mission
works to parts of the world that have never heard the gospel message; there is
the need to take care of the weak in the church: widows, orphans, the sick,
homeless, jobless, etc. And there is the need to minister our physical
blessings to our Pastors, as they minister spiritual things to us. All of these
needs in church can be adequately taken care of by graceful, sacrificial, free
willed offering; without the need to impose the false burden of tithe paying on
the flock of God.
The message of this essay is that salvation is free: fully
paid for by the death of Jesus on the cross. We cannot purchase salvation by
good works, circumcision or by tithing. God is calling on every person who is
not a Christian to re consider the gospel message, not in the light of the
false one that the demands money from you but in the light of the true gospel that
says God does not desire a penny from you; rather, God desires you. God has
fully paid for your salvation in Christ Jesus and you need not pay anything to
receive it or to keep it. Every human being created by God can afford to be a Christian
because salvation in Jesus Christ is free!
