Should we continue tithing today?

Several years ago, I attended a truly uplifting worship session at a mega-church in Leatherhead. Yet, at the conclusion of that session, I was disappointed to hear the Senior Pastor trot out the usual shop-worn arguments for the continuance of tithing in the New Testament.

Of course, I can understand churches’ attraction to having a substantial and predictable source of church funds. However, stretching the applicability of an Old Testament regulation to our New Testament era is not the way to do it.

Tithing in the Old Testament: the goal was equality

In the Old Testament, tithing (the religious practice of giving a tenth of one’s income) provided harvest and or livestock support for the relatively landless Levite tribe (Deut. 26:12–13)

In the final judgement on Egypt, in liberating His people from slavery, God spared the first-born of Israelite families. That liberation triggered an obligation to God requiring the complete dedication of the Levite tribe to offer sacrifices to Him.

Rather than a fully sustaining territory of their own, the Levites were assigned to provinces within the territories of the other eleven tribes (Num. 35:1–8). They were also appointed to offer sacrifices on behalf of the other tribes of Israel (Num. 18:8–14). Given that the Levites were only provided with basic settlement in those provinces, it was only fair that God commanded the other tribes to hand over a tenth of the Promised Land harvest to sustain them.

The goal was equality. The census count in Numbers 3 shows that the Levites formed a significant proportion of the whole Israelite population that settled in the land of Canaan.

Therefore, tithing was a regulation that God instituted to support those whose lives were dedicated to the priestly intercession through Old Testament sacrifices.

Applicable to the New Testament era?

I’ve heard others who encourage tithing in the New Testament by quoting Malachi’s well-known prophecy that begins: “Will a man rob God?” (Mal. 3:8–12). However, Malachi’s prophecy was a divine exhortation to Jews returning from the Babylonian exile to fund the Levitical tribe and, thereby, the reinstatement of temple worship.

That context can’t be divorced from the prophecy to make it applicable to the New Testament era. The church building is not the New Testament equivalent to the Temple. Church elders may be set apart for ministry, but not as successors to the Old Testament priesthood.

Jesus’ sacrifice brought the provisional Old Testament priesthood and sacrifices to an end, as signified by the veil of the Temple being torn in half when Jesus died on the cross.

Ultimately, to continue the practice of tithing implies that, despite Christ’s all-sufficient high-priestly sacrifice, there remains an intercessory caste, who are the New Testament custodians of that Old Testament allocation.

Of course, those who support tithing make no mention of the three tithes that together would require giving 25% of income (Levites’ tithe – Lev. 27:30; Num. 18:21; festival tithe – Deut. 12:10–11; poor tithe – Deut. 14:28–29).

During the service in Leatherhead, the minister even suggested that tithing did not signify a return to Judaism because Abraham, who predated the giving of the Law, gave a tenth of the spoils of war to the priest, Melchisedek (Gen. 14:18–20).

In so doing, the church leader presented tithing as not only a fundamental part of Abraham's covenant with God, but also a perpetual and universally applicable principle of living by faith.

Nothing could be further from the truth, since there is no evidence that Abraham’s regularly gave a tenth of all his income to Melchizedek or any other priest of God.

Furthermore, Abraham’s animal sacrifices also predated the Law of Moses, but I don’t hear any church leaders calling on us to emulate him in that regard.

Giving today: the goal is equality

While God calls us to give and give generously, the New Testament focus is on alleviating the genuine hardship, rather than fuelling mega-church dreams.

For example, in Scripture, when Paul appeal to the Corinthian church to give generously to famine-stricken Christians in Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8), he didn’t hark back to Old Testament tithing, but, instead, to mutual generosity among the Israelites who shared manna: the food which God gave them in the wilderness (2 Cor. 8:14,15; Ex. 16:18).

He wrote: “The goal is equality, as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.”

And that’s the principal reason that I take issue with the assertion that tithing is required by God in the New Testament era. Unlike Paul’s appeal, such exhortations are divorced from the overt context of the Bible verses used to make their case. Unlike Paul, such exhortations show no concern for equality.