Many believers often ask: “Do we have to give tithes in the New Testament?” This really is a hotly debated topic among Christians, especially now, when the gospel of grace is gaining strength and we are beginning to live in the freedom for which our wonderful and beloved Lord suffered!

The tithe points to Christ

— Brother, have you read in Malachi what the Lord of hosts said: “Bring the tithes into the house of God, so that I open the heavens”? So we must bring tithes to church.
— Listen, brother. The tithe is Jesus. And the Lord is simply saying: “Bring Jesus into the temple of your body, and then the heavens will always be open over you.”

If the tithe were as important in the New Testament as people try to make out, the apostles would have instructed believers at least once in their epistles to give tithes. But in the New Testament epistles the tithe is mentioned only in the epistle to the Hebrews, where the author speaks about Melchizedek, who is a type of Christ.

Why did Paul never once mention the tithe in his epistles to the churches? Because the tithe is part of the Old Testament and points, like the whole Old Testament, to the coming Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to His perfect work on the cross.

Sometimes people say: “But Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek hundreds of years before the Lord gave the law through Moses. So Abraham lived under grace and gave tithes, which means we must give them too!” First, Abraham did not live in the Spirit and in grace as you and I live today, because Jesus had not yet suffered on the cross and the New Testament had not yet come. And second, Abraham, for example, offered up his son Isaac and was circumcised. So should we offer up our children and be circumcised too, as Abraham did? Of course not!

Everything Abraham did or had was a shadow of good things to come, like the whole Old Testament, including the times before the law of Moses. But for us today it is the reality. The apostle Peter writes: “Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.” (1 Pet.1:10-11). Abraham was a prophet too, and Jesus testified: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad“.

Living in the New Testament, we don’t reject the Old Testament, but neither do we take it literally and according to the flesh. Just as in the story of Abraham offering up Isaac we can see a picture of how our Heavenly Father did not spare His Only Beloved Son but offered Him up for us, so the story of Melchizedek and Abram reveals what happened between God the Father, of whom Abram was a type (note: the name Abram means exalted father, or the Most High), and the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom Melchizedek was a type. (This story is explained in more detail in episode 14 of the Creepy Bible Stories, about the Tithe.)

We are already blessed

Very often believers are frightened with the idea that if they don’t give tithes or offerings, God won’t open the heavens and they will live in poverty. Beloved, if conditions are set for you, if you are pressured into making all kinds of covenants with God, or burdens are laid on your shoulders with the words: “Give your tithes, and then God will bless you”, that is a teaching of the law. The old covenant of the law is built on the principle: “You must first do something for God, and only then will He bless you.” No, my friends, we no longer live in the Old Testament, and the Law of Moses has no power over us.

In the New Covenant of grace Paul writes that God has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Eph.1:3) At the moment Jesus became the Lord of your life and you received the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of grace, you received all of God’s blessings along with the Holy Spirit. They are already inside you, and you have already received them by grace through faith.

Someone may ask: “I’ve been a believer for fifteen years and I’m baptised with the Holy Spirit, but I live in poverty. How can that be?” Christ, who lives in us by His Spirit, works and manifests all of God’s blessings in our lives only when we live in faith and grace and rely not on our own obedience, our own works and our own righteousness, but on the obedience of Jesus Christ, His finished work on the cross, and the righteousness of God.

Paul wrote clearly and unambiguously: “For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise made of no effect” (Rom.4:14) The promise in this case is the Holy Spirit, whom our Father has generously given us. That is, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, is inactive when we try to please God through our works and our obedience to Him. So too to the foolish Galatians, who began to live by the law and the flesh, Paul writes: “Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.” (Gal.5:2) Being circumcised means relying on your flesh and your own righteousness, which is of the law, and not on God’s righteousness, which we receive as a gift through faith.

More blessed to give

If we live in freedom and don’t need to do anything to receive God’s blessings, does that mean we no longer give financially? Of course not! If a believer has material abundance and spends all his finances on himself, it only shows that he has the mindset of the old, fleshly man, living not in God’s grace but in the law. That is exactly what the Corinthians were like: they were financially blessed but refused to share with others.

Beloved, we don’t give and bless others in order to get rich ourselves or so that God will bless us. Paul wrote: “I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” (Act.20:35)

Why is it more blessed to give? Because a person experiences true blessing not when he buys himself something new, but when he blesses someone in need financially. A new thing may bring fleeting joy, but that is temporary, and very soon the thing will end up in the rubbish. But when we bless those in need, not only does the person thank God for us in return, but the Spirit of God living in us fills us with joy and the love of Christ.

Why do you think the Lord loves to give, and why is He called Blessed? It is written of Him: “He has dispersed abroad, He has given to the poor; His righteousness endures forever“. The Lord God is already infinitely blessed, so why should He give away His possessions? Because He experiences even greater blessing from it. Love shows itself precisely in giving — God gave His Beloved Son — and when love shows itself, God’s heart overflows. In the same way God’s love works through us too.

Sharing with those who teach us

Sometimes people say: “Why does that preacher sell books and sermons, when the apostle Paul didn’t sell his epistles?” Paul wrote in his epistle to the Corinthians: “Even so the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel. But I have used none of these things…” (1 Cor.9:14-15)

The Lord decided and ordained that preachers should receive their living for proclaiming the Good News. To the same Corinthians he writes: “Who ever goes to war at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk of the flock?” (1 Cor.9:7) But Paul simply chose not to use this right with the Corinthians and earned his own living while preaching to them, so that it would not be a stumbling block to the gospel. Other churches, such as those in Macedonia and Philippi, supported him generously.

After all, we aren’t surprised that when we plant potatoes or grapes we expect to get a harvest, or that when we work we expect the appropriate pay from our employer. So it is written of preachers and teachers: “he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be partaker of his hope” (1 Cor.9:10).

And how does a preacher receive his share? Paul goes on: “If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things?” In other words, the preacher teaches and builds a person up in God’s grace. That person grows, becomes financially provided for, and then shares his material blessings with the one from whom he received the spiritual seed.

That is why Paul writes to the Galatians: “Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches.” (Gal.6:6) But it doesn’t end there. The Lord has arranged everything so wonderfully in His wisdom that even when the one who is taught shares his finances with the one who teaches him, he is also sowing, and a harvest awaits him too. In his epistle to the Corinthians Paul writes: “Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness” (2 Cor.9:10) God’s righteousness multiplies what is sown and brings not only a spiritual harvest but a material one too.

Sowing under grace

In the book of Genesis there is a wonderful story of how Isaac sowed in the land of Gerar and reaped a hundredfold in the same year. (Gen.26:12-14) As we have already said, our Lord loves to sow and to give away His possessions to those in need, and in the parables Jesus told, it is the Son of Man who is the Sower. And since God has placed us in Christ Jesus, we too sow into others, both spiritual and material seed. Or rather, it isn’t we who sow, but He who sows through us. So we too can draw precious pearls from this story.

Isaac was the son of Sarah, whom Paul compared to grace and to the heavenly Jerusalem. He also called Sarah our mother, for all believers are born of grace and did not earn salvation by their works. (Gal.4:24-26) It was Isaac, the son of grace, who reaped a hundredfold. Jews under the law could hardly convert a single person to Judaism, but when Paul and Barnabas preached about God’s grace in Antioch, a week later the whole city gathered to listen, and many believed. Isn’t that a hundredfold harvest?

The name Gerar, the place where Isaac sowed, in Hebrew means to drag up or to chew the cud. Oxen that chew the cud symbolise preachers and teachers, who draw God’s truths out of the Word of God to feed the sheep. Paul compares preachers to oxen when he says that even in the law it is written: “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain“. This tells us that it is best to sow where we receive spiritual food, where we are fed.

Both spiritual and material seed, sown where God’s grace is preached and taught, where the righteousness of Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross are revealed, will always bring an abundant harvest, even if there is drought and financial crisis in the world, as there was at the time when Isaac sowed.

Remember that Papa loves you very much, for He did not spare His Only Son for you. And He has already taken care of everything and blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Live in the abundance of God’s grace and righteousness, and in the obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and you will reign in life. The Spirit of God, the Spirit of grace who lives in you, will manifest the Kingdom of God, which is righteousness, peace and joy, and all that Papa has given you in Christ Jesus. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor.8:9)