Tithes and Offerings

Passage: Deuteronomy 26:1-15

The church I grew up in has always maintained a strong ethic of “tithing”. Traditionally this has been understood as giving away one-tenth of one’s income – either exclusively to the church or to the church and a collection of other causes. 10% was held up as the baseline for Christian giving – an expected bare minimum or starting point.

This has changed dramatically in recent years, both in my denomination and in most other mainline denominations in North America. If you Google “tithing”, you’ll come across all kinds of commentary on the subject. Some defend the practice. More attack it, mainly based on the fact that there are no New Testament passages that explicitly require it. Although a case can easily be made against today’s churches requiring Christians to donate 10% of their income, many of the arguments for and against tithing are so noisy and passionate that the purposes for the original tithe are missed almost completely.

In Deuteronomy 26 Moses reiterates God’s instructions for tithes and offerings. God requires his people to make an offering of the first portions of whatever their labor has produced. They are to do so as a regular ritual of thanksgiving, in which they recall God’s history of faithfulness to his covenant people. This "firstfruits" offering is a demonstration of three things: first, that the land and all it produces belongs to God; second, that the people are grateful for what God has shared with them; third, that the people trust God to continue providing what they need. The firstfruits offering is a statement of faith in God.

The tithe is a sacrifice of one-tenth of the people’s livelihood to be offered every three years. The tithe expresses the same things expressed by the firstfruits offering: gratitude for God’s goodness, and trust that God will continue to provide. The tithe also serves a practical purpose: it is used to care for the nation’s poor, and to support the Levites and temple workers (who have been commanded by God to refrain, at least partially, from the kinds of labor by which their peers support themselves). God’s people are thus commanded to give as an exercise of faith and as a means of supporting members of their community who can’t support themselves.

This brings us to the present. It’s true that there is no New Testament imperative to tithe. Instead there are regular appeals for church members to give in response to needs they encounter. There is evidence that members of the early church gave generously, both to support those in their immediate community and to help congregations in other parts of the world. Old Testament Israelites, and New Testament Christians, gave because they understood that everything they had belonged to God. They didn’t ask how much they owed God, or how little they could get away with giving. It wasn’t a question of “What’s mine and what’s God’s”. It all belongs to God.

So Christians today can argue all they want about whether tithing is required. The short answer is that it’s not. But the more accurate answer is that God requires not 10%, but 100%. As people of God we must be prepared to give up anything and everything as God requires. Why? Because it all belongs to God.

As with the Israelites, our regular giving serves two purposes. It is, primarily, an exercise of our faith. It demonstrates our recognition that our money is not our own; and it forces us to trust God to provide what we need, especially after we’ve given funds we think we need. Our giving also serves the practical purpose of supporting those in our communities who can’t support themselves. We have been given the gift of freedom from a set giving standard. But as God’s people we are still required to give. We can’t afford not to.