What do you do? Offer to the Lord or pay the tax?
{complete reading required – partial reading not recommended}
Tithing (10%) has undoubtedly become a source of much ridicule in secular circles, and in fact it has its reasons depending on the occasion. And one of the doubts that arise is whether tithing is lawful for us, the church, the body of Christ that lives under the Grace of God.
What if I said that NO, tithing is essentially linked to the law of Moses. Would you stop giving, offering, donating in the kingdom of God?!
And said that YES, tithing is an inherent part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ proposed to the church, would you make it mandatory, would it be your tribute?
Today what we have is precisely two ends, like a childhood game of “tug of war”, in fact, childhood and immaturity fit perfectly in both situations.
Those we see on one side are Christians with limited understanding, who “pay” the tithe, their tax, their fee, which for them is nothing more than another tax, it is a property tax, vehicle tax […], tithe. People who do so normally do so out of fear that the devourer will destroy them and take the little they have, they give out of fear, or they pay for bad appearances, never as a voluntary delivery or gratitude to God.
On the other hand, they are leaders of “fear”, they are people with the spirit of the dark ages, where the best way to control is to impose fear, terror, where they paint God as if he were the “devil”, where they have to take from where they don’t have, from where they can’t, in order to give… Because if they do so, God will bless them and if they don’t “pay” them, God will curse them.
So what to do? Let us turn to the Gospel of Jesus as our only interpretation:
1 – Jesus never abolished tithing. In fact, He fulfilled it. The environment He was in was precisely the Jewish one, where He said that one must do all these things (tithing and other observances of the law) but that one practice the greatest bonds of the law – justice, mercy and faith (Matthew 23.23).
2 – In Acts chapter 15, after long years of discussions about the conversion of the Gentiles to Christianity in the first century, they gathered in Jerusalem for the first council of the Church, presided over by James, and among them Peter, Paul and other apostles; The agenda of the council was whether the Gentiles would have to adhere to the laws of God given through Moses to Israel or not; after much discussion, the text was specified:
“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to lay upon you any greater burden than these necessary things:
That ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which ye do well if ye keep yourselves. Fare ye well.
Now, it is very clear in the Word of God, both in the Old Testament and in the New, that God does not accept and is not pleased with anything that is not from the heart; if it is not from faith, the Word says that it is a sin. Therefore, “paying” tithes as an imposition, considering it an obligation, is nothing more than a tax on your paycheck. God simply does not see it as an act of gratitude and faith. Even tithing has to be an act of faith, otherwise it is worthless.
For Paul, or specifically the early church, 10% could be considered the offering of the stingy, because they gave – they gave themselves deliberately so that the kingdom of God would advance. As doctrines for the church in his letters begin with tithing, offering in the kingdom of God is accompanied by some elements. For example, the letter to the Philippians is a letter of thanks. At the end he will reveal the reason he wrote the letter, and the main reason is to thank the generous offering that the church in Philippi had sent to him, which was an ongoing procedure of this church to Paul, and the sentiments that Paul uses to designate such generosity are Joy and Gratitude.
Already in the first letter to the Corinthians he treats the act of donating, offering, tithing in the kingdom of God as voluntariness, individuality and proportionality (chapter 16);
In the second letter to this same church he recalls the act of happiness, as the heart tells, he calls us to have a generous heart in the kingdom of God.
God's relationship with man in this gesture, in these same letters, is filled with God's kindness to those who do so; not because God has the obligation to do so, but because God is pleased with the man who has a generous heart.
In Philippians he says that the offering is a sweet smell to God, and he says that “God will supply all your needs”; In Corinthians he recalls “God will make it abound, like a planted seed that will return as the kindness of God to the man who does so.”
With that I conclude with some advice to Christians:
- Never give tithes, offerings out of obligation, but rather with your heart.
God doesn't need your petty tithe, he wants the gratitude of your heart; Tithe in the grace of God NO it is more of a tax, a tribute from a country (Israel) as it was, where the temple was the treasury house and the treasury house was the mint, a tribute necessary to teach man to deliberate the things of the world, and for the organizational and priestly functioning of a people; Today it is essentially an act of faith and gratitude. And gratitude in this capitalist world is extremely an act of Faith; If you had a plate to eat, a piece of clothing to wear, a shoe to wear, a house to live in, Only a miserable and insensitive heart is not capable of giving itself and giving with a grateful heart to God for all the benefits that God has done.
- Never tithe out of guilt or fear.
If you do so, you do not know God, and you will not be known by Him; Every devourer, curser, every price, was paid for by Christ Jesus, on the cross. Do it with joy, as someone who is grateful to a friend for favors he will never be able to repay.
- He who does not bless is not blessed, and he who does not give is not received.
“God loves those who give cheerfully…” The blessings in life, as to prosperity according to God's will for man, is implicit in donating, giving, delivering, helping, maintaining, contributing, doing... in the kingdom of God.
God does not need a salary, food on the table, warm clothes in the winter, or commuting. He is God, but our missionaries do, our evangelizers do, our pastors do. Give to someone, without looking at who.
Don't be a stingy person, finding excuses to not give yourself, to surrender yourself to the kingdom of God, and don't be a follower of rites and gestures, thinking that it is a tax to be paid; Don't do it because you are afraid of being devoured, do it because God did much more for you, you! You could never pay in cash the price paid for your life; Don't be a slave to money, make it your servant.
Of the one who does it out of fear of Him,
Fabiano Moreno