(The following is an abbreviated transcription from a video Linda and I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)
So the other night, Linda and I were teaching our six-week financial class called True Financial Freedom. We’re on week two with our awesome students. And we do a little Q&A at the end of each session. And we were getting question after question after question about tithing.
I’ve been writing about money, for money to Christians, for the last 14 years.
There’s nothing more controversial that I’ve ever written.
I found an awesome article on tithing by Dean Shriver that Linda and I thought was very interesting.
I recorded our discussion that you can listen to on our Podcast, or you can opt to watch the video we recorded of our conversation on YouTube, which can be viewed just below.
But, if you would rather read the full transcription, you can do so here in this article!
Enjoy.
Tithing, the most controversial topic in Christian Finance
Bob: And I always say this, but there’s nothing more controversial that I’ve ever written, ever, than tithing.
Linda: When Bob told me this I was like, what? Really? And I think it’s probably because I grew up in one church and had one teaching on it. But apparently there’s a whole lot going on out there and lots of people hold different opinions and everything.
Bob: Yeah. And I’ve written about it, you can check out the article we’ve written about my tithing experience. We’ve actually written a couple of articles about it: Should you tithe while trying to get out of debt?, When you don’t see results from tithing, Tithing When Your Spouse Doesn’t Approve and many more. Just search on the website (the search box is all the way at the bottom).
But I found an article that I think is just really, really good because I’ve been trying to figure out how do we find the biblical accurate understanding of this topic. How do we do that and how do we get this thing right?
When giving is misrepresented
Linda: Well, and another thing is, I think giving in general has been misrepresented by people.
Bob: What do you mean?
Linda: Well, just the idea of you can either give, to just get something back from God or people just wanting your money. And so they will tell you anything and they’ll try to promise things that they can’t promise and just try to manipulate other people.
Bob: Yeah. And we’ve seen this in the church. We’ve seen a lot of bad things happened in the church, so it’s easy to have something bad happen to you and I’m never going to trust anyone again. Like that pastor ran off with my money. So, I’m never going to give money to the church again. I’ve heard stories like this all the time.
Linda: And that is all really valid.
Bob: Yeah those are wounds that people are dealing with.
Linda: Right. But, I think what Bob and I have always felt is that, that doesn’t make the Word of God not true. So trying to wrap all that up, all these different opinions and ideas and experiences, it’s just a really hard thing to talk about.
Learning and growing in knowledge of the subject
Bob: Yeah. So before we dive into this, I just want to add that I love learning about any topic, but especially about The Word of God. And I love growing in my knowledge of The Word and I’m going to continue to grow.
I don’t know everything. I don’t understand everything. This is a topic I have spent a lot of time studying. And so I appreciate your grace. And I am all ears. People send me messages of what they think and believe all the time, and I love hearing it. But all that to say, I found this article written by a pastor about tithing that honestly it’s different than anything I’ve ever heard.
And that’s why I want to share it because I think it’s just a really good framework to view tithing as a New Testament believer. And so that’s why I want to talk about this. I encourage you to check out the article for yourself, it’s by pastor Dean Shriver.
Three different types of tithing
Bob: Essentially, what he says in this article is that there are three different ways to tithe. And I’ll just kind of read what he said here.
Linda: That are talked about in the Bible?
Bob: Yeah. They’re talked about the Bible.
1. Tithing as covenant
Bob: He said the form of tithing most often addressed in scripture is number one, which is tithing as covenant.
And this practice of tithing was specific to Israel as a covenant people of God. It’s part of the mosaic law. And under the covenant, God promised to materially bless Israel for obedience. And conversely to judge them and strip them of their prosperity for disobedience.
So this model of tithing has no direct relevance to us as New Testament believers. In Christ, we now live under a new covenant. Our lives are not governed by the written code, but by the indwelling holy spirit, who writes his law on our hearts. And you can do some research on this Galatians 5:18 and in Hebrews 8:7-13.
And so that’s the first form that is mentioned. The thing that I think is most common that people hear of and think of when they think of tithing. Because that’s what’s written about most in the Bible.
Linda: Right.
Bob: Especially when it comes to tithing. And, so, and I think some people will hear that and they’ll just start having a knee jerk reaction. So hang, hang on, let’s get to the other ones and then we can kind of go from there.
2. Tithing as legalism
So the second type of tithing that he mentions, in which this is what we see in the New Testament. Because tithing isn’t talked about much in the New Testament. It’s one of those things. It’s like, God, why, if this was important to you, why didn’t you talk about it more in the New Testament? That’s one of the questions I’m going to askwhen I get to heaven.
But it is talking about the New Testament with one particular passage here from Jesus. The Bible also describes a second kind of tithing which is both condemnable and I fear far too common. Which is a second form, tithing as legalism.
In the article he said, in Jesus’ day it was the religious leaders who practice this perversion of Israel’s covenant tithe. Christ’s condemnation of legalistic tithing can be found in Matthew 23. So I’ll read that this is what Jesus says now: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. For you, tithe in mint and dill and cumin, but have neglected the weightier matters of the law justice and mercy and faithfulness. These, you ought to have done without neglecting the others. And so clearly we have Jesus saying something there.
Linda: The legalism aspect, I feel like both of those forms of tithing were the more common types of tithing that I sort of understood growing up. That we tithe because it says to in the Bible and there was not any context for, it was under the law. Christ then came to fulfill the law. That whole piece of it, which is going to bring us to our third one in a minute here.
The guilt and condemnation tied to tithing as covenant and tithing as legalism
Linda: I honestly had a lot of condemnation. I remember one time I honestly felt led by the Lord to take my tithe and give it to some people who were going on a mission trip. Okay. And I’m not kidding you for about 10 years.
I felt so much guilt about that. And I had this voice in my head going, you still owed God money from that. You still owe Him money from that because you took it…
Bob: Wow.
Linda: I don’t think I’ve ever told you that story.
Bob: No.
Linda: And it was a long time and it was even to the point where we were giving more than the 10% of what that legalistic voice would say.
Bob: And you haven’t satisfied that debt in your head.
Linda: Yes, what the legalistic voice in my head would say was enough. And still that was not there. And I started to realize that this was guilt instead of conviction.
Bob: Yeah.
Linda: Because I was like, I’m actually doing more than I ever was before.
Bob: You’ve covered, we’ve covered the debt that was in your head.
Linda: By the way I was giving to a mission trip. It wasn’t like I’m just doing whatever. But because that was the voice in my head, the context that I had for tithing, I just carried around all this guilt with it.
Bob: Wow.
Linda: And that’s why I really loved hearing how he explained this third one, because it’s so it’s under grace. Tithing should be under grace.
Bob: Yeah. It’s the covenant that we’re in.
3. Tithing as worship
Bob: So the third type of tithing that he says is mentioned in the Bible is tithing as worship. Okay. Now I’m going to read a section of what he wrote here. He said in scripture, tithing as worship was practiced prior to both the establishment of tithing as covenant and the perversion of tithing as legalism.
Linda: I love that.
Bob: The principle of tithing is worship is prelaw. It’s established in Genesis 14, where Abram gives a tenth of his plunder to Melchizedek, King of Salem. Melchizedek in turn blesses, Abram and Hebrews 7, it defines the significance of these acts declaring that it is the superior who blesses the inferior. And the inferior is the one who pays tithes to the superior.
Acknowledging God is our superior and our source of blessing
So tithing as worship then is first an act by which we acknowledge that God is both our superior, the sovereign Lord and the source of our blessing.
Expressing our personal allegiance to God
And then he goes on to explain that tithing as worship does more than just acknowledge God, but it also expresses our personal allegiance to Him. Which I just really liked that. I think that’s valuable.
Thanksgiving: expressing overflowing gratitude toward God
And then he said a third and critical element of tithing as worship is Thanksgiving. It expresses overflowing gratitude toward God. It breaks us free from guilt as a motivation for our giving and its ultimate focus as a condition of one’s heart, not the percentage of one’s income.
Linda: Yeah. That’s good. And I really like that.
Bob: Yeah. And I just think that’s rich and that this lines up with scripture. It lines up with the New Testament.
We are advocates of tithing
Bob: And so we are advocates of tithing. We have been tithing, since we came together, being married, you’ve been tithing over…
Linda: Probably most my life.
Bob: It’s a practice that I would admit that we haven’t done it right. Or, I’ve definitely haven’t done it right the whole time (should you tithe while paying off debt?). And I think it began for me probably out of legalism. I don’t remember exactly, but I think probably that’s where it started for me.
But I can say now I, it is an act of worship for us. And like he mentioned in this article right here, tithing as Thanksgiving or tithing as worship, it’s ultimate focus is a condition of one’s heart, not the percentage of one’s income.
Giving our age as a percentage of income
Bob: And because of that and we’re not saying this to brag, but this is just what God has done in our hearts and what He’s invited us to do.
But because of that, that’s why we give 40% of our income. We didn’t stop at 10% because it wasn’t a legalistic thing. But we sense the Lord leading us to give our age as a percentage of income. You probably heard me talk about it, and we’ve written about, but that’s where we are.
That’s a journey of the Lord has led us on. And that’s part of our worship to Him is this obedience factor of what He asked us to do and in our thankfulness for what He’s done in our lives. We’ve been so overwhelmingly blessed and we have found, and I’ve said ita hundred times, you can’t out-give God.
And so we’ve just continued to stretch and our giving going further and further, and we’ve watched God do more and more in our lives. Some of the blessings are material, but a lot of it isn’t material blessings. It’s not like a genie or slot machine thing. It’s not manipulating God to try to make us rich. It’s none of that stuff.
Transforming our hearts and renewing our minds
Linda: But a lot of the change has come in our own hearts and it’s like, that is the whole point is like we are to be transformed into the image of Christ and the renewing of our mind, like reading The Word and then doing what He is asking us to do.
We’re seeing the fruit of it in our own lives. To where the materialistic things really don’t matter to us as much. I think we still both could use to grow in this area, but when I look back at the last 20 years of my life, I can see how I’m just like, oh that doesn’t matter to me anymore. That doesn’t bother me as much as it used to or whatever. But I definitely think that there’s been a financial blessing there as well.
Bob: Yeah.
Linda: In many ways.
Differing tithing viewpoints among believers
Bob: Talking about tithing has always been something that I’m not thrilled to do. Because there are a lot of people who just have such differing viewpoints on this, some even get into debates about tithing of time.
And I have some people who I respect tremendously, who just believe that you’re cursed if you don’t tithe then so you have to tithe then.
I just don’t see that. I see that we’ve been redeemed from the curse of the law according to scripture.
So I don’t see how we are under the law and how we are going to be cursed if we don’t tithe. Yes. The Israelites in that covenant, that was the deal. But we’re under a new covenant. And so…
Linda: Well and the other side of it too, which is where people have yelled at you because they’re saying, well, it’s old Testament to tithe. Then you don’t have to tithe (should you tithe on your tax return?). Then Bobs like, are you using this to get out of being generous?
Bob: Yeah, that’s another thing I hear all the time. Tithing is old covenant. And so therefore I don’t have to give anything. Yeah, you don’t have to.
Linda: You can still go to heaven that way.
Bob: But it’s not about that. Tithing as worship is like this is the overflow of our heart. This is the abundance of the thankfulness that we have for what Jesus has done for us.
And in that context, we were talking about the other day how somebody did something really kind and generous for us. And our natural response was to want to do something for them. And not as a we have to, because…
Linda: You gave that to me. So I have to give you something back.
Bob: So I have to give it back to make it right.
But it’s like, you just blessed us in this area. What can we do to show our appreciation? And that’s how I feel about giving and generosity in terms of worship to the Lord.
An act of worship that is really fun
Bob: We talked a lot about just how much fun we have with it and that’s thrilling. It’s like if that’s going to be a motivating factor, by all means like grab a hold of it. I think it’s okay that you have both, that is an act of worship and in that it’s really fun. I think that’s the way God designed it and that’s okay. Both of those things are in the equation.
There is a time for sacrificial giving, like where it hurts and stings. And that’s fine, but I don’t think it’s wrong that you actually enjoy giving. I think that’s God’s design. And if you look at a lot of different things that God created and set up, it makes sense.
I happen to believe that most people in their calling and the thing that God has called them to do is often in the area of gifting or an area of interest.
You know what I mean?
It just makes sense that He would give us the gifts that we need to fulfill the call that He has given to us. And a lot of us, I would say most of us when we’re operating in our giftings, it’s actually something we enjoy.
It’s something like, wow, I am skilled at this. I’m uniquely gifted at this.
Linda: It almost feels easy. Even if there are challenges that come up, it’s still like this comes naturally to me.
Bob: And when we’re operating our gifting, that is just a normal response to the whole thing.
Linda: Absolutely.
Closing
Bob: I would recommend checking out this article. And I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave us comment below or send us a DM over on Instagram.
But yeah, love to just hear your thoughts on anything. And I think that’s it. If you haven’t left us a review over on iTunes, please do that as well.
