I read this article in Leadership Journal today, and thought it would be good to share. Enjoy!
-Pastor Ryan
Tithing: Law or a Grace? -The place of giving in the Gospel
Written by John Ortberg
One of the things Jesus never
actually said was, "By the way, now that I've introduced grace into the equation,
no one needs to worry about tithing anymore."
Tithing is considerably less popular
than words like generosity or sharing. Among lay people the most common
question associated with tithing is: "Am I supposed to base it on net
income or gross?" Among pastors the question is: "Isn't tithing an
Old Testament concept? Aren't we under grace now?"
This question more or less assumes
that it was only post-Pentecost that the church discovered that God is the
owner and that people are stewards. It implies that legalistic old Israel
thought all they had to do was check the "I tithed" box and then got
to spend the rest however they wanted (ignoring biblical statements like
"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof").
Worse—a certain looseness of thought
about grace sometimes becomes a rationale for not giving at all. A friend of
mine made the case: "If my kids are really the Lord's, then I can count
the money I spend on their food and clothing and college tuition as falling
into the 'good steward' category. If I use my home for hospitality and hosting
small group, then the same goes for furniture acquisition and home makeovers. I
use my computer for Bible study and my phone to store worship songs, so those
items are stewardologically deductible." This type of "all-grace
giving" where we give "everything" to God looks suspiciously
similar to giving nothing to God.
What if tithing is actually one of
God's great gifts to us? What if tithing isn't opposed to grace, but is
actually a vehicle of it? I'd like to go back to one of the classic statements
about the tithe in Scripture, and look at why tithing is in fact God's great
tool to create generous people.
Spiritual
training wheels
Tithing is like training wheels when
it comes to giving. It's intended to help you get started, but not recommended
for the Tour de France.
How do you know when to take
training wheels off? The quick answer is: when they're slowing you down. How do
you know when its time to stop tithing? For all of us not living in dire
poverty, the answer is when you're giving way more than 10 percent. Tithing is
a bad ceiling but an excellent floor.
The prophet Malachi famously spoke
of failure to tithe as a kind of robbery of the divine. "'You are robbing
me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my
house. Test Me in this,' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw
open the flood gates of heaven and pour out so much blessing there will not be
room enough to store it.'"
God invites human beings into an
experiment. He challenges people to test it. At the same time, failure to tithe
is called robbery. Tithing is not the last word in generosity; it's the first
word. But it's a word that God takes with deep seriousness; perhaps because
when human beings get vague around finances, they grow deeply evasive.
Tithe
was never to be legalistic
Tithing was built into the
foundation of Israel's way of life. "A tithe of everything from the land,
whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is
holy to the Lord" (Lev.
27:30).
The word tithe means "a tenth
part." Tithing means 10 percent. For Israel, however, tithing was really
only a start.
There were three "tithes"
collected from Israel—one to support priests and Levites (Num.
18:21); another for a sacred celebration (Deut.
14:23); and a third—collected only once every three years—to support
the poor, orphans, and widows (Deut.
14:28-29; 26:12-13).
So the actual income percentage given was closer to 23 than 10.
Tithing was never meant to be a way
to "pay our debt to God." It has always been a training exercise to
cultivate a generous and God-centered heart.
Some people argue that since tithing
is found in the Old Testament we can discard the whole concept. Jesus, however,
was quite clear that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. In
the early church, no one's attitude was "Thank goodness grace takes us out
from under the Law—now we don't have to tithe anymore! We can give far less
than 10 percent!" The early church was so overwhelmed by God's grace and
generosity, it went far beyond the tithe.
Tithing was never intended as a way
to "pay our debt to God." It has always been a training exercise to
cultivate a generous and God-centered heart.
Tithing is to our possessions what
the Sabbath is to our time—a concrete guideline that points beyond itself to
the truth that every moment and inch and scrap of our lives come from the hand
of God, and will be returned to God.
An
economy of generosity
Stanford researcher Leon Festinger
developed a line of research in social comparison theory. He noted that in
different situations we will tend to compare ourselves with people above us or
below us, depending on what ladder we're talking about.
For instance, on morality, we tend
to compare ourselves with people we think are below us: mass murderers, drug
dealers. On money, we compare ourselves to people above us, those who have more
than we do. Upward financial comparisons generate increasing amounts of greed
and decreasing amounts of compassion.
But ancient financial practices in
Israel discouraged upward financial comparisons. Tithing was a reminder that
all human beings were created with a need to give.
If there were two ways Israel was
most obviously distinct in its ancient Mediterranean world, one would be
monotheism. They worshiped one God. The other is they put voluntary limits on
their wealth. They lived in deliberate generosity.
Tithing
gets personal
Some years ago I was at a dinner
with a man who headed up a large ministry that works with churches and
stewardship. I asked him, "What's the primary predictor of whether any
particular church will be generous?" I figured he'd talk about what
stewardship program they used or how often generosity was taught. It was none
of those. The number one predictor of a generous church, he said, is whether or
not it has a generous pastor.
Tithing starts right here. So Nancy
and I take the tithe of what we earn and give it to the local congregation we
are a part of. Then we support other ministries like World Vision and
International Justice Mission and Fuller Seminary. That practice is especially
important for leaders who want to lead churches to grace-filled generosity.
Copyright © 2013 by the author (John Ortberg) or
Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
